User talk:3cardmonty

Some words to Columbus the slaver: he made at least one commercial trip to El Mina, the first slaving port the Portuguese set up on the West African coast, likely to procure workers for the young sugar industry on the Canary islands. His business relationship with Genuese merchant families indicates strongly that he was decidedly more than a supporter of slavery - one of his 'friends', Marchionni, obtained 1490 exclusive license of the Portuguese crown for the trade with the than-called slave-coast. We should also not forget that it was Columbus himself who, on his second voyage in 1496, send home a cargo of some 400 Indians to be sold as slaves in Spain (of which only half survived the trip). He did that against the express orders of the Queen. If nothing else that makes him the first slaver operating in America.