African Laborers for a New Empire: Iberia, Slavery, and the Atlantic World

Exhibit Splash Image

About the Exhibit

This online exhibition examines the beginnings of Iberian expansion into the Americas in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when political and religious leaders in Spain, Portugal, and colonial Spanish America established arguments supporting the use of enslaved Africans—and limiting other forms of coerced labor—in ways that would greatly influence the development of slavery in the Atlantic World. Published February 2014. Updated 2016. 

Credits

Project Authors: Carl Wise, College of Charleston, and David Wheat, Michigan State University