![[Pasted image 20250201183136.png]] By the middle of the sixteenth century, Africans were an important component of the forced labor landscape, producing sugar and tobacco for European markets. Europeans viewed Africans as non-Christians, which they considered a justification for enslavement. Denied control over their lives, slaves endured horrendous conditions. They resisted enslavement of course, and their resistance was met with violence. Portuguese “factories” on the west coast of Africa, like [Elmina Castle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmina_Castle) in Ghana, served as holding pens for slaves captured by Europeans or other Africans and brought from the interior. The Spanish, prevented by the Treaty of Tordesillas from establishing their own slave-taking colonies on the West African coast, established a monopoly contract called the *[[Asiento]]* in 1518. After the Genoese and Portuguese had supplied slaves to the Spanish for well over a century, the [[Dutch West India Company]] was awarded the monopoly in 1675 and held it until 1713, when the Asiento was passed to the British [[South Sea Company]] which held it until 1750. --- Next: [[2.19 Siglo de Oro]] Back: [[2.17 Encomiendas and Mita]]