“Por Vía de Canaria”: The Canary Islands as a Nexus for Slaving Voyages to Spanish America in the 16th Century

The Inquisition of the Canary Islands had a problem. In the 1540’s, inquisitors began raising alarms both internally and to officials in mainland Spain about the precarity of the capturing and ransoming of captives from Berberia, the northwest coast of Africa. Known as rescate, the exchange or ransom of captives was a mainstay of interfaith Mediterranean trade networks throughout the medieval and early modern periods. From the earliest European voyages to the islands, raids against the African coast were a central mechanism of accumulating wealth. However, the increased proximity of the Canary Islands to Africa radically changed the dynamics of rescate. While merchants and elite families relished both in the the human capital, which came in the form of labor from those enslaved captives whose families could not afford to ransom them, and the literal capital from those who could, officials in the Canaries became far more weary of the enterprise over the course of the sixteenth century. Fearing the increased possibility of rebellion and believed that the increased presence of non-Christian peoples, enslaved of not, formed an existential threat both to the Catholic faith and to the stability of the colony itself, they enacted regulations seeking to control the maritime movement between the Canary Islands and Africa. Analyzing notarial records relating to the organizing of raids against the northwest African coast as well as the exchange and sale of enslaved captives alongside local ordinances and Inquisition records, this paper will foreground the role that rescate held in defining the contours of slavery, captivity, and freedom in the Atlantic world. Ultimately, I will argue that the debates and discourse relating to rescate were a central mechanism by which Europeans defined the terrain of acceptable engagement with coastal African Atlantic peoples, from northwest to sub-Saharan Africa.