Short Essay 1

In sum, the image that comes out of the readings focused around 1400-1600 is one of ignorance and ethnocentrism dominating the cold and calculating policies of European and African nations and city-states.  In that they pursue profit and national solidification above any interest in the human condition, I see minor changes taking place alongside a blind and uncritical eye toward injustice, save one notable individual.  However, though these changes may have been small, there was progress nonetheless.

The main difference that we see between Mediterranean and Atlantic Europe at the outset is that it seems Mediterranean Europeans had more actual contact with Africans in this period than did those in the Atlantic region.  The geographically isolated late 15^th century English were fed descriptions like John Mandeville’s 14^th century account in Travels, in which Ethiopians were an altogether mysterious species living in a strange and uninhabitable hot land.  They were said to have had only one foot, so large that it could block out the sun and the rain if held above the body, though they were also capable of marvelous running speeds.[1]  Meanwhile, the Portuguese in this same century were actually encountering and learning to trade with peoples of the upper western coast of Africa.[2]

Though the common conception of slavery seems to be of a large and technologically insurmountable European colonizing force overwhelming the natives of Africa and forcing their citizens into bondage, Ivana Elbl describes the Portuguese-African relationship to be of a more equal trade relationship based on pragmatism.[3]  This respectful relationship was built on the humbling of the mighty Portuguese military by African inhabitants south of the Senegal River.[4]  Through first hand experience that the English to this point lacked, Portugal backed off of military shows of force and conceptions of infallibility to develop a commercial enterprise that gained the confidence of local rulers.[5]  Being the first of the Europeans with access to the area, they learned through shaky trade missions and military skirmishes the true capabilities of the locals believed by many Europeans to be mere subhuman beasts.

However, conditions deteriorated by the 1520s and ‘30s as Portugal became more interested in Asia.[6]  This supports the notion that the pursuit of profitable ventures and national acceleration define decision making in the late medieval period.  The development of African slavery by Europeans is just one of the aspects (though a significant one) of this.  It does not stand out as an unprecedented development, as we see it reemerge throughout the readings that slavery of conquered opponents was a long-standing aspect of the European world, dating back to at least ancient Rome.[7]  Additionally, the slave trade in Africa was already a working institution that was merely expanded upon by the Europeans.

The change that we see is that conditions were ever-worsening.  This is an important point brought up by Lawrence Clayton, writing about Bartolome de las Casas and his initial support for slavery.  As Las Casas saw the brutalities of the native population of the Americas and requested African slaves be brought to relieve them, he did so with an uncritical perspective on the realities of all slave labor.  The traditional conventions of the African slave system was accepted as such to not been seen as injustice even for the man fighting for humanity in the American treatment of the indigenous population.  It was as though Africans were some kind of skilled professionals, immune to the brutalities of slave labor, whereas the Amerindians were an innocent population under threat of genocide.

Clayton offers the possible explanation that Las Casas had not expected the harsh conditions of plantation slavery because he had only witnessed the comparatively comfortable conditions of domestic slavery as a child in Seville.[8]  Besides demonstrating worsening conditions for African slaves, this would also help indicate the trend away from Portugal’s focus on trade with the African continent.

In 16^th century England Richard Hakluyt advanced the notion that the Cimarrones could help the English defeat the Spanish in the West Indies.  However, while we see black crewmen on English ships,[9] Africans were still being captured in large numbers and abandoned when it was deemed expedient to do so.[10]  Additionally, what is seen in the evolution of English slavery is that as generations pass, slaves became more acculturated to being slaves and less likely to feel mistreated or rebel against injustice.[11]  Rodney points out that in revolts, the leaders are often more recent transplants from Africa.[12]  They had experienced less indoctrination stripping them of their humanity than those born into the system, thus making them more susceptible to harsh conditions and greater servility.

Thus the best example of progressive change came through Africans assimilating into European society.  Though Carmen Fracchia would argue that assimilation creates a negative invisibility in which black members of society could only gain acceptance by being basically out of sight by acting as white as possible,[13] Annette Ivory claims this so-called invisibility is an indication of acceptance, or blending in.  The 1620 play about the life of Juan Latino demonstrates a change in Spanish thinking on race relations.  Rather than being an ineffectual bumbling drain on society or a symbol of darkness and evil, Juan Latino is the positive leading role in La comedia famosa, coming out ahead of other ethnic minorities.

With the exception of the strikingly ahead of the curve Las Casas, it seems that although different sections of Europe came to different understandings with their African counterparts at different periods, they all essentially used African relations to advance their position with regards to one another, with concern only for the bottom line.  Essentially, Africans were viewed as inferiors, though in terms of foreign relations the Portuguese appear to have treated some of their rulers with higher regard for a brief period closing the 15^th and beginning the 16^th century.  In large part, however, it seems that from 1400-1600 Africans were seen as less and less worthy of European concern, making for both harsh brutalities and cultural assimilation allowed by societal indifference.

---

[1] Alden T. Vaughan and Virginia Mason Vaughan, “Before Othello: Representations of Sub-Saharan Africans,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Series, LIV, no. 1 (Jan. 1997): 22.

[2] Ivana Elbl, “Cross-Cultural Trade and Diplomacy: Portuguese Relations with West Africa, 1441-1521,” Journal of World History, 3, no. 2 (Fall 1992): 169

[3] Elbl, 168.

[4] Elbl, 169.

[5] Elbl, 170.

[6] Elbl 203-204.

[7] Walter Rodney, “Africa in Europe and the Americas,” The Cambridge History of Africa, 4 (Cambridge Histories Online 1998): 583.

[8] Lawrence Clayton, “Bartolome de las Casas and the African Slave Trade,” History Compass, 7/6 (2009): 1529.

[9] Michael Guasco, “Free from the tyrannous Spanyard‟? Englishmen and Africans in Spain‟s Atlantic World,” Slavery and Abolition, 29, no. 1 (March 2008): 9.

[10] Guasco, 10-11.

[11] Rodney, 607.

[12] Rodney, 610.

[13] Carmen Fracchia, “(Lack of) Visual Representation of Black Slaves in Spanish Golden Age Painting,” Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, 10, no. 1 (June 2004): 31.