Portugal
According to the World Economy, Portugal began its slave-trading activities in Africa around 1445 not too long after Portuguese navigators discovered and settled in the Cape Verde islands, opposite Senegal. There, they were able to buy slaves from African merchants in return for salt, cloth, horses, and trinkets. About 175 000 slaves were between 1450 and 1600 shipped to Portugal and its Atlantic islands. Portugal later captured slaves further south in Angola as the slave trade developed.
At the end of the sixteenth and in the seventeenth century when Portugal shipped slaves to Brazil and oversaw most of the slave shipments to Spanish America, the slave trade became more profitable. Between 1500 and 1870, out of the 9.4 million slaves shipped to the Americas, about 4.5 million of those were supplied by Portugal, making it Europe’s largest trafficker of human beings. The growth of the sugar economy in Portugal’s colony of Brazil was thanks to the work of slaves, so was gold mining, which the Portuguese used to pay for industrialized goods such as textiles and weapons, and to erect regal buildings and monuments.
