The Moors Were Targets For Portuguese, Spaniard and English Slave Markets

Initial Q: Two Soldiers Leading Two Moors before a King (detail), from Feudal Customs of Aragon, Huesca (Spain), about 1290-1310, artist unknown. The J. Paul Getty Museum
 

 “Pope Urban II, 1088–1099, granted Spanish crusaders the same papal indulgences that were granted for making pilgrimages to Jerusalem. Urban thereafter issued the first call for crusades to the holy lands in 1095, and he continued to link crusades with pilgrimages by granting indulgences for crusaders, just as he had done for participants in the holy war with the Moors. The Knights were an infamous, crusading, priestly order, who believed Christians could attack pagans at will and deprive them of their property and lordship. The sources of this power were the papal bulls that had been directed at the Holy Lands. The Knights argued that their territorial and jurisdictional claims could be traced to papal bulls from the Crusading era, which had authorized the complete confiscation of the property and sovereignty of non-Christians. In 1455, Pope Nicholas V granted Portugal title to lands in Africa that were already “acquired and that shall hereafter come to be acquired” and authorized Portugal “to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans” and to place them into perpetual slavery and seize all their property. The Portuguese, for example, erected stone crosses all along the coast of West Africa to symbolize their possession, and Columbus did the same “with appropriate words and ceremony” on the Caribbean islands he found. See, e.g., MILLER, NATIVE AMERICA, supra note 1, at 12–23, 44–48, 120–26, 131–36 (discussing the European powers dividing up the New World and Africa).

Source: The International Law of Discovery, Indigenous Peoples

Panel of azulejos by Jorge Colaço (1864-1942) at the São Bento railway station, depicting Prince Henry the Navigator during the conquest of Ceuta

“Portugal, ever since the capture of Ceuta in 1415 (the event which had set Prince Henry of Portugal thinking on West African discovery), had been striving to conquer for herself an empire over Morocco.”

Source: Liberia Vol. I: Portuguese Assisted break up of Moorish dynasty of Beni-Marin

Portuguese possessions in Magreb (1415–1769)

“Possession of Ceuta would indirectly lead to further Portuguese expansion. The main area of Portuguese expansion, at this time, was the coast of Morocco, where there was grain, cattle, sugar, and textiles, as well as fish, hides, wax, and honey.“

Source: Payne, Stanley G., A History of Spain and Portugal, Vol. 1, Chap. 10 “The Expansion”

“When the Portuguese started their colonial expansion by taking Ceuta in retribution for its piracy ( Source: Finlayson (1992), p. 26) “in 1415,” (Source: B. W. Diffie, Prelude to Empire, Portugal Overseas before Henry the Navigator, University of Nebraska Press, Ann Arbor, 1960, pp. 83–90.)

“Tangier was always a major goal. They failed to capture it in 1437, 1458, and 1464, (Lévi-Provençal (1936), p. 651.) but occupied it unopposed on 28 August 1471 after its garrison fled upon learning of the conquest of Asilah.”

Source: Elbl, Martin Malcolm (2013), Portuguese Tangier (1471–1662): Colonial Urban Fabric as Cross-Cultural Skeleton, Peterborough: Baywolf Press

“As in Ceuta, they converted its chief mosque into the town’s cathedral church; it was further embellished by several restorations during the town’s occupation.”

Source: Lévi-Provençal, Évariste (1936), “Tangier”, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol. IV (1st ed.), Leiden: E.J. Brill, pp. 650–652

“In addition to the cathedral, the Portuguese raised European-style houses and Franciscan and Dominican chapels and monasteries.”

Source: Finlayson, Iain (1992), Tangier: City of the Dream, London: Tauris Parke, p. 26

“The Wattasids assaulted Tangier in 1508, 1511, and 1515 but without success. In the 17th century, it passed with the rest of Portugal’s domains into Spanish control as part of the personal union of the crowns  but maintained its Portuguese garrison and administration.”

Source: Lévi-Provençal, Évariste (1936), “Tangier”, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol. IV (1st ed.), Leiden: E.J. Brill, pp. 650–652

“In 1458, the Portuguese, led by Duarte de Meneses, captured the city and built a fortress there. Their domination lasted for over a century before the Moroccans reconquered the city.”

Source: Ricard, R., “Evacuation of Portuguese places from Morocco under Jean III: Ksar es Seghir ( 1549-1550 )”, in unpublished sources of the history of Morocco, Portugal, 1951, t. IV.

Source: Vasco de Carvalho, V., Portuguese domination in Morocco: from the 1415-1769th to the 1415-1769th century (1415-1769), Lisbon, 1942, S.P.N.

“In 1486 the Moroccan coastal city Azemmour’s inhabitants became vassals and tributaries of João II of Portugal. Portuguese control of the city lasted only for a short period; it was abandoned by João III of Portugal in 1541 due to his court’s economic difficulties.”

Source: Lhoussain Simour (19 November 2014). Recollecting History beyond Borders: Captives, Acrobats, Dancers and the Moroccan-American Narrative of Encounters. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 55. ISBN978-1-4438-7142-6.^

Source: EPUB 2-3 (23 October 2013). Ferdinand Magellan. Infobase Learning. ISBN 978-1-4381-4851-9.

Leonor Freire Costa; Pedro Lains; Susana Münch Miranda (3 May 2016). An Economic History of Portugal, 1143–2010. Cambridge University Press. p. 43. ISBN 978-1-107-03554-6.

“Iberian rule lasted until 1661, when it was given to England’s King Charles II as part of the dowry of the Portuguese infanta Catherine of Braganza.” Source: Winston S. Churchill, Marlborough: His Life and Times, Book I (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1933) p. 35.

“A squadron under the admiral and ambassador Edward Montagu arrived in November. English Tangier, fully occupied in January 1662,” was praised by Charles as “a jewell of immense value in the royal diadem” despite the departing Portuguese taking away everything they could, even—according to the official report—”the very fflowers, the Windowes and the Dores”.

