Excerpt from An Account of the Slave Trade
on the Coast of Africa

Published in An Account of the Slave Trade
on the Coast of Africa, 1788

Many scholars date the true beginnings of the Renaissance, a period of renewed interest in learning that heralded the beginnings of the modern age in Europe, from about 1450. Around that time, a number of important changes occurred, among them the launching of numerous voyages of discovery by Portuguese and Spanish ships.

After Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) accidentally discovered the Americas, or the New World, in 1492, Spaniards began colonizing parts of it—that is, they made certain regions into Spanish territories. Among these regions were the islands of the Caribbean, which came to be known as the West Indies because Columbus mistakenly believed he had reached India. The Portuguese, however, had started their explorations a...