Sugar production in the Iberian peninsula and the Iberian controlled islands off the coast of Africa, Madeiras, Sao Thome, the Cape Verde Islands and the Canaries after about 1440 utilized primarily African slaves.

Information on sugar production and slavery prior to Columbus is difficult to locate as most authors choose to concentrate on the more politically correct American slavery.

About 10,000,000 African slaves were transported to the Americas between 1501 and 1860. Of these about 5% or 500,000 were transported to the Continental North American British colonies and the subsequent United States.

325 B.C.

Admiral Nearchus, Alexander the Great's Navy, writes of Indian reeds "that produce honey, although there are no bees." First known reference to sugar.

300 B.C.

The Carthaginian Navy rules the seas in quinquiremes. War ships with five banks of oars manned by government owned galley slaves. Carthage built a powerful economy based on slaves. All Mediterranean powers used galleys manned by slaves into the 18th century. In some cases, as in France, the slaves were felons sentenced to the galleys.

Carthaginian planters own fertile plantations in Libya worked by slaves. Some have up to 20,000 slaves.

Sugar is introduced to the Middle East from India.

168 B.C.

Battle of Pydna Roman General Lucius Aemilius Paulus defeats Macedonian King Perseus and brings home so much booty that Roman citizens are relieved of direct taxation. Macedonians captured at Pydna constitute a large part of the booty and are sold as slaves in Rome with females fetching fifty times the price of a male.

135 B.C.

Rome's first slave war begins when slaves on large estates in Sicily revolt under leadership of the Syrian Eunus who styles himself King Antiochus.

132 B.C.

Rome's first slave war ends with the capture of the Syrian Eunus. He is savagely execute with his supporters.

103 B.C.

Rome's second slave war began when slaves in Sicily revolt under the leadership of Tryphon and Athenion.

99 B.C.

Rome's second slave war ends after four years when Consul M. Aquillius subdues the slave army.

73 B.C.

Rome's third slave war begins under the leadership of the Thracian slave Spartacus.

72 B.C.

Roman armies defeat the slave forces of Spartacus.

71 B.C.

Rome's third slave war ends when Spartacus is defeated by the Roman Praetor M. Licinius Crassus. Pompey returns from the Hispanic provinces and mops up the remnants of the slave army.

9 A.D.

Emperor Wang Mang frees China's slaves.

12 A.D.

Emperor Wang Mang repeals reforms which have met with widespread protests.

17 A.D.

Slaves are taxed in China.

200

Rome has 400,000 slaves for 1.5 million citizens. Middle class citizens own an average of eight.

628

Sugar from India is brought to Constantinople by Byzantine solders who found it in 627 at the sack of the Persian castle at Dastagerd.

711

Moors invade the Iberian Peninsula and introduce sugar, rice and saffron.

800

Vikings sell slaves from all over Europe to Moslems in the eastern Mediterranean.

850

From the middle of the 9th century until 1831 all Muslim kingdoms purchased white male slaves, mainly Turkish prisoners and Circassians from Russia, the Caucasus and central Asia, and form them into regiments of guards known as Mamelukes. The Mamelukes, from Arabic mamluk, owned, like the Roman Praetorian Guard, soon begin to exert considerable influence over the affairs of state. See 1375.

904

Thessalonica is plundered by the Saracen Corsair Leo of Tripoli who carries off 20,000 people as slaves.

973

Jewish merchants known as the Radanites sell white female slaves in the marketplace at Mainz and at other slave markets in the Orient. The Radanites then purchase spices, aloe, musk, pearls, and precious stones.

1099

The Crusaders plant sugar cane in the Holy Land.

1104

Sugar serves as an emergency ration for Crusaders at siege of Acre.

1148

Crusaders take sugar back to Europe.

1226

Henry III asks Mayor of Winchester for 3 pounds of sugar. An enormous amount for the time.

1362

Some time late in the 14th century, exact date unknown, until 1826 the core of the Ottoman Empire's standing army was the Janizaries who were organized by either Orkhan or Murad I. The Janizaries, from Turkish yenicheri, recruits or new troops, were originally prisoners of war but the main source of Janizaries were Christian boys taken prisoner in war or delivered as tribute by subject states. The Janizaries like the Roman Praetorian Guard and the Mamelukes, soon begin to exert considerable influence over the affairs of state.