Source: Elbl, Martin Malcolm (2013), Portuguese Tangier (1471–1662): Colonial Urban Fabric as Cross-Cultural Skeleton, Peterborough: Baywolf Press, ISBN 9780921437505

Source: Finlayson, Iain (1992), Tangier: City of the Dream, London: Tauris Parke, ISBN 9781780769264

Source: Elbl, Martin Malcolm (2013), Portuguese Tangier (1471–1662): Colonial Urban Fabric as Cross-Cultural Skeleton, Peterborough: Baywolf Press, ISBN 9780921437505

“Tangier received a garrison and a charter which made it equal to other English towns, but the religious orders were expropriated, the Portuguese residents nearly entirely left, and the town’s Jews were driven out owing to fears concerning their loyalty.”

Source: Finlayson, Iain (1992), Tangier: City of the Dream, London: Tauris Parke, ISBN 9781780769264 p. 26-27

“Meanwhile, the Tangier Regiment were almost constantly under attack by locals who considered themselves mujahideen fighting a holy war. Their principal leader was Khadir Ghaïlan (known to the English as “Gayland” or “Guyland”) of the Banu Gurfat, whom the Earl of Peterborough attempted to buy off. Ultimately, the truce only lasted for part of 1663 and 1664; on May 4 of the latter year, the Earl of Teviot and around 470 members of the garrison were killed in an ambush beside Jew’s Hill. Khadir Ghaïlan hoped to support a pretender against the new Alawid sultan Al-Rashid and things subsequently went so badly for him that he was obliged to abide by its terms until his death in 1673.”

Source: Lévi-Provençal, Évariste (1936), “Tangier”, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol. IV (1st ed.), Leiden: E.J. Brill, pp. 650–652 p. 651.

“Lord Belasyse happened to secure a longer-lasting treaty in 1666”

Source: Articles of Peace Concluded and Agreed between His Excellency the Lord Bellasyse, His Majesties Governour of His City and Garrison of Tangier in Affrica, &c. and Cidi Hamlet Hader Ben Ali Gayland, Prince of VVest-Barbary, &c.”, London, 2 April 1666.

Ceuta, a Spanish possession in North Africa.

 

“The English, lagging behind for about half a century, cashed in on the slave trade as early as the 1480s. Various records kept in several Spanish archives disprove the received view that the English as a slaving nation was late coming in the 1550s. Moors and Mooresses of Morocco constituted colonial targets only for the Portuguese and the Spaniards, they were also victims of the English who bought the captured slaves at the slave markets of Andalusia. The trade with enslaved Moroccans led to a serious depopulation of the coastal regions of Morocco.”

Source: Shakespeare Studies, Volume 31 edited by Leeds Barroll, Susan Zimmerman

Vista de Ceuta y la península de Almina desde el mirador de Isabel II

“On the Moroccan side, there was considerable enthusiasm for expelling the Spanish and Portuguese from the several Moroccan coastal cities they had conquered.”

Source: An “Extremely Civile” Diplomacy Written by Caroline Stone

São Tomé, Africa

“In the mid-1400s, Portuguese King Dom Manuel colonized the African coastal islands of Sao Tome and Principe in order “to whiten the race,” as he put it. 

Source: Echoes of Mr. Yakub After Patmos By Tingba Muhammad

“One of the principal motives behind Portuguese interest in West Africa and the Canaries was the desire to tap into the trans-Saharan gold traffic. Fernandez-Armesto, Before Columbus, 140-48, 189-92.”

Source: Moors” Of West Africa And The Beginnings Of The Portuguese Slave Trade

   Mauretania Nuova Tavola Southwest

“Gradually the Christian reconquest drove them back until the only Moorish stronghold in Spain, Granada, fell in 1492.“The Iberian Moors, who had considerably intermarried, returned to Africa where they were known as Andalusians, and scattered over the enormous range of the Moors, from the Mediterranean to the Senegal river, and from the Atlantic to Timbuktu.” 

Source: Iberian Moors migrated into West Africa 1492

Brotherhood of St George. A Leugemeete Fresco, Flanders, 14th century. The Andalusia Company

“English trade with Morocco was a natural extension of the existing trade established by the Andalusia company in Spain and in the Levant. Individual voyages can be traced as far back as the 1520s or 1530s. All the evidence is that the English merchants were rugged individuals and rivals. Trading together in one small town, they must have known one another, but during the days of prosperity, there is no hint of any combination or organization. Only in adversity did they combine together and then not very effective. They did so once in order to petition the duke. To give coherence to their organization and standing in the eyes of the English government they petitioned King Henry VIII and in September 1530 he granted them a constitution.”

Source: The English “Andalusia Company” was the “Brotherhood of St George”

“Slavery had long been known in Iberia, but slaves never constituted more than a small percentage of society. By 1492, although more than 35,000 black slaves had been introduced in Portugal, most of them were intended to be reexported to other European markets and to the Americas. By 1550, there were 9,500 African slaves in Lisbon–comprising nearly 10 percent of the total population–and 32,370 slaves and 2,580 freedmen in Portugal as a whole. Black slaves increasingly replaced slaves from other racial origins as the Portuguese became less involved in the wars against the Turks in the Mediterranean and in general against Muslims. The Moors were visible in Portugal in the most southern part of the country, where a relatively large population of Christianized Moors (Moriscos) toiled the fields and worked as artisans in towns and cities.”

Source: Iberia and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History (Transatlantic Relations)

“The English under Elizabeth now deemed the time opportune for gaining a foothold in West Africa. Forts were built at the mouth of the River Gambia in 1588, and towards the close of the sixteenth century English trading-settlements were erected at or near Sierra Leone, and during the seventeenth century, Great Britain became one of the leading Powers of the Gold Coast.”

Source: Liberia Vol. I: Portuguese Assisted break up of Moorish dynasty of Beni-Marin

“The early Portuguese explorers sent out by Prince Henry at first took every opportunity of Kidnapping the Moors whom they met on the coast of the Sahara, and these people were dispatched as slaves to Portugal. Prince, Henry, however, came in time to realize the iniquity of this proceeding and its bad policy on the part of a nation which at that time was aspiring to colonize and rule Morocco. The Portuguese learned in this way that by pursuing their journeys father south they might come to a land where it was possible to obtain “black Moors” as slaves. In fact, a slang term, “Panyar (from the Portuguese Apanhar, to seize, catch, kidnap), had sprung up in the coast jargon to illustrate the English methods. Even English travelers such as William Smith (who went out as a surveyor to the Gold Coast early in the eighteenth century) admit that the English had become very unpopular on the Gold Coast, owing to these aggression’s on the natives; and William Smith and his companions endeavored to pass as Frenchmen when they visited Eastern Liberia and the Ivory Coast, ‘because of the bad name the English had acquired.”

