The Portuguese-African Slave Trade
A Lesson in Colonialism
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4500149 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Emília Viotti Da Costa (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1985 |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 41-61 |
| Publication date | 1985-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Latin American Perspectives (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0094-582X • E-ISSN: 1552-678X |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0094582x8501200103 |
| OpenAlex | W2790863582 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 11 |
When we compare the first contacts between Europeans and natives in Africa, North America, and South America, surprising patterns appear within the diversity of colonial experiences. The colonists were from different backgrounds: Some were English Puritans, like those who settled in Massachusetts or Anglicans, like the Virginia settlers; others, like the conquistadores of Mexico and Peru, were Catholic Spaniards; still others were Portuguese, like the plantation owners in Brazil and the merchants and royal bureaucrats in West Africa. They had migrated to new territories for a great variety of reasons and with different purposes in mind. The Puritans were escaping political and religious persecution; they condemned corruption in their homeland and hoped to create a city of saints in the New World. The Spanish and Portuguese missionaries also aimed at creating a perfect Christian community, but they put their hopes in the conversion of the Indians, who initially seemed to many of them to live in a state of innocence. Many Portuguese in Africa, Spaniards in America, and Englishmen in Virginia had escaped poverty and social degradation and dreamed of plundering the new lands opened to them and exploiting the natives' labor. Others were moved by a desire to serve their king by increasing his patrimony while accumulating gold and other riches for themselves, as Cortes did in Mexico and Pizarro in Peru. There were also merchants who expected to develop their own profitable enterprises. Finally, there were convicts unwillingly sent to the New World as settlers by cunning royal administrators who saw their chance to provide the colonies with labor while ridding the mother country of elements that seemed to threaten social stability. The colonists created towns in New England, plantations in Brazil and Virginia, trading posts in Africa, and towns, haciendas, and mining
Art · Colonialism · Economic history · Ethnology · Homeland · Language change · Persecution · Political science · Politics · Portuguese · Poverty · Religious persecution · State (computer science · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History · Law
A history of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545-1800.
Peru's Indian peoples and the challenge of Spanish conquest
Monumenta missionaria africana.
American Slavery, American Freedom
The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea
Manitou and Providence
The Voyages of Cadamosto and Other Documents on Western Africa in the Second Half of the Fifteenth Century
The Voyages of Cadamosto, and Other Documents on Western Africa in the Second Half of the Fifteenth Century
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,38 |
| Citation span | 2010 - 2026 (17) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 6 |