Why were Africans selected for slavery?

Reasons for Selecting Africans as Slaves

I . Introduction

It is a common fact that of all races , the most widely traded slaves are Africans . For the most part , these Africans were shipped across continents to serve in the homes of Europe or to labor in the mines and plantations in the Americas

Spanish and Portuguese colonizers were the first ones to promote African slavery in the Americas in the 1500 's . Historical readers must have wondered why these colonizers had Africans as slaves than the native Indians . Widely held views would

be that by virtue of their color the Europeans treated them as such . But such racist perception was adopted much later

The purpose of this is to discuss the reasons why Africans were selected as slaves . Historical research and accounts showed that Africans were selected as slaves mainly because they were more accustomed to hard agrarian labor , more resistant to diseases , the European colonizers forbade the enslavement of Indian slavery and African slavery trading existed

II . Accustomed to Hard Labor

Upon colonizing the Americas Europeans , particularly Portuguese and Spanish , acquire large tracts of land that they used for sugar and cotton plantation or for mining of silver and gold . Moreover , this type of activity required much working in the soil , a task which the aristocratic colonizers considered degrading . Moreover , colonized Indians of the Americas also labored to cultivate the ground and build houses for their colonizers . These forced hard labors , however , had exhausted the Indians so that ultimately many of them died ( The Enslaved ' 2006

Indians were replaced by African slaves . Africans were supposed to be accustomed to heavy field work in a tropical climate , while Indians were not . African slaves eventually provided most of the heavy labor for plantations throughout tropical and semitropical America (Perry 358

III . More resistant to European diseases

Although forced labor and conquest killed many Indians , the Indian 's worst enemy was the Old World diseases brought to the Americas from Europe , Asia and Africa . In the span of a generation , smallpox , measles flu and the common cold killed hundreds of thousands . In fact , the Arawaks of the Caribbean islands were wiped out altogether . In some areas of the Mexican mainland , the population fell to about a third of what it had been before the Europeans arrived . It was several generations before the Indian population began to grow again ( Perry 358

The tragic deaths of so many Indians caused a severe labor shortage in the Spanish colonies . Since they came from the Old World , the African slaves were more resistant to the diseases that have newly confronted the natives

IV . European colonizers forbade the enslavement of the Indians

To do the hard work on the plantation and mines , the settlers used the Indian peasants . But because the native Indians had been converted to Christianity , the Spanish rulers issued policies designed to protect them . Indians could not be bought or sold as slaves , and colonists had to grant a royal license to use...