1.5

• Enslaved Africans


  Africans sold into slavery by Europeans, who established forts along the African coast and traded goods for enslaved people
• Selling of people into slavery had a long history in Africa before the European involvement, with slaves having some legal rights and their bondage not being permanent or inheritable
• When Europeans began purchasing enslaved Africans, they adopted thought systems to justify the inferiority of black people and the morality of enslaving them
• Noah's curse of Ham's son Canaan


  Europeans in the 15th-16th centuries postulated that Africans were descended from Canaan, and therefore it was biblical to enslave them
• Encomienda system of labor

  1. Leading men called encomenderos were granted land and the natives living on that land became a coerced labor force

  2. Justified on religious grounds, with the pope granting Spanish monarchs authority to claim lands and convert natives

  3. Natives who resisted conversion could be subjugated or killed
• The encomienda system did not work well for the Spanish, as native Americans kept dying from European diseases and escaping their slavery
• The Spanish imported African people to replace native American slaves, as Africans had better immunity and were less familiar with the land
• Groups in Spanish-controlled Americas


  • Spanish (peninsulares)
  • Creoles (Spanish born in Americas)
  • Mestizos (Spanish and native American ancestry)
  • Mulattos (Spanish and African ancestry)
  • Africans
  • Native Americans
• The Spanish imposed a caste system in the Americas to determine tax levels, with those at the bottom paying the highest taxes
• This caste system shaped and influenced colonial societies throughout the Western Hemisphere