Treaty of Tordesillas divides Iberian claims across the Atlantic

The bull Dum Diversas granted Portugal a claimed religious and political warrant to conquer territories ruled by non-Christians and reduce people to perpetual servitude. It helped give a Christian...

Romanus Pontifex reaffirmed Portuguese claims to navigation, conquest, and trade along the West African coast, including claims over people whom Portuguese forces captured. The document connected...

Charles V granted Lorenzo de Gorrevod a license for the direct shipment of 4,000 enslaved Africans from Africa to Spanish America. The license reveals how the Crown converted human beings into a...

Sublimis Deus declared Indigenous peoples rational and capable of Christian faith and condemned their enslavement. Its protection was limited and repeatedly undermined by colonial practice, and it did...

The New Laws sought to curb abuses against Indigenous peoples and restrict hereditary encomiendas, while also addressing Indigenous enslavement. Colonial elites resisted and enforcement was uneven....

The Crown granted Reynel a contract to supply enslaved Africans to Spanish America. The asiento system made trafficking a regulated imperial monopoly, with African captives treated as taxable cargo...

A privateer delivered captive Africans to Point Comfort in August 1619, where colonists exchanged food for them. This often-cited arrival is not the beginning of African presence in the Americas,...