1381

Wat Taylor's rebellion in England. A mob of 30,000 rioters enter London and behead the archbishop of Canterbury. Richard II promises reforms and an end to serfdom.

1382

England repeals reforms and reestablishes serfdom.

1419

Sugar cane from Sicily is planted in Madeira.

1430

March 1

Murad II, Ottoman Sultan, attacks Salonika. The city is carried by storm. The inhabitants and the Venetian garrison are massacred. The survivors are sold into slavery. The churches were converted into mosques.

1434

African slaves are brought to Portugal by a caravel returning from Africa.

1441

African slaves are sold in the market at Lisbon. About 10,000,000 Africans will be transported to Europe by 1901.

1442

Moors captured by the Portuguese officer, Antam Goncalves, are ordered returned to Africa by Prince Henry the Navigator. The Moors exchange ten African slaves and some gold dust for their fellow countrymen.

The Portuguese construct forts on the coast of Africa and establish a thriving trade in slaves. The first African slaves in the New World are slaves from Spain and Portugal.

1450

Pope Nicholas V authorizes the Portuguese to "attack, subject, and reduce to perpetual slavery the Saracens, pagans and other enemies of Christ southward from Cape Bajador and Non, including all the coast of Guinea." See 1514

1456

Sugar from Madeira reaches Bristol, England. This is first sugar many Englishmen have seen.

1486

African slaves in the kingdom of Gaur in India rebel and place their own leader on the throne.

African kingdom of Benin begins trade with Portugal.

Christopher Columbus submits his proposal, for a westward expedition to the Orient, to Castile's Isabella and Aragon's Ferdinand.

1490

Sugar cane is planted on the island of Sao Thome and slaves are transported from the kingdom of Benin and other African countries to work in the cane fields.

1491

Spanish colonists plant sugar cane in the Canary Islands.

1492

August 3

Christopher Columbus weighs anchor on a Friday. The 100 ton Santa Maria has a crew of 52.

October 12

Christopher Columbus sights land.

The first known reference to smoking tobacco is made by Luis de Torres and Rodrigo de Jarez. Rodrigo will be imprisoned by the Spanish Inquisition for his "devilish habit" of smoking.

1493

Sugar cane and cucumbers from the Canary Islands are planted on Santo Domingo by Columbus. Columbus' father in law owns a Madeira sugar plantation.

1494

Columbus sends five hundred Carib Indians taken in wars with the Caciques to be sold as slaves at Seville. Queen Isabella suspends the royal order for their sale and requests an inquiry into the lawfulness of the sale. Theologians differ on the lawfulness of the sale. The Indians are eventually shipped back home.

1496

Spain completes conquest of the Canary Islands from the Portuguese and the native fair skinned Guanche who have fought off invaders for a century.

Statute of Piotkow deprives Polish peasants of freedom to move about.

1498

The Spanish ship some six hundred cannibal Caribs to Spain to be sold as slaves.

February

Sebastian Cabot sails to North America and returns with 3 Indian slaves. There is some controversy as to exactly where Henry and his son Sebastian landed on their voyages.

1500

Gaspar de Corte-Real (Portugal) makes the first authenticated European landing on the North American Continent since Leif Ericson in 1000.

1501

Gaspar de Corte-Real (Portugal) kidnaps 57 Indians in North America to be sold as slaves. The Indians and Gaspar are both drowned when the ship sinks. A second vessel reaches Portugal with seven Indians.

African slaves introduced into Hispaniola at Santo Domingo by Spanish settlers. This is the first importation of African slaves into the Americas.

1502

Nicolas de Ovando, governor of Santo Domingo, is given permission to transport slaves born in Seville and other parts of Spain provided they had been instructed in the Christian faith.

1503

Nicolas de Ovando, the Spanish governor of Hispaniola, petitions Ferdinand the Catholic to permit no more African slaves to be sent to Hispaniola.

1506

The Spanish begin sugar production in the Caribbean's Great Antilles.

1507

The Portuguese capture Zafi in Morocco and begin a commerce in captive Moors, Berbers and Jews. Many are female, all are called white slaves to distinguish them from African slaves.

1508

The native population of Hispaniola is 60,000 as compared with 200,000 to 300,000 in 1492.

