the first strong impetus to the traffic, and in 1517
an edict of the Spanish Government authorised
the importation of 4000 annually into Hispaniola.
When the mining fever subsided through lack of
profit or the greater attractions of El Dorado on
“ the Main,” the negroes were put to work on the
growing plantations, and were introduced into Cuba
and Jamaica. Even the good Las Casas, in his pity
for the disappearing aborigines, countenanced the
substitution of slaves from Africa, though he repented
when he realised the consequences. T he
Portuguese did not long enjoy a monopoly of trading
in human commodities. T h e roving traders of England,
France, and the Netherlands took a hand, and
kidnapping became the easiest and most profitable
method of obtaining the supply. It was then that
Sir John Hawkins attained the evil celebrity which
his naval services could not efface, as a slave-trader;
but it was not until the development of the plantation
system in the next century that the traffic assumed
large proportions, and slavery was planted
on an extensive scale in the West Indies.
Though sugar-cane had been brought by Columbus,
sugar in Europe was still a medicament bought
by the ounce from the apothecary, or at most a
costly luxury for the rich; and the culture in the
islands was of slow growth. Cotton had been used
b y the aborigines to a limited extent in simple
fabrics, and it had been introduced into Europe from
“ Calicut ” and elsewhere in the Orient; but it was
long before its cultivation became a systematic industry,
and then it was almost confined to Jamaica
and some small islands after they became English.
Tobacco made its way gradually as a marketable
commodity in Europe, and finally coffee was introduced
as adapted to the soil and climate of the new
Indies.
I t was not until after the English had colonised
Barbados that the development of the sugar plantation
b e g an ; it received a tremendous impulse after
the taking of Jamaica, and it soon began to divide
the field with tobacco in Cuba. T h e great price of
sugar in Europe and the cheapness of its production
in the Indies made the cultivation of the cane and
the extraction of its saccharine contents an extremely
profitable business, but the labour of the negro was
considered necessary to carry it on, and no one
thought of using it otherwise than as slave labour.
Plantations multiplied not only on the English
islands and in Cuba and Hispaniola, but on the
French islands and to a less extent those occupied
b y the Du tch ; and an enormous impulse was given
to the slave trade. Sugar was the great industry
from Barbados to Santa Cruz and in Jamaica and
Cuba, varied with coffee in Martinique, cotton in
Jamaica, and tobacco in Cuba as the great staples;
and Europeans who invested their money in large
plantations and bought many slaves acquired vast
fortunes in a few years and lived like nabobs.
Bryan Edwards, the historian of the British colonies
in the West Indies, declares that from 1680 to
1786 not less than 2,130,000 blacks were imported
from Africa, of whom 6x0,000 were landed in Jamaica
; and the traffic began long before that period