Source: Portuguese Explorers took every opportunity of kidnapping Moors on Saharan Coast

In 1704 a Willem Bosman of the Dutch West India company describing the “Gold Coast” wrote:

“Here the Portuguese received a small quantity of gold dust, as well as some ostrich eggs; and, as Gonçalves had always desired, his men also seized some black Africans, twelve in number, to take back to Portugal (“What a beautiful thing it would be,” this commander told his men, ‘if we could capture some of the natives to lay before the face of our Prince’). These people were nearly all Azanaghi, as had been most of those sold in Lagos in 1444. They seem not to have been carried off to serve as slaves—though one of them, a woman, was a black slave, presumably from somewhere in the region of Guinea. They were taken as exhibits to show Prince Henry, much as Columbus would bring back some Indians, fifty years later, from his first journey to the Caribbean”

Source: Historical References on the Black African Skin color of the original Berber Tribes

“All the concerns of this essay begin in Andalusia. Slavery was a matter, raised by Shylock at his trial, in the Merchant of Venice narrative. This topic is of cultural relevance to early modern English audiences. The bottom lines become clear in the earliest records of the English slave trade to which [English American] historiographers often omit from the discussion. Records show that the first English slaveholders and traders of “enslaved Moors” were the English merchant’s resident in Andalusia in the last decades of the fifteenth and early decades of the sixteenth centuries, and further, that the English were the pioneers of the English slave trade with Morocco”

Source: Portia & the Prince of Morocco Essay By Ungerer, Gustav

“The (De)slaving history: Mostafa al-Azemmouri, the sixteenth-century Moroccan captive in the tale of conquest article attempts to revisit one of the most spectacular odysseys in Moroccan-American history, that of the encounters started from the shores of a Moorish town in the sixteenth century by Mostafa Al-Azemmouri, the Moroccan captive and adventurer. Al-Azemmouri was captured by the Portuguese, sold in Spain and then shipped across the Atlantic to the New World around 1527. His narrative has consistently been displaced and subjected to various forms of exclusion in history; his experience in historiographical writing has been distorted by the culturally and historically essentialised forms of knowledge and power. In order to re-orient the debate on Al-Azemmouri’s emblematic journey, this work offers a rereading of sixteenth-century Morocco in its connections with the Atlantic, focuses on the Spanish historical perspective about the reconquista overseas, and spotlights the Portuguese-Azemmour nexus against the background of the Portuguese presence in Morocco to shift the focus into the Other’s Atlantic as a site of complex history that criss-crosses the boundaries of nationality and extends beyond mere geographical locations. It also interrogates the representation of Al-Azemmouri in some sixteenth-century Spanish accounts, which consigned the Moorish slave to textual shadows and obstructed his visibility in the narrative of colonial conquest.”

Source: (De)slaving history: Mostafa al-Azemmouri, the sixteenth-century Moroccan captive in the tale of conquest

Ignatius Sancho Oil painting by Thomas Gainsborough, 1768, National Gallery of Canada

“Indeed Sancho’s life in England was an immediate result of the English involvement with slavery. ‘Dear sir,’ he beseeched Sterne, ‘think in me you behold the uplifted hands of thousands of my brother Moors.’”

Source: Black and white: the Negro and English society, 1555-1945

“Hamet Tanjawi, for instance, was captured and enslaved during the Restoration period; he became a servant of the duke of York, from whom he learned a wide variety of naval lore, and later escaped back to Tangier where he put his English warfare training into Muslim use as held the attack on the English fort in Tangier in 1676. In his account of captivity in Morocco in the 1680s, Thomas Phelps recalled meeting with an “ancient Moor, who formerly had been a slave in England and spoke good English, and who was set at liberty by our late Gracious King Charles the 2d.” Another captive/slave was the corsair  Abdallah bin Aisha, who spent three years in England and was released by King Charles without ransom upon the intercession of James II.”

“Kim F. Hall agreed that “English traders went to the markets of Guinea and Barbary, but African traders rarely went to England.” Only Bernard Harris, Eldred Jones, and Jack D’Amicohave alluded to Muslim ambassadors and “blackmoors” in England..”

“During the period under study, thousands of Turks and Moors visited and traded in English and Welsh ports; hundreds were captured on the high seas and brought to stand trial in English courts; scores of ambassadors and emissaries dazzled the London populace with their charm, cuisine and “Araby” ,,,”from the Elizabethan to the early Caroline periods, Britons undertook another venture as they entered into an extensive commercial, diplomatic, and social engagement with the Turks and Moors of the Muslim empires.”

“In all the surviving records of captured Moors and Turks, there is not a single reference to a Muslim woman. While numerous British women were recaptured and sold in North Africa, no Muslim woman seems to have ever set foot on English soil, either as a refugee or a prisoner. Britons also met Moorish and Turkish captives of Spain in the Caribbean.”

“In March of 1586 some Moors deserted to join Sir Francis Drake during the English attack on Cartegena, and later during the attack on Santo Domingo. In June of that year Drake captured hundreds of “Turks and Moors, who do menial service” in Havana. Although the Moors,  the English encountered in the Caribbean were slaves who projected weakness and despair, they were subjects of rulers whom England’s queen wanted to befriend, and whose assistance she sought against Spain. There must have been so many of these Moors in the American Spanish dominions that in 1617, Purchas mentioned that Islam had spread as far as America. Purchas was probably thinking of these captives, some of whom had been freed by their Spanish masters and were settled in the colonies.”

“In September 1630, the Moroccan ruler, Sidi Alibin Mohammad, sent a letter to King Charles in which he demanded that the king release all Muslim captives and send them back to the lands of Islam (“li-bilad al-Islam”) regardless of whether or not they were Sidi’s subjects. After doing so, Charles could be assured that no captive from the “English tribes”(“qaba’il al-Ingleez”) would remain in North Africa.”

