Timeline

6800 B.C. The worlds first city grows up in Mesopotamia. With the ownership of land and the beginnings of technology comes warfare in which enemies are captured and forced to work: slavery. 2575 B.C. Egyptians send expeditions down the Nile River to capture slaves. Temple art celebrates the capture of slaves in battle. 120 Slaves are taken by the thousands in Roman military campaigns; some estimates put the population of Rome at more than half slave. 500 In England, the native Britons are enslaved after invasion by Anglo-Saxons. 1000 Slavery is normal practice in Englands rural economy, as destitute agricultural workers place themselves and their families in a form of debt bondage to landowners. 1380 In the aftermath of the Black Plague, Europes slave trade revives in response to the labor shortage. The slaves come from all over Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. 1441 Start of European slave trading in Africa. The Portuguese captains Anto Gonalves and Nuno Tristo capture 12 Africans in Cabo Branco (modern Mauritania) and take them to Portugal as slaves. 1526 Spanish explorers bring the first African slaves to a Spanish settlement in what was to become the United States these were the first African Americans. The same year, they mounted the first known slave revolt in the Americas. 1550 Renaissance art is peopled with slaves displayed as objects of conspicuous consumption. 1562 Sir John Hawkins becomes Englands first slave trader when he embarks on a voyage to Sierra Leone and loads his ship with 500 Africans to be sold to estate o wners in the West Indies. He burns African villages and towns in order to get slaves. 1564 Queen Elizabeth I sponsors Sir John Hawkins second voyage, providing him with a 700 ton ship, Jesus of Lubeck. He captures 500 Africans in Guinea and trades them in the West Indies. Over the next five years he will make 3 more trips, totalling 1200 slaves.

1619 First indentured servants (workers placed under a contract to work for a specific amount of time to pay off passage to a new country) brought from Africa to Jamestown, Virginia, America to grow tobacco. 1641 Massachusetts becomes the first British colony to legalize slavery. 1660 Charles II grants a monopoly for the trading of slaves to the Royal Adventurers into Africa, a company led by James, Duke of York, Charles IIs brother. 1672 The Royal African Company succeeds the Royal Adventurers into Africa and operates a monopoly on the slave trade, transporting an average of 5 000 slaves each year between 1680 and 1686. 1698 The Royal African Companys monopoly is ended and the slave trade opened to all. By the end of the century, England leads the world in the trafficking of slaves 1730 Britain becomes the biggest slave trading country.
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