1527 to 1842 · Datasetspan
Puerto Rico's captives arrived mostly from other Caribbean ports
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The traffic in enslaved Africans to Puerto Rico ran from 1527 to 1842 and stayed small beside Cuba or Saint-Domingue. Spanish and Portuguese ships handled the early arrivals; French and British merchants dominated later. West Central Africa was the main source throughout, with substantial numbers from Upper Guinea and the Bight of Biafra. The distinctive feature is the route. Most people did not reach Puerto Rican shores straight from Africa. They were landed first at Saint Thomas, at Havana or at other re-export centres, then sold onward in small lots, because the island was too thin a market to justify sending a full slaver to it directly. Scale shaped the society that resulted. Puerto Rico never developed the overwhelming enslaved majority that made Saint-Domingue what it was, free people of colour formed a large part of the population early, and the island entered the nineteenth century with a mixed rural peasantry alongside its plantations.
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