1510

A consignment of African slaves is transported to Brazil to labor on Portuguese sugar plantations.

King Ferdinand transports African slaves to Santo Domingo to work the mines.

1511

Poland establishes serfdom under laws passed by the diet.

1512

African slaves are imported into Hispaniola's western settlement (Haiti) in large numbers to replace Indian slaves who are dying out from over work and disease.

1514

Pope Leo X issues a bull denouncing slavery and the slave trade. See 1450

The Spanish conquer Cuba.

1516

The Castilian regent Jiminez forbids importation of slaves into Spanish colonies but Carlos I grants his courtiers licenses to import slaves into Spanish colonial islands.

Carlos I receives 6 loaves of sugar grown in the Americas from Hispaniola's inspector of gold mines. The first sugar grown in the America's to reach Europe.

1517

Archduke Charles grants Florentine merchants a monopoly in the African slave trade.

Enslavement of Indians in the America's is protested by Father Bartolomeo de Las Casas. Father Las Casas, bishop of Chiapa, first priest ordained in America and a former planter, went back to Spain to plead the case of the Indians to Carlos I. He requests that each Spanish resident in Haiti be granted a license to import twelve African slaves in order to release the natives from slavery.

1518

The 28 Spanish sugar plantations on Santo Domingo step up importation's of African slaves to replace the Island's fast disappearing native population.

Tobacco is introduced to Juan de Grijalva by a native chief. 1522

Hispaniola has a large scale slave uprising. There will be at least 10 more in the next 31 years.

1523

Sugar introduced into Cuba.

1526

Congolese king Mbemba Nzinga protests to John III (Portugal) that Portuguese merchants are "taking every day our natives, sons of the land and sons of our noblemen and our vassals and our relatives." The king is a convert to Christianity and he says the slavers are depopulating his country.

1531

Sugar becomes as important as gold in the Spanish and Portuguese colonial economies.

1532

France begins sentencing condemned criminals to the galleys. See 1561.

Tobacco is cultivated on a commercial scale in the Spanish West Indies.

1533

Slaves on Hispaniola stage an uprising which is suppressed with a great deal of bloodshed.

1536

England begins to suffer shortages of honey as the monasteries are dissolved pursuant to the 1534 Act of Supremacy. The priests keep bees for the wax which is used for votive candles.

1537

Slave uprising on Hispaniola

1539

Portugal's agrarian system declines as a result of dependence on slave labor introduced since 1441.

1542

Spain forbids the enslavement of Indians but does not abolish Indian slavery.

1544

The Protestant Reformation leads to a shortage of honey as the Monasteries are broken up and the apiaries formally tended by the priests fall into decay. This creates a demand for more sugar which in turn creates a demand for more slaves.

1545

A silver mine is discovered at Potosi in the altiplano of New Castile. The mine will yield an estimated $2 billion in silver.

1546

Mayans stage a major uprising but are crushed by the Spanish.

1547

The population of New Spain has fallen from 11 million in 1518 before the arrival of Cortez to 6 million in 1547 as a result of disease and over work in mines and on plantations.

1548

Hispaniola has another slave uprising

The native population of Hispaniola is less than 500.

1550

Prices in Europe and England rise as coins minted from Mexican and Peruvian gold and silver devalue the old currencies. Stalin gets the Spanish gold in 1936 when he persuaded the Spanish Central Bank to send the gold reserves to Russia for safe keeping during the Spanish Civil War.

Brazil has 5 sugar plantations.

1556

Franciscan monk Andre Thevet brings tobacco seeds to Europe from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

1560

A smallpox epidemic ravages Portugal's Brazilian colony increasing the need for African slaves to cut sugar cane.

1561

France enacts the Ordonnance d'Orleans providing for the sentencing of condemned criminals to the galleys. See 1564.

Tobacco grows in Spain and Portugal where it is used as an ornamental plant and for its alleged medicinal properties.

1562

John Hawkins hijacks a Portuguese ship carrying African slaves to Brazil. He sells the slaves in 1563 at Hispaniola for sugar, pearls and ginger and makes a huge profit.

1563

John Hawkins sells a hijacked cargo of 105 to 300 African slaves in Hispaniola.