“there are numerous indications that Britons hauled Muslim captives to the Barbary Coast and exchanged them for English captives. In 1635 Robert Blake was authorized to take forty-five Moors to Barbary to exchange them for English captives. But he immediately ran into difficulty. There were more English than Moorish captives.

“In September 16 36, two Moors were captured—one “Mahammet aged twentie seven or thereabout” and “Hammet aged fortie foure yeares or there-about”—from Salee. They had been sailing with “foure Moores, eighteen[sailors] of Sallie, five Renegadoes Dutch one English their Pilott.” When their ship reached the English coast the renegades turned against the Moors after being called “to stand up for their lives & liberties” whereupon “they drove the Moores into the hold, hoisted saile, and brought their Barque into the first [English] port. Writing to the Lords of the Admiralty, the earl of Portland included “copies of the examinations of two of the moores.”

“In 1658, William D’Avenant wrote The Play-House to be Let, in 100 The Renaissance Triangle which which he included a scene about “the Symerons,” a Moorish people brought formerly to Peru by the Spaniards.) Purchas could also have been thinking of an ethnological theory that described the American Indians as descendants of the Moors of North Africa.”

Source: Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery Nabil Matar

“Muhammad notes that “Moors” from the Barbary Coast—captured by the Portuguese and enslaved—successfully. “Freeland traces how slavery became racialized as slaves became Christians. citing Allan Austin’s estimation that there may have been at least eighteen thousand Muslim slaves imported from 1771 to 1775). Ghanea Bassiri notes that a Moorish identity may have captured the public imagination, the public having heard tales of white slavery coming out of the exotic and well-known Barbary Wars. Eight Moors [enslaved-Muslims] successfully petitioned the South Carolina House of Representatives for their freedom in 1790, describing the perfidy of the English captain who promised to redeem them back to Morocco as captives of war but sold them as slaves in the New World instead. Capet, supra note 8, at 556. One of those eight Muslim slaves was named Fatima.”

Source: Islam in the Mind of American Courts: 1800 to 1960 By Marie A. Failinger

“The Mohammedan Africans remaining of the old stock of importations, although accustomed to hear the Gospel preached, have been known to accommodate Christianity to Mohammedanism. “God,” say they, “is Allah, and Jesus Christ is Mohammed–the religion is the same, but different countries have different names.”

Source: The Religious Instruction of the Negroes. In the United States: Jones, Charles Colcock, 1804-1863

“Clearly it seems that the “Barbares” or Soninke of the Sahel and Sudan were the “Mauri Bavares” or Babars of Mauritania in what is now Morocco and Algeria possibly pushed down by the Tuareg “the second race of Berbers” and/or Arab Sulaym/Hilal peoples like the Trarza or Hassaniya. They were direct ancestors of the black merchants known as Soninke, Sughai (Isuwaghen or Zawagha) or Wangara who are called “whites” in early African manuscripts.” “The Bafour, in fact, is considered by some to be the same as the Zenagha or Znaga Berbers who came to be subject to the Almoravid (Tuareg) nobles. In Mauritania by the 15th century, they were referred to as “tawny and squat” by a slave trader from Venice named Alvice Ca’da Mosto (Thomas, Hugh, 1997, p. 22). They then fell into low caste status under the Hassaniyya or Hassan “Moors” (a group formed from the mixture of Arab/Berber peoples) which might explain how they came to be the first Africans sold out of Lagos to the Portuguese that were brought to Europe.”  

Source: FEAR OF BLACKNESS SERIES – PART II Andalusia and the Mauri: An Exploration of the Original Berbers of Early Sources and their Settlements in Spain

“Most Americans are unaware of the special relationship between Morocco and the U.S.A. that developed subconsciously through the trans‐Atlantic conquests of Moorish‐impregnated Spain and consciously through contacts between our early Republic and this old, dilapidated kingdom. Even fewer Americans seem aware of the complex contacts between Morocco, at Africa’s northwest corner, and the ancestors of our Negro community. Slave traders from the Moorish feudal society raided southward into Senegal and delivered slaves to European traders who, in turn, sold them across the Atlantic. The descendants of these slaves are U.S. citizens today. But more rarely discussed is the vaguely discernible link between Morocco and the American Negro minority. This U.S. knowledge gap is perhaps partially if inaccurately being filled by American Negro teachers, notably Black Muslims.”

Source: The Moroccan, or Moorish ties of U.S. Negroes

“Morocco also has an extensive history of slavery. Like the United States, Morocco traded in enslaved black West Africans, who came to Morocco across the Sahara. Slavery in Morocco took other forms, too. Morocco was one of the so-called Barbary States, where for centuries European and American sailors captured by pirates were enslaved and ransomed. In his 1853 book “White Slavery in the Barbary States,” the radical abolitionist senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts depicted North Africa as a disturbing analog to the American South, which he called the “Barbary States of America.”

The Moroccan Front BY JAMIE L. JONES SEPTEMBER 18, 2013

“It difficult to know from available information if this is a massive understatement or fails to give due respect to the comparative few who did make the journey. Though it is well-known that the Iberian powers took slaves from Morocco for service in Spain and Portugal, it is unknown how many of these may ultimately have also been sent across the Atlantic. Spain and Portugal overwhelmingly dominated the transatlantic slave trade in the first century of the Atlantic World, with the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database documenting approximately 275,000 slaves sent during that period to the Americas (a paltry sum compared to later centuries). But the database shows no voyages to or from Morocco – understandable for a location that was not a major source of slaves for work in the Americas – and nothing to suggest that a substantial numbers of slaves first taken to Portugal or Spain ended up across the ocean. Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, http://www.slavevoyages.org (for estimates and maps; accessed September 4, 2017). By the second half of the sixteenth century the slave population in Portugal appears to have been made up predominantly of people from sub-Saharan Africa. Bovill asserts that the decline of the peasant population in Portugal had resulted in their replacement by so many blacks from Africa that the southern part of Portugal had become predominantly black. Subjective evaluations of color and the multiethnic makeup of Morocco might make the assumption that these “blacks” are sub-Saharan suspect. But Bovill’s remark is consistent with Portugal having begun the importation of sub-Saharan slaves in 1444. There was also an apparent preference for sub-Saharan African slaves over North African Muslims slaves, as the former were deemed more open to conversion to Christianity, had no nearby places to which to escape, and were considered more compliant. This made them far less threatening than Muslims, the last of who were forcibly expelled from the Iberian Peninsula in the early seventeenth century. Bovill, The Battle of Alcazar, 5; Joachim Romero Magalhães, “Africans, Indians and Slavery in Portugal,” Portuguese Studies 13 (1997): 143-151, 143.”

