Liz, No, we were not. Or yes we were. Depends on how you want to look at it.. Way before the Portuguese, the Romans were known for capturing slaves in (North) Africa and shipping them over to Rome and other regions of the Empire. So we (the Portuguese) weren't the first ones to do so.
HOWEVER, if you want to drill down and say that the Portuguese were the first ones to capture and transport slaves from Africa to the Americas (and Europe), then yes we were. Of course... By the Treaty of Tordesillas, we had control of all access to Africa by the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. And we were also the only ones at that time (together with Spain) to have colonies in Africa. One major point of History, though... The Portuguese didn't capture the slaves themselves, we just built a few fortresses where tribal chiefs delivered slaves in exchange for whatever they deemed valuable (gold, trinkets, etc.). It was only until much later, that we actually grew the colonies inland. That was when the English and others started to draw borders in the map, and it looked like we would be left with the original fortresses. João Ventura https://tombo.pt/en On Wednesday, 25 February 2015 23:14:25 UTC+1, Lizmig wrote: > > Interesting info. > Just watched a program on History channel called "Mankind The story of all > of us" > One point was a bit shocking (to me anyway) It showed how the > Portuguese were the first ones to capture and transport slaves from Africa. > > Great show otherwise. > > Liz > -- For options, such as changing to List, Digest, Abridged, or No Mail (vacation) mode, log into your Google account and visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Azores. Click in the blue area on the right that says "Join this group" and it will take you to "Edit my membership." --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Azores Genealogy" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to azores+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/azores.
