9781422274231

Origins of Slavery in America Between the arrival of Europeans in North and South America around 1500, and the end of slavery in the United States in the 1860s, it’s estimated that at least 12 million African people were forcibly taken from their homes and forced to live as slaves in the New World . These slaves were transported across the Atlantic Ocean, where they were then sold. Approximately half a million of these slaves were sent to the American colonies, while most of the others were sent to work in the Caribbean and South America. For many people in the United States today, it’s hard to imagine a time when slavery was legal. This heartbreaking chapter in American history has its start in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the first European colonies were being established in North America and the Caribbean. The Spanish had established profitable colonies in modern-day Mexico and Peru, where large amounts of gold, silver, and other resources could be found. They initially tried to enslave Native Americans that they encountered, but the natives soon died out due to overwork and exposure to unfamiliar diseases. Another source of labor had to be found. The Spanish and Portuguese soon began importing people from Africa, and forcing them to work as slaves in their colonies in the Caribbean and South America. The first permanent European settlement in North America was the Spanish colony at St. Augustine, in present-day Florida.

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