Source: MOROCCO IN THE EARLY ATLANTIC WORLD, 1415-1603 A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History By Earnest W. Porta, Jr., J.D.

 

The First American Slave Plantation was a “Crack House”

The modern “C.D.S.” brand “Crack” was first used in reference to “Sugarcane” before “Cocaine”.

“Hard candy is nearly as hard to define as it is to chew. In the United States, the term describes a wide variety of sweets, including drops, fruit lozenges, peppermints, lollipops, sour balls, candy sticks and canes, and rock candy. Familiar American brands like Life Savers, Necco Wafers, Tootsie Pops, Boston Baked Beans, Red Hots, and Lemonheads use hard candy techniques boiling sugar to the “crack or “hard crack” stage to create specialized tastes.”

Source: The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets

“Although almonds, candied fruits, marmalade, capers, and ostrich feathers also appear in the English records, Willan estimates that through the mid-1570s sugar “seems always to have constituted some 85 per cent of such imports by value.”872 Documents on Morocco from this period show that Moroccan sugar went overwhelmingly to England, as opposed to Spain, Portugal, France, or the Low Countries.”

Source: MOROCCO IN THE EARLY ATLANTIC WORLD, 1415-1603 A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History By Earnest W. Porta, Jr., J.D

“But in the midst of all of this, English merchants had been doing some business, finding there a market for their cloth and ready supplies of the sugar that is said to have destroyed Elizabeth’s teeth.But let’s get back to Morocco where, in the 1570s, trade took a new and interesting turn. Sugar had, as we know, long been the overwhelming mainstay of English imports, in chests, loafs, barrels of unrefined, and tons of molasses. It had been supplemented by almonds, goatskins, aniseed, capers, candied citrus peel, raisins, and ostrich feathers,”

Source: Thomas Dallam 2: The Anglo-Moroccan Relationship Thomas Dallam, Script

“Experimentation with sugar syrup was ongoing. A sort of cookie called aqras mukallala was glazed by dipping it into very thick syrup, and a new variety of lauzinaj was virtually the same as modern nougatine (sugar cooked without water to the hard crack stage, then stirred with almond paste. Hard candies (aqra slimun) had been invented and were colored red, yellow, or green, like lemon drops or life savers.”

Source: The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets

“The Moors transmitted the Middle East’s knowledge of sweets to Europe during their occupation of Spain (717-1492) and Sicily (827-1224), starting with the culture of the sugarcane. Lauzinaj spread under a new name, makhshaban, giving European words for this product, such as Spanish mazapan and English marzipan. Along with knowledge of syrup the Moors passed on the technique of candying. A third-century Damascus cookbook titled Kitab al Wusla ila al-habib gives a recipe for for puff pastry under an Arabic name (muwarraqa) and a Spanish one (folyatil), both meaning “leafy,” which suggest that puff pastry might have been a joint invention of the Moors and the Spanish.”

Source: The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets

“The Spanish had small sugar plantations on the Madeira Islands, which were a way station between Spain and the New World. When they brought sugar to the New World, it exploded. Sugarcane was brought into an environment in which it goes gangbusters. Sugar was a scarce commodity. Cane sugar in tea, cookies, and crumpets was unheard of 500 years ago. It was only a plaything of the rich and famous. Its appeal then is analogous to that of cocaine now. An incredibly valuable commodity imported from a faraway tropical location. But the Caribbean changed all that. By providing this commodity en masse, the Caribbean was the single region that changed the dietary consumption through the entire planet for the next 500 years.”

Source: The Plaid Avenger’s World By John Boyer

“But in the midst of all of this, English merchants had been doing some business, finding there a market for their cloth and ready supplies of the sugar that is said to have destroyed Elizabeth’s teeth. It’s hard to say how long exactly they had been doing this, but one important date is 1551, the year of Thomas Wyndham’s first voyage. Unfortunately, little can be said of this trip save that it seems to have been a success, for he was soon back again, the following year. This second journey apparently resulted in the trade of a “good quantity of linen and woolen cloth, coral, amber, jet, and diverse other things well accepted by the Moors,” and in the loading of the ships with “sugar, dates, almonds, and molasses.” But let’s get back to Morocco where, in the 1570s, trade took a new and interesting turn. Sugar had, as we know, long been the overwhelming mainstay of English imports, in chests, loafs, barrels of unrefined, and tons of molasses. It had been supplemented by almonds, goatskins, aniseed, capers, candied citrus peel, raisins, and ostrich feathers, but in 1572 a new product was explored: potassium-nitrate, otherwise known as saltpetre, and a necessary ingredient in the making of gunpowder.”

Source: Thomas Dallam 2: The Anglo-Moroccan Relationship Thomas Dallam, Script

“Sugar was a big business, a big deal. The point I am trying ti make about sugar’s impact on the Caribbean is this: When it became popular, everyone wanted to plant it everywhere, it was the crack cocaine of its day. It’s awesome; it gets great prices. People will pay anything for it. You can make buckets of money on it. However, as I suggested, it is very labor intensive. The plantation owners need lots of labor, and cheap labor is preferable. Cheap labor? How about free labor? Guess what that means? That’s right: slaves. “Hey guys, let’s enslave the local population! It’s the perfect solution! They tried. But most of the natives, as I pointed out in the Mexican section, died of European imported disease. It virtually wiped out everyone in the Caribbean before they even saw white dudes. The few that were left over got worked to death in very short order. Basically, the colonizers virtually wiped out the native populations of the Caribbean islands. So the colonizers were on the lookout. “We need more labor. Where are we going to get them? You already know the story. They found out that they could bring people over from Africa. This set up what is called the Triangle Trade.”

