DAM – DIGITAL AFRICAN MEMORY PORTUGAL

Black Death, introduced by sea and land, affected all the provinces of the kingdom, causing countless victims. It is assumed that between 1/3 to ½ of the population perished. In the following years, the pestilences were repeated, although with less impact. The sudden decrease in the number of inhabitants caused by disease, famine and war (and earthquakes) translated into problems of labor shortages, especially in urban centers. Artisans were sought out, which resulted in an increase in wages and the rural worker fleeing to the city, where they were paid better.

The anti-Jewish movement in Spain led to the growth of the Jewish community in Portugal, many were considered black Jews. Hundreds of Jews emigrated from Spain to Portugal. They settled first in the cities closest to their entrance (on the coast for those who traveled by sea and those in the interior of the border for those who arrived by land) and gradually expanded their area of occupation.

It began with the conquest of Ceuta from the Arab colonizing elite coming from the Arabian peninsula and the African peoples of Morocco already colonized by Islam.

Antão Gonçalves brings the first enslaved African peoples to Portugal, from the north coast of Mauritania. Three years later, a group of people from the Algarve associated with a kind of temporary company armed six caravels and reached the coast of Mauritania and returned with 235 enslaved people.

Most of these enslaved people would be Amazigh peoples from North Africa (Berbers), but also peoples from West Africa and East Europe Slavic peoples (enslaved whites who gave rise to the term slave – slave during the Ottoman rule in the region of eastern Europe ) – Muslim slave ships brought together people of various origins. The shortage of labor led to the intensification of privateering and piracy, and the use of enslaved people for rural work. The rediscovery of the Canaries brought a new supply market. In the Treaty of Alcáçovas, Portugal recognized the Castilian sovereignty of the islands, abandoning any claim in the Treaty of Toledo, on March 6, 1480. The African peoples who inhabited the islands (Canary Guanches) were known in Portugal, although we do not have enslaved. With the arrival on the coast of Guinea (1441) the market expanded and specialized. The vast majority of these enslaved people were sold to Castile, Aragon and other European kingdoms. Only a part remained in the sugar plantations and in other agricultural and domestic services in Madeira and Portugal. Until 1475, thousands of enslaved people entered and remained in Portugal.