576 MIGRATIONS OF RACES OF MEN CONSIDERED HISTORICALLY. 



sixteenth ceutiiiy, when the (lestiuctiou oF the native Indians by their 

 Spanish taskmasters in the Antilles started the slave trade,* down to 

 our own times, when slavers still occasionally landed their cargoes in 

 Brazil, th*^ number of negroes carried from Africa to America must be 

 reckoned by many millions. In 179J it was estimated tliat 60,000 were 

 carried annually to the West Indies alone. The change effected may 

 be measured by the fact that along the southern coasts of North 

 America, in the West India islands, and in some districts of Brazil 

 the negroes form the largest part of the population. Their total num- 

 ber, which in the United States alone exceeds 7,000,000, can not be less 

 than from 13,000,000 to 1(),000,000. They increase rapidly in South 

 Carolina and the (xulf States of the Union, are stationary in Mexico 

 and Peru, aud in Central America seem to diminish. Though some 

 have suggested their re-migration to Africa, there is not the slightest 

 reason to think that this will take place to any ap])reciable extent. On 

 the other hand, it is not likely that they will, ex(;ept, perhaps, in the 

 unsettled tropical interior of the less elevated i^arts of South America, 

 spread beyond the area which they now occupy. The slave trade is 

 unfortunately not yet extinct on the east coast of Africa, but it has 

 caused so comparatively slight a transfer of population from that con- 

 tinent to Arabia, the Turkish dominions, and Persia as not to require 

 discussion here. 



Before quitting this part of the subject a passing reference may be 

 made to two other causes of migration, which, though their effects 

 have been com]iaratively small, are not without interest — religion and 

 the love of freedom. Religion has operated in two ways. Sometimes 

 it has led to the removal of persons of a particular faith, as in the case 

 of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella, 

 the Catholic, an event which affected not only Spain l)ut Europe gen- 

 erally, by sending many caj)able Spanish Jews to Holland and others 

 to the Turkish East. Similar motives led Philip III to expel the Moris- 

 coes in A. D. 1G09. The present Jewish emigration from Russia is also 

 partially, though only partially, traceable to this cause. In another 

 class of cases religion has been one of the motive forces in promi)ting 

 war and concpiest, as when the Arabs overthrew the dominions of the 

 Sassanid kings, overran the eastern part of the East Roman Empire, 

 subjugated North Africa and S])ain; and also in the case of the Spanish 

 conquests in America, where the missionary spirit went hand in hand 

 with, andAvas not felt to be incompatible with, the greed of gold and 

 the harshest means of satisfying it. The latest American instance 



* The first negroes were brouglit from Morocco to Portugal iu 1442, soon after 

 which they began to be brought iu large numbers from the Guinea coasts. There 

 were already some in Hispauiola in 1502; and after 1517 the trade from Africa seems 

 to have set in regularly, though it did not become large till a still later date. Las 

 Casas lived to bitterly repent the qualified approval he had given to it, in the 

 interests of the aborigines of the Antilles, whom labor in the mines was swiftly 

 destroying; but it is a complete error to ascribe its origin to him. 