Source: The Plaid Avenger’s World By John Boyer

“1452: Start of the ‘sugar-slave complex’. Sugar is first planted in the Portuguese island of Madeira and, for the first time, African slaves are put to work on the sugar plantations.”

Source: Slavery Timeline 1400-1500 A Chronology of Slavery, Abolition, and Emancipation in the Fifteenth Century

“Mendes’s chapter thus emphasizes the connections between the Portuguese expansion in Morocco, the beginnings of the slave trade in Senegambia and the growing use of slaves in the Atlantic islands with the beginning of the sugar economy around 1525.  The fact that commercial companies shared so much with others which were more clearly military in character underlines the idea that all these associations were to some extent based on the Christian discourse on fidelity (fidelitas).”

Source: From Al-Andalus to the Americas 13th-17th Centuries

“At first sugar was used as a medicine, but gradually came to be regarded as a luxury, and was partaken of only at special feasts. From Arabia through Egypt and finally by the Moors, sugar cane was introduced into Spain and the countries north of the Mediterranean Sea. In the fifteenth century cuttings were sent by the King of Portugal for planting in Madeira and Canary Islands. From the latter country the sugar cane was introduced into Brazil early in the sixteenth century, and then into the West Indies, principally in San Domingo. It was not introduced into the American Colonies until 1750 at which time an unsuccessful attempt was made, to make sugar, in Louisiana. In 1791, however, the sugar boilers were more successful. ” 

Source: The source, chemistry and use of food products By Edgar Henry Summerfield Bailey

“The sugar-cane, though at one time extensively cultivated, is now practically unknown in Morocco–whence it was formerly exported to Europe–the province of Dukalla being in those days known as Blad es-Sukkar, “the sugar country.” Idreesi speaks of the sugar of Sus, for which the district was famous, as the best in the world. Tarudant owed its early importance to this lucrative trade, and Agadir was coveted as the port of its shipment. Mills were built by Europeans, and Christian slaves were employed in its manufacture in the sixteenth century. A more attempt to revive the business I called to mind by the ruined sugar mill erected in the fifties for the Sultan by an English engineer, at the extreme point of the Agudal park at Marrakesh. Another product of bygone day was cotton, of which Idreesi says enough was produced round Tadla to supply all the Maghrib; and indigo was extensively grown in the Dra’a. Rice, too, has been and is still grown in the neighborhood of Fez, but whatever quantity of these three may now be raised, it is insignificant, as foreign importations have altogether superseded the native articles, except possibly in the far interior.”

Source: The Land of the Moors: A Comprehensive Description By Budgett Meakin

“A retrospect of the sugar industry in general, up to this epoch, will throw some light upon what subsequently took place in Cuba. Sugar production which had existed in Europe since some time in the ninth century, and had been extended by the Moors to all the southern part, of the Spanish peninsula in the eleventh, would naturally after the discovery of America, find its way to the more propitious climate of the West Indies. The Dutch, who had become familiar with it through their enterprising trade with the East, seem to have been the first to introduce it on a commercial scale in the Antilles, after their expulsion from Brazil by the Portuguese, about the year 1655.”

 

 

Angola Under the Portuguese: The Myth and the Reality

“Freyre and others maintain that there was considerable miscegenation between the Portuguese and the Moors and Jews which reputedly resulted in a Portuguese tolerance of, even preference for, dark complexioned women. This miscegenation, however, may have been more common during the Moorish occupation. Unquestionably the most peaceful and tolerant relations between the Portuguese, Moors, and Jews transpired under the Moorish rule of Portugal.”

“Ironically, Portugal manifested its most intolerant and brutal behavior towards its own ‘infidels’ at the very time the Portuguese were meeting and colonizing the African and Indian ‘infidels’. In fact, prior to the end of the Inquisition in 1769, Jews, Moors, and Negroes were frequently referred to in official documents as racas infectadas (infected races).”

“If there was a legacy of amicability among the Portuguese towards the Moors after seven centuries of contact in Iberia, it was not apparent in their relations with the Moors they encountered in Africa. Beginning with the conquest of the Moroccan coast town of Ceuta in 1415 and until the middle of the eighteenth century, Portugal was engaged in almost constant warfare with the Moors. At times these battles reached the proportion of a holy crusade; personal accounts of some of the battles reveal that the Portuguese soldiers often made no distinction between combatants and civilians since none of the infidels was deemed worthy of human consideration.”

 “A richly detailed narration of these voyages by Henry’s personal chronicler, Gomes Eanes de Azurara, recounts the initiation of the African slave trade with the exons of Antao Goncalvez and Nuno Tristao to Senegal in 1441 and 1442 respectively. By 1446 there were nearly a thousand African slaves in Portugal. Azurara, who witnessed the return of many of the early slave ships, described the anguish which overcame the Africans as families and friends were separated indiscriminately, ‘faces bathed in tears…[while] others struck their faces with the palms of their hands, throwing themselves upon the ground.”

 “Slavery, however, was not the only objective of the Portuguese explorations. They also sought minerals, ivory, spices, and souls as they searched for a land or sea route to the fabled riches of the Orient. Their experience in the Maghreb provided them with important knowledge which fed these ambitions: they learned of gold on the Guinea coast which was beyond the control of their Muslims enemies, and of Arab navigation on the East African coast, confirming that the continent was surrounded by water.”

 “By 1471 Portuguese sailors had arrived in Ghana and found it so rich in gold that a decade later they built their first fort in West Africa (Elmina), in order to deter other European explorers from following in their wake. Another fort was built at Benin (Nigeria), where Portugal found not only more wealth but a well-developed kingdom which greatly impressed the crown. The Portuguese and Benin kings exchanged gifts and diplomatic missions and the latter’s son even adopted Christianity. Further down the coast, along the northern frontiers of Angola, the Portuguese encountered in 1482 the undisputed leader among the coastal states of Central Africa–the vast Kongo Kingdom. In a letter directred to Joao III (1526) Afonso wrote, ‘there are many traders in all corners of the country. They bring ruin to the country. Everday people are enslaved and kidnapped, even nobles, even members of the King’s own family.” 

