ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 of the translations focuses on merchants from Portugal, Spain, and the Spanish Canaries who sailed to the Cape Verde Islands and purchased enslaved Africans and tropical merchandise in 1513–15. Merchants from Europe and its Old World eastern Atlantic island colonies paid Cape Verde customs officers a 10 percent tax on imports and exports. When the vessels from Europe and its colonies entered customs houses in the Cape Verde Island, customs agents collected taxes the same way they collected duty from ships returning from West Africa. First, they recorded the name of the ship and the dates of arrival and departure. Scribes wrote down the names of ship officers, crew, and merchants, and the merchandise or enslaved African declared to customs. In addition, scribes recorded the volume of cargo, the assessed value, and import/export taxes paid by merchants. The translated customs records name the men who purchased enslaved Africans in the Cape Verde Islands and personally transported them to Portugal, Spain, and the Spanish Canaries. It provides detailed data on the second leg of the Atlantic slave trade from West Africa to Iberia and the Canary Islands, at the time European slave traders began shipping enslaved Africans to the Spanish Caribbean.
