American Negro Slavery | Page 8

confronted with the prospect of the complete
disappearance of its laboring population.[10] Meanwhile the same
régime was being carried to Porto Rico, Jamaica and Cuba with similar
consequences in its train.
[Footnote 10: E. g. Bourne, Spain in America (New York, 1904);
Wilhelm Roscher, _The Spanish Colonial System_, Bourne ed. (New
York, 1904); Konrad Habler, "The Spanish Colonial Empire," in
Helmolt, _History of the World_, vol I.]
As long as mining remained the chief industry the islands failed to

prosper; and the reports of adversity so strongly checked the Spanish
impulse for adventure that special inducements by the government were
required to sustain any flow of emigration. But in 1512-1515 the
introduction of sugar-cane culture brought the beginning of a change in
the industrial situation. The few surviving gangs of Indians began to be
shifted from the mines to the fields, and a demand for a new labor
supply arose which could be met only from across the sea.
Apparently no negroes were brought to the islands before 1501. In that
year, however, a royal decree, while excluding Jews and Moors,
authorized the transportation of negroes born in Christian lands; and
some of these were doubtless carried to Hispaniola in the great fleet of
Ovando, the new governor, in 1502. Ovando's reports of this
experiment were conflicting. In the year following his arrival he
advised that no more negroes be sent, because of their propensity to run
away and band with and corrupt the Indians. But after another year had
elapsed he requested that more negroes be sent. In this interim the
humane Isabella died and the more callous Ferdinand acceded to full
control. In consequence a prohibition of the negro trade in 1504 was
rescinded in 1505 and replaced by orders that the bureau in charge of
colonial trade promote the sending of negroes from Spain in large
parcels. For the next twelve years this policy was maintained--the
sending of Christian negroes was encouraged, while the direct slave
trade from Africa to America was prohibited. The number of negroes
who reached the islands under this régime is not ascertainable. It was
clearly almost negligible in comparison with the increasing
demand.[11]
[Footnote 11: The chief authority upon the origin and growth of negro
slavery in the Spanish colonies is J.A. Saco, _Historia de la Esclavitud
de la Raza Africana en el Nuevo Mundo y en especial en los Paises
Americo-Hispanos_. (Barcelona, 1879.) This book supplements the
same author's Historia de la Esclavitud desde los Tiempos remotos
previously cited.]
The policy of excluding negroes fresh from Africa--"bozal negroes" the
Spaniards called them--was of course a product of the characteristic

resolution to keep the colonies free from all influences hostile to
Catholic orthodoxy. But whereas Jews, Mohammedans and Christian
heretics were considered as champions of rival faiths, the pagan blacks
came increasingly to be reckoned as having no religion and therefore as
a mere passive element ready for christianization. As early as 1510, in
fact, the Spanish crown relaxed its discrimination against pagans by
ordering the purchase of above a hundred negro slaves in the Lisbon
market for dispatch to Hispaniola. To quiet its religious scruples the
government hit upon the device of requiring the baptism of all pagan
slaves upon their disembarkation in the colonial ports.
The crown was clearly not prepared to withstand a campaign for
supplies direct from Africa, especially after the accession of the youth
Charles I in 1517. At that very time a clamor from the islands reached
its climax. Not only did many civil officials, voicing public opinion in
their island communities, urge that the supply of negro slaves be
greatly increased as a means of preventing industrial collapse, but a
delegation of Jeronimite friars and the famous Bartholomeo de las
Casas, who had formerly been a Cuban encomendero and was now a
Dominican priest, appeared in Spain to press the same or kindred
causes. The Jeronimites, themselves concerned in industrial enterprises,
were mostly interested in the labor supply. But the well-born and
highly talented Las Casas, earnest and full of the milk of human
kindness, was moved entirely by humanitarian and religious
considerations. He pleaded primarily for the abolition of the
encomienda system and the establishment of a great Indian reservation
under missionary control, and he favored the increased transfer of
Christian negroes from Spain as a means of relieving the Indians from
their terrible sufferings. The lay spokesmen and the Jeronimites asked
that provision be made for the sending of thousands of negro slaves,
preferably bozal negroes for the sake of cheapness and plenty; and the
supporters of this policy were able to turn to their use the favorable
impression which Las Casas was making, even though his programme
and theirs were different.[12] The outcome was that while the settling
of the encomienda problem was indefinitely