ABSTRACT
The number of blacks employed at court as bodyguards, executioners or entertainers was small and limited, for the most part, to lands surrounding the Mediterranean. A more reasonable estimate is that of Philip Curtin who maintains that there were approximately 49,000 Africans imported into all of Europe between 1451 and 1600. Seymour Liebman states that Marranos may have accompanied Cortes to Mexico in 1519. Christians had never ceased their attacks since the seventh century. Slave trading prompted concern on the part of the Catholic church. For good reason: by the end of the century the Spanish were already exporting hundreds of Indians back to Europe and arguing for replacement labor as they killed off the remnants of natives in Hispaniola, Mexico, and Peru. The Inquisition operated in the New World until the Latin American republics declared themselves free from Spanish tyranny in 1820.
