The Beginning of Racialized Slavery in the 15th-Century Spanish Expansion to the Canary Islands

This paper argues that the early Castilian and Spanish experiences of plundering, conquering, trading, and enslaving on the Canary archipelago would prove indispensable to the future of slavery and the slave trade in the early modern Spanish Atlantic. Settlements on the Canary Islands brought the Castilians into the geographical space of the African continent and gave them their first practice enslaving a group of previously undiscovered peoples. In so doing, the Spanish -- and their allies in Rome -- grappled with distinctions between infidels and Christians, and slaves and vassals. In defining the hierarchical relationships that reflected their newly globalized world, they looked to the familiar historical precedents of ancient and medieval Europe’s trade in slaves; to North Africa’s Islamic system of slavery; and to the Papacy to legitimate their conquest and enslavement of the indigenous Canary islanders.