in Greek slaves was the decline of Catalan influence in the Balkans.22 The slave trade from the eastern Mediterranean diminished by the late fifteenth century, as the Ottoman Turks consolidated their control in the region.
Sards came on the market in relatively small numbers during the early fourteenth century, when the Crown of Aragon was taking over Sardinia. Theoretically Sards were subjects of the Aragonese king, but those who resisted the conquest and those who later revolted against the conquerors could be enslaved.23 In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Italian merchants brought back Albanians, Tartars, Russians, Caucasians, and other Crimean peoples. Albanians also fled from the Turkish advance in the Balkan Peninsula in the 1380s. Some, in desperation, sold themselves into slavery and ended up in Venice, from where dealers transported some of them to Mallorca and Catalonia. Turks and Armenians appeared among the slaves of the Crown of Aragon, but they were only a small proportion of the total numbers.24 The town of Vic in Catalonia, isolated from the sea and from the frontier with Islam, had slaves from a surprisingly varied set of origins in the early years of the fifteenth century. Of 39 slaves sold in that period, 14 were Tartars, 7 “Saracens” from either Spain or North Africa, 6 black Africans, 2 Circassians, 2 Russians, a Canarian, a Bulgar, and a Bosnian.25
To move to the center of the peninsula, slaves in Castile were almost exclusively Muslim in origin during the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. Before the fifteenth century, Castile was not greatly involved in Mediterranean activity and purchased few slaves from Mediterranean merchants. Thus only small numbers of slaves from the Mediterranean reached Castile. Rather, Castilian slavery was fed by the reconquest and the raids into Muslim territory, and, within the territories under Castilian rule, Andalusia was the most prominent location where slaves were used.34 In Cádiz at the end of the fifteenth century, there was a sizeable number of slaves, both because many citizens of the town owned a small number of slaves, and because many Muslim slaves passed through Cádiz before being sold elsewhere, notably in Valencia. In Cádiz, too, we see evidence of a few Jews sold as slaves.26 On increasingly rare occasions, slaves from Eastern Europe could find themselves in Andalusia.27
The slave trade in Canary Islanders had a relatively short existence from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century. When individual European captains with authorization from the Castilian monarchs undertook the conquest of the Canaries in various phases, they found the islands inhabited by natives akin to the Berbers of northwest Africa who were living at a Neolithic level of culture. They likely had lived in isolation from the rest of the world since the end of the Western Roman Empire, a thousand years before. Politically they divided themselves into smaller or larger bands, and the Castilian conquests proceeded by securing treaties with some of the bands and conquering others. The settlers in time remade the Canaries along the lines of Europe, with cities, farms, and sugar production facilities, but in the initial phases of the conquest the conquerors resorted to enslaving natives as a quick way to make the profits necessary to repay the loans to pay for their expeditions, mainly financed on credit. Only natives of the conquered bands could be enslaved legally, but the royal agents had to maintain constant vigilance to ensure that the conquerors did not violate the rules and enslave members of the treaty bands.28 But there was a loophole. If members of allied bands rebelled or refused to carry out the terms of their treaties, they could be enslaved as “captives of second war” (de segunda guerra), as we saw earlier. Many enslaved Canarians were sold on the mainland, whereas others remained in the islands and found themselves put to work by the Europeans. The material and legal conditions they lived under resembled, not surprisingly, those of the slaves in late medieval Spain.
Natives of the Canaries did not make a substantial or a long-lasting addition to the international slave trade and did not even fill the labor needs of the Canaries. The indigenous Canarian population was small to begin with, and the isolated island peoples fell victim to diseases common in Africa and Europe. Manumission was common for those who did become enslaved. The Canarian slave trade to Europe ceased early in the sixteenth century, as the remaining Canarians increasingly assimilated European culture and intermarried with the colonists. Other sources of labor were necessary before the islands could be developed fully. So the Canaries witnessed the influx of other laborers, including a number of free Castilian workers. More substantial settlers often brought their own slaves with them. Berbers and black slaves were obtained from Castilian raids and trade along the West African coast, or brought to the Canaries by Portuguese dealers. In the course of time, slaves came to be born in the islands. For a short period after the first Spanish contact with the Americas, Indians were sold in the Canaries. Their numbers were always few, and the trade soon stopped when the Spanish monarchs outlawed slave trade in Indians.
Black African, Muslim, and Morisco slaves came to constitute a significant component among the work force in the Canaries. The settlers in the Canaries acquired imported slaves in a variety of ways. Some slaves, who had already spent time in Spain, accompanied their Spanish owners when they migrated to the Canaries. Portuguese merchants sold others from their ships as they stopped in the Canaries on their return voyages from West Africa. Castilians competed with Portuguese in the trade, especially during the war between Castile and Portugal from 1474 to 1478. By the treaties ending that war in 1479, Portugal received a monopoly on trade with Africa south of the Canary Islands, but illegal Castilian raids continued into the sixteenth century.29 Castilians engaged in raids called cabalgadas mounted from the Canaries, and along the African coast north of Cape Bojador they acquired captives and cattle. Manuel Lobo Cabrera found records for 154 raids from the eastern Canaries during the course of the sixteenth century. The greatest number (87) left from Lanzarote, followed by Gran Canaria with 59. Only 8 left from Fuerteventura. At times, the raiders acquired black slaves directly, although often a more complicated process ensued. Most of the human booty from the raids consisted of Muslims. Some were enslaved, converted, and later freed. Other Muslim captives, those who were able to do so, negotiated for their ransoms, and frequently they paid for their ransoms with variable numbers of black slaves. This became one of the most common means by which sub-Saharan Africans entered the islands.30
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