1560 · Datasetyear only
Regular slaving to Brazil begins and never really stops
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Systematic shipping of African captives to Brazil began around 1560, when Portuguese planters in Pernambuco and Bahia had sugar mills running and needed a workforce larger than indigenous labour and warfare could provide. The traffic continued until 1850. About forty-four percent of everyone forced across the Atlantic ended in Brazil, more than all the Caribbean islands together and more than twelve times the number landed in mainland North America. It was also organised differently. Ships were fitted out in Salvador da Bahia and Rio de Janeiro instead of Lisbon, financed by Brazilian merchants, and paid for in Brazilian goods, tobacco and sugar brandy that African buyers wanted. A direct commercial relationship ran across the South Atlantic between Brazil and Angola for three centuries with Europe barely involved. That is why the African inheritance in Bahia can be traced to particular regions with unusual precision, and why Candomble and Haitian Vodou share structures without either having borrowed from the other.
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