Queen Elizabeth: "If any African were carried away without his free consent it would be detestable and call down the vengeance of Heaven upon the undertaking."

1564

Queen Elizabeth loans John Hawkins a ship and takes shares in his slave running ventures. Apparently she doesn't fear Heaven.

Charles IX of France forbids sentencing prisoners to the galleys for less than 10 years. Galley slaves are branded with the letters GAL. See 1748.

1565

John Hawkins introduces tobacco into England from Florida.

1570

Large scale traffic in African slaves begins between the African coast of Sierra Leone and the Brazilian bulge 1,807 miles away.

Slave ships returning from Brazil bring peanuts, maize, manioc, sweet potatoes and beans to supplement Africa's few subsistence crops. Manioc (cassava) is very resistant to locusts and to deterioration in the field and serves as a reserve against famine.

Maize fuels the population growth necessary to provide the steady supply of African slaves required for the new trade.

1580

Spain and Portugal unite under one crown. Spain's Philip II is crowned Philip I of Portugal.

1581

Philip II of Spain sends some of his African slaves to St. Augustine. These are the first African slaves to be landed in North America.

Philip II unifies control of the Oriental spice trade eliminating the competition in the sugar, spice and slave trade that existed before the Spanish takeover of Portugal in 1580.

1582

Colony planted on Roanoke Island by Walter Raleigh.

1588

The "invincible" Spanish Armada sails for England. The fleet carries handcuffs, legirons and chains for the thousands of English slaves the Spanish expect to take.

English merchants form the Guinea Company to traffic in slaves from Africa's Guinea coast.

1591

North Africa's African culture is destroyed when Spanish and Portuguese Mercenaries in the service of Moroccan pashas use firearms to defeat the Africans, destroy Goa and assist the Moroccans in establishing themselves at Timbuktu. The pashas gain independence from Morocco in 1612 and rule Timbuktu until 1780.

Portugal closes Brazil to further immigration of anyone except Portuguese but continues to import African slaves for the Brazilian plantations.

1592

A Russian census lists peasants under the names of landholders. The peasants will hereafter be considered as serfs of the landlords.

1595

The Dutch East India Company sends its first ships to the Orient. The Dutch begin settlements on Africa's Guinea coast. Dutch ships arrive in the East Indies.

1597

A Muscovite ukase requires the seizure of runaway serfs and their return to their masters.

A German visitor to England makes note of Queen Elizabeth's black teeth. Paul Henter ascribes this condition to the Queen's excessive consumption of sugar. This is the first recorded association between sugar and tooth decay.

1599

There is an estimated 900,000 African slaves in the America's. Most of the slaves are engaged in producing sugar.

The Dutch raise the price of pepper from three shillings per pound to six or eight and eighty London merchants form their own East India Company.

Prices in western Europe are six times what they were a century ago. The nobility is impoverished and is forced to sell its land to the despised middle class.

1600

Tobacco sells in London for its weight in silver shillings.

1601

English adventurer John Smith is captured by the Turks, while serving with Transylvania's Sigismund Bathory, and sold into slavery.

1603

John Smith kills his slave master, escapes from captivity east of the African Sea and returns to England.

1604

James I publishes Counterblast to Tobacco anonymously. He regards smoking as a filthy stinking habit.

1607 May 14

Jamestown, Virginia founded by Captain Christopher Newport.

June 22

Captain Christopher Newport sails for England leaving Jamestown under the command of Captain John Smith.

1612

Jamestown grows rich on tobacco and the import duties alter James I attitude towards tobacco.

1615

English slaver Thomas Hunt kidnaps a Wampanoag from Patuxet. He sells Tisquantum (Squanto) into slavery at Malaga, Spain.

1619

May 11

One hundred and forty transported white female convicts are sold at a slave auction in Jamestown, Virginia against their weight in tobacco "at a fixed poundage for the crop" and fetch between two hundred and six hundred pounds each depending on age and condition. This shipment of female convicts is follow by another shipment in a few weeks which includes 105 women and girls. Transported convicts were slaves without any rights during the period of their sentence.

Planters purchase any labor they are offered and do not ask questions. Press-ganged, kidnapped, convicted criminals, prisoners of war or self-sold, red, white, African, male or female it makes no difference. Slaves in Jamaica are sold against sugar, about £7 each. Branding and flogging are usually included in the process. See 1698.

