KEY DATES IN THE SLAVERY OF THE PEOPLE OF THE DIASPORA
(All dates are A.D.)
700: Zanzibar becomes the main Arab slave trading post in Africa
1325: Mansa Musa, the king of Mali, makes his pilgrimage to Mecca
carrying 500 slaves and 100 camels
1441: Start of European slave trading in Africa. The Portuguese captains Antão Gonçalves and Nuno Tristão capture 12 Africans in Cabo Branco (modern Mauritania) and take them to Portugal as slaves.
1444-1600: Portugal enjoys a virtual monopoly in the slave trade to the Americas
1444: Lançarote de Freitas, a tax-collector from the Portuguese town of Lagos, forms a company to trade with Africa. de Freitas lands 235 kidnapped and enslaved Africans in Lagos, the first large group of African slaves brought to Europe.
1452: Pope Nicholas V issued the Papal Bull Dum Diversas, granting King Afonso V of Portugal, the right to reduce any "Saracens (Muslims), pagans and any other unbelievers" to perpetual slavery
1455: Pope Nicholas V reiterates his approval of slavery by reaffirming and extending it in the Papal Bull Romanus Pontifex
1476: Carlos de Valera of Castille in Spain brings back 400 slaves from Africa.
1481-86: Diogo da Azambuja builds the castle at Elmina (modern Ghana) which was to become the most substantial and the most notorious of the slave-trading forts in West Africa.
1528: the Spanish government issues "asientos" (contracts) to private companies for the trade of African slaves
1564: Slave trader John Hawkins was given an armed ship ‘Jesus of Lubeck’ by Queen Elizabeth I
1619: the Dutch begin the slave trade between Africa and North America; First Hebrew slaves (not indentured servants) brought to Jamestown, Virginia August 19, 1619
1637: Holland captures Portugal's main trading post in Africa, Elmira
1650: Holland becomes the dominant slave trading country
1660: King Charles II, the restored Stuart monarch, established the Royal Adventurers, a company given a 1,000 year monopoly to trade on the Guinea Coast (West Africa), mainly in slaves, but also in gold and ivory
1713: The Royal African Company of England obtained the privilege of supplying the Spanish colonies in America, South and Central, for thirty years. One quarter of the stock of the company was taken by King Philip V. of Spain, and Queen Anne of England reserved for herself the other quarter
1750 - 1821: Company of Royal Adventurers of England Trading with Africa and successors lost its monopoly in 1698 and became insolvent in the 1720s. Its ports, settlements and factories in Africa were vested in the Company of Merchants trading to Africa incorporated by act of Parliament in 1750. It was abolished in 1821 and its property vested in the Crown.
1789: the English Privy Council concludes that almost 50% of the slaves exported from Africa die before reaching the Americas