Slaves were kept naked and packed close together the men chained for long periods. Middle Passage voyages lasted from as little as three weeks to five months, depending on the weather. The ship sailed from La Rochelle, France, in 1784, acquired about 600 Africans at Malembo in Angola, and sailed to Saint Domingue. Our artist’s reconstruction, by Mario Lendvai, is of the French slaver L’Aurore. Slavers left Angola, headed to Rio de Janeiro, then sailed straight back to Africa. However, much of the Portuguese trade was bilateral. Together with Portugal, the two countries accounted for about 70% of all Africans transported to the Americas. Britain was one of the most successful slave-trading countries. After selling the slaves at auction, ships loaded with sugar, tobacco and cotton sailed back to Europe. The ships then travelled across the Atlantic - the so-called “Middle Passage” - to the Americas. On the first leg, merchants exported goods to Africa in return for enslaved Africans, gold, ivory and spices. The transatlantic slave trade was primarily a triangular route from Europe to Africa, to the Americas and back to Europe. Britain became involved in the trade in the 16th century followed by France, the Dutch, and the Danes in the 17th century. Professor David Eltis of Atlanta-based Emory University writes that the first direct slave voyage from Africa to the Americas was Portuguese and probably sailed in 1526. The trade continued until the 19th century, contributing substantially to the wealth and development of Europe. These papal bulls signalled to the rest of Christian Europe that the enslavement of sub-Saharan Africans was acceptable. In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued a papal bull that granted King Afonso V of Portugal the right to reduce to “perpetual slavery” all “infidels and enemies of Christ.” In 1454, a second bull granted Portugal the power to conquer and enslave people along the coast of West Africa. Initially, the Catholic church endorsed African slavery. Between 14 as many as 156,000 African slaves arrived in the Iberian Peninsula - Portugal and Spain. The enslavement of Africans by Europeans began in the late 15th century.
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