August

African slaves are sold in Jamestown, Virginia by a Dutch privateer. They introduce African diseases such as yellow fever, virulent forms of malaria and hookworm to North America. This is the first sale of African slaves in an English Colony. The Dutch ship is short of food and according to tradition the twenty Africans were about to be thrown overboard. Theoretically they are indentured servants. See 1650.

1621

March 16

Squanto makes his way back from Spain and assists the Pilgrim colony on Cape Cod Bay with farming.

1623

Brazil has 350 sugar plantations.

1624

Snuff users are threatened with excommunication by Pope Urban VIII

1630

Lemonade is invented in Paris as sugar imported from the French West Indies drops in price.

1635

Dutch forces invade and occupy northern Brazil and Dutch planters enter the lucrative sugar market.

A new French law restricts sale of tobacco to apothecaries on prescription of a physician.

1636

A Dutch planter introduces Sugar cane from Brazil to Barbados. The English settlers have been growing cotton, indigo, ginger and tobacco.

1637

Dutch forces take Elmina from the Portuguese and construct forts along the Gold Coast to insure a supply of African slaves for their sugar plantations in Brazil.

The Massachusetts militia massacre the Pequod village at Mystia. They kill about 600; take 30 males offshore, drown them and sell the women and children as slaves. The technical term for a mass drowning is: Noyäde'.

The Pequod Indian slaves were transported to the Indies aboard, the first American Slave Ship, the Desire.

The Desire, 120 tons, was constructed at Marblehead, Massachusetts and was one of the first, if not the first, ships built in the colonies.

The Desire transported a cargo of African slaves to Connecticut on the return voyage.

See

A Wonderful Victory Over the Enemies of God

&

Massacre at Fort Mystic

Hugh Peter writes to John Winthrop, Jr., that he had heard of a "dividend" of women and children from the Pequod captives and that he would like a share, "a young woman or girl and a boy if you think good."

1640

The British West Indies have a population of 20,000, most of it employed in growing sugar cane.

1641

Massachusetts outlaws slavery. The code of laws, Body of Liberties, adopted in 1641, Article 91 reads "there shall never any bond slaverie, villinage, or captivites amongst us unless it be lawfull captives taken in just wars, and such strangers as willingly selle themselves or are sold to us. And these shall have all the liberties and Christian usages which the law of God established in Israell concerning such persons doeth morally require. This exempts none from servitude who be Judged thereto by Authoritie."

A person can, theoretically, still be sold into slavery in the United States as the thirteenth amendment allows slavery as a punishment for crime. See 1865 and 1926.

Some 10,000 slaves will be imported to the Americas during this decade. Most of them for the sugar plantations in Brazil.

The first sugar refinery in the English colonies is constructed on Barbados using money borrowed from the Dutch against the sugar to be produced.

Russia's Michael Romanov forbids the sale and use of tobacco. Users and sellers are to be flogged.

Russia makes tobacco a state monopoly.

1642

Transportation and sale of convicts and prisoners of war becomes a major branch of the slave trade from 1642 to 1649 during the English Civil War.

1645

Portuguese colonists begin an uprising against the Dutch in Brazil.

Barbados has 6,000 slaves.

1648

Czar Alexis Mikhailovich abolishes the state monopoly in tobacco and reimposes the ban on smoking.

1649

There are 300 slaves in Virginia.

1650

Chattel slavery legally recognized in Virginia.

Virginia grows rich on tobacco exports.

1651

John Cotton writes a letter to Oliver Cromwell thanking him for the gift of "The Scots whom God delivered into your hands at Dunbarre. . . . ." and goes on to report that "They have not been sold for slaves to perpetuall servitude, but for 6 or 7 or 8 yeares as we do our owne; . . . ."

1652

Capetown, South Africa is founded by Dutch ship's surgeon Jan van Riebeck who goes ashore at Table Bay with 70 men, seeds, agricultural implements and building materials.

Ukrainian serfs rise in a revolution that will continue for six years.

1654

Portugal recovers the Brazilian territory taken by the Dutch in 1635.

Sugar cane is planted on Martinique by the French. Martinique will become a major Caribbean sugar producer.

