Portugal: A Genesis of Chains and a Legacy of Power
The Historical Reality
Portugal's role in the transatlantic slave trade is one of grim primacy. As the first European nation to systematically engage in the trafficking of Africans, Portugal not only initiated the trade but also became its largest and most enduring perpetrator, transporting nearly half of all Africans forcibly taken to the Americas.
Entry and Authorization
Portugal's entry into the slave trade began in the 1440s, evolving from centuries of conflict with Moorish states on the Iberian Peninsula. The initial voyages down the African coast, sponsored by Prince Henry the Navigator, were driven by a mixture of motives. However, a pressing domestic economic need—a severe labor shortage on the sugarcane plantations of southern Portugal—quickly made the acquisition of enslaved people a primary objective.
The first phase involved direct slave raids. Between 1441 and 1444, Portuguese navigators captured the first contingents of Africans on the Mauritanian coast and shipped them to Europe. These early raids soon proved costly and inefficient against African resistance. Consequently, the Portuguese shifted their strategy from raiding to trading, establishing fortified trading posts (feitorias) and forging commercial relationships with African coastal rulers who were willing to sell captives from the interior, often prisoners of war.
This enterprise received the highest possible sanction. The Portuguese Crown, under the leadership of figures like Prince Henry, institutionalized the trade through state-run bodies like the Casa da Guiné, which managed the royal monopoly from 1443. The ultimate justification came from the Papacy. The papal bulls Dum Diversas (1452) and Romanus Pontifex(1455) granted the Portuguese monarchy an exclusive, God-given right to conquer non-Christian lands and reduce their inhabitants to "perpetual servitude," effectively giving Portugal a moral and legal blank check for its slaving activities.
Gains and Human Cost
Portugal transported an estimated 5.8 million Africans across the Atlantic, more than any other nation. The overwhelming destination was its colony of Brazil, which received approximately 94% of all Africans shipped on Portuguese and Brazilian vessels. The Brazilian colonial economy was entirely dependent on enslaved labor, first for its sugar plantations, then for its gold and diamond mines, and finally for its coffee plantations.
This created a uniquely efficient and brutal bilateral system, a direct axis between Portuguese-controlled ports in West Central Africa and the ports of Brazil. This immense flow of profits, generated by slave-produced commodities, was used to directly finance the purchase of more enslaved people in Angola, creating a self-perpetuating cycle of exploitation of staggering scale and resilience.
The human cost was catastrophic. Brazil imported nearly five million Africans. The conditions were so deadly, and the supply of new captives so relatively cheap, that plantation owners often made the cold calculation that it was more profitable to work an enslaved person to death over a few years and replace them than to provide adequate food, shelter, and care to sustain their lives. Resistance was a constant feature of this brutal system. On the Middle Passage, revolts occurred on roughly one in ten voyages. In Brazil, enslaved Africans resisted through sabotage, escape to form maroon communities known as quilombos, and large-scale uprisings like the Malê Revolt of 1835.
Abolition and Legacy
Portugal's path to abolition was a testament to the deep integration of slavery into its imperial economy and national identity. The end of the trade was forced upon Portugal almost entirely by external coercion from Great Britain. A series of treaties, signed under duress, gradually restricted and then officially banned the Portuguese trade. However, these laws were widely ignored, and a massive illegal trade to Brazil flourished for decades. The effective end of the trade only came in 1850, when Brazil, under direct threat of British naval intervention, finally passed and enforced its own laws against the traffic.
Slavery itself persisted in Brazil until 1888, when it became the last nation in the Western Hemisphere to abolish the institution. The aftermath of emancipation was a disaster for the newly freed. The Brazilian state offered no compensation, no land, no education, and no path to meaningful citizenship. Instead, it implemented a state-sponsored policy of branqueamento ("whitening"), encouraging mass European immigration with the explicit goal of diluting the country's Black population.
The legacy of this history is a deeply entrenched systemic racism and one of the most pronounced racial wealth and opportunity gaps in the world. In modern Portugal, the nation's foundational role in this global crime is often downplayed or ignored. While the Portuguese President recently called for reparations in April 2024, the government swiftly rejected the idea, stating it had no plans to initiate any such process.
This is not just history; it's our call to action. By confronting the past, we empower our present and forge a new genesis of wealth, well-being, and power for the Black community.
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