[Sca-cooks] Grains of Paradise

[Terry Decker]

Slavery was uncommon, but not unknown.  In 1434, the Portuguese introduced 
African slaves into Europe.  The trade seriously expanded in the early 16th 
Century as the Portuguese opened plantations in Brazil.  Pope Nicholas V 
authorized the Portuguese to "attack, subject and reduce to perpetual 
slavery the Saracens, pagans and other enemies of Christ southward from Cape 
Bajador and Non including all the coast of Guinea" in 1514.

The English and the Dutch began raiding Portuguese slavers and selling the 
human plunder into the Caribbean.  John Hawkins got his start raiding 
Portuguese slavers in 1562 and was backed by Elizabeth in his ventures in 
1564.  The trade continued to expand and the various plantation systems of 
the New World demanded a steady stream of replacable labor.

The inital cost of purchasing a slave tended to limit their purchase to the 
wealth and to extremely profitable, but lethal enterprises.  The less well 
to do hired their servants or retained them in what is occasionally referred 
to as "bastard feudalism."  Indentured servitude is largely a product of the 
17th Century.

Bear

>>     I have never seen "servants' allotments" for sugar, spices or other
>> luxury products in the 15th century. What was available to those who who
>> could not buy slaves was locally produced - not pepper.
>
> Now I'm completely lost-- what country are we in? Slavery had become
> uncommon in most European countries by approximately the 12th century as
> far as I knew?
>
> -- 
> -- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, Knowledge Pika jenne at fiedlerfamily.net