Liberia ^^ 



as much as for domestic service. Care was generally taken to 

 have them baptized and even to a certain extent educated. 



Meantime, North and South America had been discovered 

 and the West India Islands settled by Spaniards. As early 

 as 1 50 1, only nine years since the West India Islands had been 

 discovered by Christopher Columbus, it was found that the 

 wretched inhabitants of the Antilles were dying out under 

 the treatment of the colonising Spaniards. In 1502, therefore, 

 it was decided to export from Spain and Portugal to the 

 West Indies some of the Negro slaves who had reached the 

 Iberian Peninsula from West Africa and had been converted to 

 Christianity (!). By 1503 there were already quite a number of 

 Negroes in Hispaniola (Haiti — San Domingo). In 15 10 the 

 King of Spain (Ferdinand) dispatched more Negro slaves, 

 obtained through the Portuguese ^ from West Africa, to the 

 mines in that island. 



The celebrated Bartolomeo de las Casas, Bishop of Chiapa 

 in Hispaniola, came to Spain in 151 7, to the court of the 

 young King-Emperor Charles V., to protest against the wicked 

 treatment which the West Indian indigenes were enduring at 

 the hands of the Spaniards. As a remedy he proposed that the 

 hardier Negroes of West Africa should be imported direct into 

 the West Indies, to furnish the unskilled labour for which 

 the native Americans were unsuited by their constitution, 

 Charles V. had, however, already anticipated this idea, and a 

 year or two previously had granted licences to Flemish courtiers 

 to recruit Negroes in W^est Africa for dispatch to the West 

 Indies. One of these patents issued by Charles gave the 



' The Spaniards were prevented by the Papal Bnll of Demarcation — an 

 anticipation by Pope Alexander VI. in 1493 of our modern term " spheres of 

 influence " — from trespassing on the Portuguese sphere, which included the West 

 Coast of Africa. This, therefore, was the reason why they had to contract with 

 the Portuguese directly or indirectly for the supply of Negro slaves, 



