Colonization and Slavery in Central America

In the development of the 'Atlantic World' after 1492, Central America was always as peripheral as it remains today. Yet it is precisely the peripheral nature of its relationship to this emerging world that is the key to understanding the particular patterns of colonization and varieties of slavery that existed in the three centuries following the conquest. The relationship between colonization and slavery in Central America from the early sixteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century was affected by the fact that the region remained, throughout this period, at the periphery of the Spanish and British empires.