![[ElMina_AtlasBlaeuvanderHem 1.jpg]] *Elmina Castle in Africa (Ghana), where enslaved people were collected and shipped across the Atlantic* As described in the previous chapter, slavery was a traditional element in all world societies, including those of Africa, but Europeans quickly grasped the usefulness of having enslaved Africans in European communities because it would be harder for them to blend in with the local population. The sugar economy propelled the slave trade, as European notions of racial superiority developed to justify the enslavement of people with darker skins. The Portuguese were initially more interested in dominating trade routes in the Indian Ocean, so they mostly ignored their new possession in Brazil until French Huguenots (protestant Christians fleeing Catholic France) tried to establish a colony near present-day Rio de Janeiro in the mid-1500s. By that time, the Portuguese had watched the Spanish success cultivating sugar cane in the Caribbean. Sugar was already grown using enslaved African labor on profitable plantations in Portugal’s and Spain's island colonies off the African coast. Portuguese entrepreneurs brought cane and slaves to Brazil and set up plantations along the northern coast. By this time, the Catholic Church had prohibited the enslavement of Indians, but not of Africans. Native Brazilians did not at the time have centralized societies like those of Mexico and Andean South America, so it was actually harder to “conquer” them, as they escaped deeper into the interior jungles and forests. However, the Portuguese already had established colonies and trade ties in Africa, which soon supplied enslaved labor to the sugar plantations. ----- Next: [[4.25 - Spanish Armada]] Back: [[4.23 - Castas]]