1660

Africa's Bambara kingdom's of Segu and Kaarta on the upper Niger begin their rise against the Mandingo Empire which they will replace in 1670.

1664

Plockhoy's Dutch Mennonite settlement on the Delaware is raided by Sir Robert Carr and the Massachusetts militia. The women are raped by the God fearing Puritans and the survivors, of the raid, men, women and children are sold into slavery in Virginia and the West Indies.

1665

England imports less than 88 tons of sugar. This will grow to about 10,000 tons in 1700 as prices fall and tea drinking increases in popularity.

1671

Czar Alexis suppresses a peasant revolt in the southeast led by the Don Cossacks. Stenka Razin, leader of the Cossacks, is executed.

The governor of Virginia estimates that Africans comprise less than 5 percent of the population.

Rice is introduced into South Carolina by physician Henry Woodward who received some Magdagascar rice from a sea captain.

Russian serfs rise in revolt.

English merchants form the Royal African Company to exploit the African slave trade.

1674

Richard Baxter, English Puritan, denounces slave hunters as "enemies of mankind" but he does nor denounce plantation slavery itself so long as the slaves are well treated.

1675

New England has a population of 50,000 while the native population is less than 20,000.

1676

King Philips War ends in August. Chief Metacum's head is cut off and displayed in Plymouth for the next twenty years.

King Philips widow and children are sold as slaves in the West Indies, despite Increase Mather's vote that they be executed, along with other survivors. Over 500 are shipped into slavery from Plymouth alone as the militia tracks them down.

Dutch traders purchase African slaves at 30 žorins in Angola and sell 15,000 per year in the Americas at 300 to 500 žorins each.

1680

Between 1680 and 1700 The Royal African Company exported 140,000 African slaves and private adventures exported 160,000. See 1700.

1690

The African slave trade of England which had been restricted to exclusive companies is opened to all subjects of the Crown.

1697

The Treaty of Rijswijk recognized French possession of the western third of Hispaniola, Haiti, which they name Saint Domingue.

1698

Transported convicts are sold in Monserrat for a fixed price of 2,500 pounds of sugar "per servant, male or female". See 1712.

1700

Between 1700 and 1786 610,000 African slaves are transported to Jamaica.

1707

Philadelphia mechanics demonstrate to protest competition from Indian slaves.

1708

South Carolina has 2,400 adult whites; 1,100 Indian slaves and 2,900 African slaves.

Britain's Caribbean colonies import 20,000 slaves per year by official estimate but many are for re-export to North and South America.

1712

Queen Anne's Proclamation Against Vice generates fresh supplies of felons for transportation. See 1718.

April 6

Slaves revolt in New York. Six committed suicide and 21 are executed.

1713

April 11

The Treaty of Utrecht grants the South Sea Company a monopoly, asientos, to import 4,800 African slaves per year into Spain's American colonies for a period of 30 years to date from May 1, 1713. The French had previously held this monopoly and before them the Dutch. See 1739.

1715

African slaves comprise 24 percent of Virginia's population.

1718

The act of 1718 reaffirming the Transportation of Convicts make transportation the routine alternative to a death sentence of hanging or burning at the stake. See 1745.

1724

African slaves outnumber whites two to one in South Carolina.

A Code Noir for regulating the Africans and expelling the Jews at New Orleans is proclaimed by Louisiana Governor de Bienville.

1733

Molasses Act passed by Parliament imposes heavy duties on molasses, sugar and rum imported from non-British West Indies islands and increases the cost of rum. Americans consume 3 Imperial (3.75 American) gallons per capita per year.

Smugglers evade the Molasses Act and trade slaves for molasses and sugar in the non-British West Indies to sell to New England distillers to be made into rum which is carried to Africa and traded for slaves to trade for molasses in the Indies.

1735

Trustees of Georgia prohibit slavery and rum. Beer is encouraged as a temperance drink.

1739

The Cato Conspiracy at Stono, South Carolino takes the lives of 40 African slaves and 30 whites. Slave uprising. 1739/1740

Spain cancels England's contract to import slaves into Spanish colonies. Complaints of the English slavers on the one hand and the complaints of Spanish planters on the other were causing such a din that Philip V was fed up. Cancellation of the contract along with other differences led to the War of Jenkin's Ear.