“Portugal, the native inhabitants of Portugal were influenced and shaped by a variety of cultural, ethnic, racial and religious groups. From the arrival of the Phoenicians in the eighth century BC until the final expulsion of the Moors in the thirteenth century AD, the Iberian tribes absorbed at least seven major civilizations including the Greeks, Celts, Carthaginians, Romans, Visigoths, and Moors. Each left an indelible mark on the emerging Portuguese society.”

“Unfortunately, there is scanty information concerning miscegenation in Portugal during the period when blacks formed a part of its population. In fact, most histories of Portugal contain little more than passing references to the presence of African slaves. Yet, African slaves constituted an important segment of Portuguese society, being an integral part of the labor force, for more than three centuries–long than the period of slavery in the United States.”

“In a 1533 letter written from Evora, a Flemish priest wrote, undoubtedly exaggerating that ‘slaves were swarming all over. All the work is done by captive blacks and Moors. Portugal is being glutted with this race. I’m beginning to believe that the slaves in Lisbon outnumber the Portuguese. Actually, from about the middle of the sixteenth century until at least 1620 approximately 10 percent of Lisbon’s 100,000 inhabitants were Africans.”

“Although slavery was abolished in Portugal (not in the colonies in 1761, as late as the mid-nineteenth century Lichnowsky reported seeing ‘thousands of blacks on the streets in Lisbon’, noting that they were not treated as men by the Portuguese ‘but as an inferior race of domestic animals’.”

 Source: Angola Under the Portuguese: The Myth and the Reality By Gerald J. Bender

 

History of Brazil, Volume 3

 

“The Moors of Morocco at this time took from the Portuguese the last of their possessions in that part of Africa. In the noonday of Portugal, her best historians found it necessary to distribute her history into four distinct portions,…so extensive was the empire which she had established in Africa, Asia, and America.”

“The history of Portuguese Africa, (or that part of it which had been of most importance,) was now closed by the fall of Mazagam; and it ended in a happier hour than it began. The immediate consequence was the most advantageous change in the commercial system of Brazil.”

“Hitherto Portugal had been in a state of permanent war with the Moors, and for that reason, the Brazillian trade was carried on by annual fleets,…..the prohibition of single ships, which had commenced during the Dutch war, having been continued in force, first because of the Buccaneers, and their successors the Pirates, and when those common enemies of all mankind had been exterminated, then on account of the Barbary cruizers.”

“Peace was now made with Morocco when there was no longer an old point of honor to impede it, and Oeyars immediately declared, that as soon as the fleets from Baia and the Rio should have returned, the trade with those ports might be carried on by single ships.”

“The inhabitants raised cotton and provisions and were well supplied with fish. Some twenty leagues to the east, the town of Almeirim stood in a commanding situation, at the mouth of the Paru, one of the points which the Dutch occupied when they attempted to establish themselves upon the great river: the remains of their works still make part of the fort.”

“Its population in 1784, was wholly Indian and amounted to about three hundred persons. They cultivated mandioc, maize, rice, pulse, and cotton. The women, at their ordinary occupations, were naked from the waist upward; but when they went to Church they wore a shift and linen petticoat, tied up their hair, and adorned their necks with a bentinho.”

“There were two smaller towns, and two river parishes, (so those parishes are called where the population has no fixed and central point,) between Almeirim and Mazagam. That place was losing its inhabitants because of its unhealthy situation, which proved fatal even to persons brought thither from the coast of Morocco.”

“Below Mazagam was Villa Vistoza da Madre de Deos,…the Beautiful Town of the Mother of God! It ill-deserved this lofty appellation. Three hundred families were planted there by the Government: some of them were good colonist from the Azores, but the greater number were criminals, foreign soldiers, and subjects taken from the house of correction: about nine-tenths of this hopeful population speedily forsook the place. It is on the left bank of the Anauirapucu, a considerable river, seven leagues from its mouth…”

Source: History of Brazil, Volume 3 By Robert Southey

Some Historical Account of Guinea

“The most ancient account we have of the country of the Negroes, particulary that part situate on an between the two great rivers of Senegal and Gambia, is from the writings of two ancient authors, one an Arabian, and the other a Moor. The first wrote in Arabic, about the twelth century. His works, printed in that language at Rome, were afterwards translated into Latin, and printed at Paris, under the patronage of the famous Thuanus, chancellor of France, with the title Geograophica Nubienses, containing containing an account of all the nations lying on the Senegal and Gambia.”

“The other written by John Leo, a Moor, born at Granada, in Spain, before the Moors were totally expelled from that kingdom. He resided in Africa; but being on a voyage from Tripoli to Tunis, was taken by some Italian Corairs, who finding him possess of Several Arabian books, besides his own manuscripts, apprehended him to be a man of learening, and as such presented him to Pope Leo the Tenth.”

“This Pope encouraging him, he embraced the Romish religion, and his description of Africa was published in Italian. From these writings we gather, that after the Mahometan religion had extended to the Kingdom of Morocco, some of the promoters of it crossing the sandy deserts of Numidia, which separate that country from Guinea, found it inhabited by men, who, though under no regular government, and destitute of that knowledge the Arabians were favored with, lived in content and peace.”

“The first author particularly remarks, “That they never made war, or traveled abroad, but employed themselves in tending their herds, or laboring in the ground.” J. Leo says, page 65, “That they lived in common, having no property in land, no tyrant nor superior lord, but supported themselves in anequal state, upon the natural produce of the country, which afforded plenty of roots, game, and honey. That ambition or avarice never drove them into foreign countries to subdue or cheat their neighbours. Thus, they lived without toil or superfluities.”

 

 

“The ancient inhabitants of Morocco, who wore coats of mail, and used swords and spears headed with iron, coming among those harmless and nake people, soon brought them under subjection, and divided that part of Guinea which lies on the rivers Senegal and Gambia into fifteen parts; those were the fifteen kingdoms of the Negroes, over which the Moors presided, and the common people were Negroes.”

