ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the eighteenth century Dutch introduced coffee, originally from East Africa and Arabia, to the island of Java, thereby becoming Europe's main coffee brokers. Europe's sweet tooth thus changed the African slave trade from a peripheral phenomenon into a defining element of European society. As the Portuguese began their explorations of the African coast in the fifteenth century, they established trading posts in which African captives sold as slaves were one of the commodities. By the Treaty of Tordesillas, the Portuguese had exclusive rights to the African coast trade, so they became the primary slavers. Most abolitionists focused their attention on the evils of the slave trade as opposed to slavery itself. It is one of the ironies of colonialism that the British Empire was just beginning to move towards its peak at the moment when one small part of it, the thirteen North American colonies, were breaking away.
