EVENT INFORMATION

25
Juni
1558

Royal decree excludes Indigenous people from pearl fishing and reserves the work for Africans

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📅 25 Juni 1558 📍 Venezuela

A royal decree of 25 June 1558 prohibited the future use of Indigenous people in pearl fishing and specified that Africans could be used for the work. In practice, the measure shifted the burden of a dangerous extractive industry toward enslaved Africans; it did not abolish slavery or end exploitation in the fishery. Read alongside earlier inspections, the decree shows a racialized labor transition in which legal protection for one group could coexist with the forced labor of another.

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Personen in deze gebeurtenis

Spanish Crown officials

Indigenous and African pearl fishers

Organisaties in dit Evenement

Spanish Crown

pearl-fishery operators in Margarita

Cubagua

and nearby waters