“These Moors taught the Negroes the Mahometan religion, and arts of life, particularly the use of iron, before unknown to them. About the 14th century, a native Negroe, called Heli Ischia, expelled the Moorish conquerors; but though the Negroes threw off the yoke of a foreign nation, they only changed a Libyan for a Negroe master. Heli-Ischia himself becoming King led the Negroes on to foreign wars and established himself in power over a very large extent of country.”

 

 

“Since Leo’s time, the Europeans have had very little knowledge of those parts of Africa, nor do they know what became of this great empire. It is highly probable that it broke into pieces, and that the natives again resumed many of their ancient customs; for in the account published by Francis Moor, in his travels on the river Gambia, we find a mixture of the Moorish and Mahaometann customs, joined with the original simplicity of the Negroes.”

“It appears by accounts of ancient voyages, collected by Hackluit, Purchas, and others, that it was about fifty years before the discovery of America, that the Portuguese attempted to sail around Cape Bajador, which lies between their country and Guinea; this, after divers repulses occasioned by the violent currents, they effected; when landing on the western coast of Africa, they soon began to make incursions into the country, and to seize and carry off the native inhabitants.”

“As early as the year 1434, Alonzo Gonzales, the first who is recorded to have met with the natives, on that coast, pursued and attacked a number of them, when some were wounded, as was also one of the Portuguese; which the author records as the first blood spilled by Christians in those parts.”

“Six years after, and took Gonzales, the same Gonzales again attacked the natives, and took twelve prisoners, with whom he returned to his vessels; he afterward put a woman on shore, in order to induce the natives to redeem the prisoners; but the next day 150 of the inhabitants appeared on horses and camels provoking the Portuguese to land; which they not daring to venture, the natives discharged a volley of stones at them, and went off, after this, the Portuguese still continued to send vessels on the coast of Africa; particularly we read of their falling on a village, whence the inhabitants fled, and being pursued, twenty-five were taken: “He that ran best,” says the author, “taking the most.”“In their way home, they killed some of the natives and took fifty-five more prisoners.”

“Afterwards, Dinisanes Dagrama, with two other vessels, landed on the island of Arguin, where they took fifty-four Moors; then running along with the coast eighty leagues father, they at several times took fifty slaves, but here seven of the Portuguese were killed.”

“Then being joined by several other vessels, Dinisanes proposed to destroy the island to revenge the lost of the seven Portuguese; of which the Moors being apprised, fled, so that no more than twelve were found, whereof only four could be taken, the rest being killed, as also one of the Portuguese. Many more captures of this kind of the coast of Barbary and Guinea, are recorded to have been made in the year 1481, the Portuguese erected their first fort D’Elmina on that coast from whence they soon opened a trade for slaves with the inland parts of Guinea.”

“From the foregoing accounts, it is undoubted, that the practice of making slaves of the Negroes, owes its origin to the early incursions of the Portuguese on the coast of Africa, solely from an inordinate desire of gain. This is clearly evidenced from their own historians, particularly Cada Mofto, about the year 1455, who writes, “That before the trade was settled for purchasing slaves from the Moors at Arguin sometimes four, and sometimes more Portuguese vessels were used to come to that gulf, well armed; and landing by night, would surprise some fither men’s villages; that they even entered into the country, and carried away Arabs of both sexes, whom they sold in Portugal.”

“And also, “That the Portuguese and Spaniards, settled on four of the Canary Islands, would go to the other island by night, and seize some of the natives of both sexes, whom they sent to be sold in Spain.” After the settlement of America, those devastations, and the captivating the miserable Africans, greatly increased.”

“Anderson, in his history of trade and commerce, at page 336, speaking of what passed in the year 1508, writes, “That the Spaniards had by this time found that the miserable Indian natives, whom they have made to work in their mines and fields, were not for robust and proper for those purposes as Negroes brought from Africa; wherefore they, about that time began to import Negroes for that end in Hispaniola, from the Portuguese settlements on the Guinea coast: and also afterward for their sugar works.”

“This oppression of the Indians had, even before this time, rouzed the zeal, as well as it did the comparison, of some of the truly pious of that day; particularly that of Bartholomew De las Casas, bishop of Chapia; whom a desire of being instrumental towards the conversion of the Indians, had invited into America.”

“In the History of the Piratical States of Barbary, printed in 1750, said to be written by a person who resided at Algiers, in a public character, at page 265 the author says, ” The word exclaims against the Algerines for their cruel treatment of their slaves, and their employing even tortures to convert them to Mahometism; but this is a vulgar error, artfully propagated for selfish views. So far are their slaves from being ill-used, that they must have committed some very great fault to suffer any punishment?”

“Neither are they forced to work beyond their strength, but rather spared, lest they should fall sick. Some are so pleased with their situation, that they will not purchase their ransom, though they are able. It is the same generally through Mahometan countries, except in some particular instances, like that of Muley Ishmael, late Emperor of Morocco, who is naturally barbarous, frequently used both his subjects and slaves with cruelty.”

“Yet even under him, the usage the slaves met with was, in general, much more tolerable than that of the Negroe slaves in the West Indies. Captain Braithwaite, an author of credit, who accompanied consul general Ruffiel in a congratulatory embassy to Muley Ishamel’s successor, upon his accession to the throne, says, “The situation of the Christian slaves in Morocco was not near so bad as represented.”

“That it was true they were kept at labor by the late Emperor, but not harder than our daily laborers go through. Masters of ships were never obliged to work, nor such as had but a small matter of money to give the Alcaide. When sick, they had a religious house appointed for them to go to, where they were well attended: and whatever money in charity was sent them by their friends in Europe, was their own.” Braithwaite’s revolutions of Morocco.”

“Lady Montague, wife of the English ambassador at Constantinople, in her letters, vol. 3. page 20, writes, “I know you expect I should say something particular of the slaves, and you will imagine me half a Turk, when I do not speak of it with the same horror other Christians have done before me; but I cannot forebear applauding the humanity of the Turks to these creatures; they are not ill-used; and their slavery, in my opinion, is no worse than servitude all over the world. It is true they have no wages, but they give them yearly cloaths to a higher value than our salaries to our ordinary servants.” 

Source: Some Historical Account of Guinea: With an Inquiry Into the Rise and …By Anthony Benezet