1741

Second slave uprising in New York; either 13 or 18 slaves hanged; 13 burned at the stake and 71 deported. Four whites are hanged. Fires broke out and Catholic priests were charged with a "Negro Conspiracy" and inciting slaves to burn New York on orders from Spain. Oglethorpe reports this news to the trustees in a letter of May 28, 1742. He also mentions fires at Charles Town and a Negro insurrection in Carolina where Mr. Bathurst and above twenty white people and forty Negroes were killed.

Indigo introduced into South Carolina by Elizabeth Lucas Pinckney.

1745

Female convicts are being dumped in Pennsylvania in such large numbers that the Puritans begin to complain. See 1751.

1748

France incorporates the corps of galleys with the navy.

1750

Massachusetts has 63 distilleries producing rum made from West Indies molasses to be shipped to Africa to trade for slaves.

1751

May 9

Benjamin Franklin suggests in the May 9, 1751 issue of his Pennsylvania Gazette that the convict transport ships be laden for the return voyage with Rattlesnakes to be distributed in St. James Park, in the gardens of the Prime Minister, the Lords of Trade and the Members of Parliament. See 1776.

1754

Money from slave produced commodities such as sugar, tobacco and sea-island cotton create a growing leisure class in England.

1756

Forty per cent of Virginia's population of 250,000 are slaves.

1761

Slave traders are excluded from the Society of Friends by the American Quakers despite the fact that many Quakers own slaves.

1763

Granville Sharp finds a slave beaten and left to die in the street. He nurses the slave back to health only to have the slave kidnapped by his owner and shipped to Barbados to be sold. A public outcry results.

1764

April 5

The Sugar Act replaces the Molasses Act of 1733. The tax is cut in half but customs officials are dispatched and the governors ordered to collect the tax.

1766

George Washington ships an unruly slave off to the West Indies in exchange for a hogshead of rum and other commodities.

1770

There is an estimated 15,000 African slaves in Great Britain. See 1772.

1771

Serfdom ends in Savoy (Sardinia).

1772

June 22

Lord Chief Justice William Murray, Lord Mansfield, rules in the Somerset case after some hesitation that "as soon as any slave sets foot on the soil of the British Islands he becomes free." Apparently this does not apply to miners. See 1775 and 1778.

1773

Samuel Hopkins and Yale President Ezra Stiles urge that freed Africans be resettled in West Africa.

1775

George III signs an order freeing women and children working in British coal and salt mines. Many of the children are under 8 years of age and are forced to work 10 to 12 hour days. They could be transferred with the mines or when their masters had no further use for them.

The first American abolition society is founded in Pennsylvania. The slave population below the Mason-Dixon line exceeds 450,000. Africans outnumber whites two to one in South Carolina.

1776

Delaware forbids further importation of slaves. The slave population of the thirteen colonies reaches 500,000.

The House of Commons hears the first motion to outlaw slavery. The motion fails.

Importations of female convicts sold as slaves exceeds 30.000 and large numbers continue to be transported. See 1783.

July 2

Declaration of Independence adopted by Congress. The term "all men" is evidently the particular man, male and not the generic man, mankind. Jefferson's draft was edited to omit an attack on slavery so "all men" apparently also does not extend to non white males.

The House of Commons hears the first motion to outlaw slavery in Great Britain and her colonies. David Hartley calls slavery "contrary to the laws of God and the rights of man." His motion fails.

1778

The Virginia legislature forbids further importation of slaves at the persuasion of Thomas Jefferson.

Scottish miners gain some partial remission of the conditions of virtual slavery under which they labor but they will not achieve complete freedom until 1779.

1780

Massachusetts constitution of 1780 declares that "all men are born free and equal". See 1783.

Holy Roman Emperor Josef II abolishes serfdom in Bohemia and Hungary.

March 1

Pennsylvania abolishes slavery. Pennsylvania enacts a gradual emancipation act providing that no child born in Pennsylvania after March 1, 1780 should be a slave.

1782

Serfdom is abolished in Austria and her dominions.

The Virginia legislature authorizes manumission of slaves as slavery begins to die out in some parts of the South. Some 10,000 Virginia slaves will be freed in the next years. Independence has a high price as British subsidies on critical commodities are ended and Britain shifts her trade elsewhere.

