Spanish Crown grants a major asiento for African captives

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...

The treaty drew a line dividing rival Iberian claims to lands outside Europe. It did not create African or Indigenous consent, yet its imperial framework helped structure later conquest, plantation...

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....

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,...

The charter authorized a Dutch company to wage war, trade, and govern in Atlantic territories. Its later activities included conquest, plantation production, and trafficking in enslaved Africans,...

The ship returned from the Caribbean carrying enslaved Africans and is often identified as an early New England voyage in the Atlantic trade. Its cargo linked New England commerce to Caribbean...

The legal code permitted enslavement of captives taken in just wars and people sold into bondage by others. Its language shows colonial lawmakers creating legal openings for enslavement while claiming...

Eleven Black residents petitioned for freedom for themselves and their families, citing decades of service and asking for land. The Dutch authorities granted conditional freedom while keeping their...