Expansion of the Atlantic Slave Trade

Timeline

1. 1518Valladolid (royal residence) · Castile-LeónIn 1518 Charles I issued an edict authorizing the Genoese banker Lorenzo de Góvoria de La Bresa to import African slaves to the American colonies. The privilege lasted eight years with a cap of 4,000 people; slaves were to be purchased on the Guinea coast of West Africa and registered with the trade house in Seville. This was the first large-scale royal charter for the transatlantic slave trade.
2. c. 1510–1518Hispaniola · HispaniolaIndigenous peoples such as the Taíno had already suffered drastic population decline from disease, forced labor, and war, and colonists had begun importing small numbers of African slaves from 1502. By 1518, the expansion of sugar and ranching worsened the labor gap, and the royal charter aimed to supplement African forced labor institutionally, replacing the collapsing indigenous labor system.
3. 1518–1520American colonies · AmericasAfter the 1518 charter, imports of African slaves rose markedly, and the trade route from Guinea via the Canary Islands to the Caribbean gradually became fixed. Slave trade and plantation economy formed a symbiotic relationship, setting an institutional precedent for the massive expansion of the transatlantic slave trade in the 16th–19th centuries and profoundly reshaping the racial composition and social hierarchy of the Americas.