From the Canary Islands to the Caribbean: Mid-Voyage Perspectives on Spain’s Late 16th- and Early 17th-Century Slave Trade

Records for most known slaving voyages during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries – during a time when Portugal and Spain were united under one monarch and a monopoly contract for transporting enslaved Africans to Spanish America was being established – generally relate to either pre-departure voyage registrations or arrivals with captives in an American port. However, notarial records from the Canary Islands, a common preliminary stop and occasional departure point for transatlantic slaving voyages, can enrich our understanding of how these voyages unfolded as their crews took on supplies, changed composition, and found new commercial opportunities there. Documents such as deeds of sale of captives, contracts among crewmembers, and commercial agreements with local merchants and investors provide an alternate perspective to those meant for the eyes of royal officials, and in some cases even acknowledged false claims in official paperwork. In this presentation, I will examine the traces that slaving voyages, and other vessels carrying enslaved individuals, left as they passed through the islands of Tenerife, Gran Canaria, and La Palma en route to Cuba, Española, or Puerto Rico. In contrast to many crown records, the documents local notaries recorded offer a sense of human relationships involving free and enslaved people aboard slaving vessels prior to loading the majority of the captives they would carry in a Portuguese-controlled region of Africa such as Cabo Verde or Angola. By contextualizing these brief glimpses of the individuals aboard slaving vessels – willingly or not – within the more detailed itineraries captured in judicial investigations during this time, I can illustrate the kinds of personal connections that linked residents of the Canaries with relatives and business associates throughout the Spanish Caribbean, and outline the experiences of captives being transferred from one kind of slaving regime to another across the Atlantic.