Mediterranean Slavery, New World Transformations: Galley Slaves in the Spanish Caribbean, 1578–1635

Beginning in the 1570s, the Spanish Crown dispatched approximately 20 to 25 Mediterranean galleys to the Caribbean in order to protect the empire’s maritime lifelines.

In addition to convict rowers of widely varied origins, the galleys employed relatively small numbers of skilled oarsmen drawn from the Islamic Mediterranean, particularly North Africa and the Ottoman empire. While Spain’s Caribbean galley squadrons existed for

only 60 years, their reliance on ‘Turkish’ and ‘Moorish’ galley slaves provides evidence of an overlooked, intermediate stage in the evolution of slavery within the early modern Iberian Atlantic world.