English Quakers form an association "for the relief and liberation of the Negro slaves in the West Indies, and for the discouragement of the slave trade on the coast of Africa."

Maryland forbids further importation of slaves.

1783

A consignment of transported convicts is refused entry and returned to England. See 1787.

A slave named Quaco sues for his freedom, in the Massachusetts courts, under the 1780 constitution and wins. At the census of 1790 Massachusetts is the only state that returns no slaves. See 1788.

Prime Minister Andreas Bernstorff abolishes serfdom in Denmark.

1784

Connecticut abolishes slavery.

1787

Ordinance of 1787 prohibits slavery in new states north of the Ohio.

New South Wales replaces North America as a dumping ground for transported convicts. The convicts are not sold. The commissioned officers are given their pick of the women, then the non-commissioned officers, then the privates and finally male convicts that have completed their sentences are allowed to choose from what is left.

For some reason British North America apparently was not a destination for transported convicts.

Captain Bligh, as governor of New South Wales, undergoes his third mutiny in 1808. See 1788.

Delaware forbids importation of slaves.

The Free Africa Society founded at Philadelphia by Richard Allen and other Africans.

Richard Allen, Absalom Jones and others establish the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

1788

Virginia declares the importation of convicts illegal. See 1789.

Massachusetts prohibits participation in the slave trade.

1789

The Declaration of the Rights of Man adopted by the French Assembly declares that man has "natural and imprescribable rights. These rights are liberty, property, personal security and resistance to oppression. . . ."

Planters in Saint Domingue on Hispaniola send delegates to Paris and demand freedom to deal with local matters, slavery, without interference. Paris is not sympathetic to their demands. Hispaniola has 480,000 slaves.

Jamaica has 211,000 slaves and William Wilberforce informs the House of Commons that one third of the African slaves landed in the West Indies die within a few months of arrival, many by suicide.

A young girl sentenced to death at the Old Bailey for some petty crime refused transportation in lieu of death. At the time it was fashionable for the Society Ladies to attend such trials and set on the bench with the judge.

Mrs. Fitzherbert, morganatic wife of the Prince Regent, and a coterie of noble ladies were present on this occasion and when despite the pleas of the judge and the entire courtroom, which was reduced to tears, the girl persisted, saying "she would rather die" the judge adjoined the trial.

Mrs. Fitzherbert and her Ladies plead with the girl for several hours in her cell before she finally agreed to accept transportation and allow the trial to continue.

1790

First U,S. census reports 500,000 slaves and 3,500,000 free citizens.

1791

The French National Assembly grants Africans born of free parents in the French West Indies voting rights and the same privileges as all citizens.

The 30,000 white citizens of Saint Domingue prepare to secede

Free Africans and mulattos in Saint Domingue revolt. Within a few months 2,000 whites and 10,000 Africans have been killed. Sugar plantations are burned but 70,000 tons of sugar are produced.

A motion by William Wilberforce to prevent further importation of slaves into the British West Indies fails by a 188 to 163 vote. The House of Commons has been prejudiced by the slave insurrection at Saint Domingue and by similar revolts in Martinique and Dominica.

1792

Edward Gibbon writes Lord Sheffield expressing his approval of the vote against slavery but hopes that humanity is the only motive as he has a fear of wild ideas about the rights and natural equality of man.

Paris sends an army to restore order in Saint Domingue but the military commanders favor emancipation and support the slaves.

Eli Whitney develops an improved cotton gin which is capable of processing short staple upland cotton. This is the first improvement to the cotton gin in 2,000 years. Cotton will rescue slavery from oblivion by replacing the naval stores and indigo trade lost during the revolution and advance the inevitable war between the Northern and Southern States by a generation.

January

Riots in Paris over high price of sugar.

May 16

Denmark becomes first nation to abolish the slave trade. The Act is to take effect from the end of 1802 in all Danish possessions.

1793 February 12

The Fugitive Slave Act passed.

1794

February 4

The French Assembly emancipates all slaves in French colonies. The first nation to free slaves. See 1802.

March 24

U.S. citizens forbidden to participate in the slave trade to foreign countries by act of Congress.

Thomas Clarkson issues a pamphlet urging suppression of the slave trade.

1798

Georgia forbids further importation of slaves.