Slave Trade
Relations between both kingdoms deteriorated rapidly after 1510. The discovery of Brazil in 1500 and the need for labor to work on the Portuguese plantations in Brazil, Cape Verde and São Tomé led Portugal to look for more slaves. As the Portuguese's demand for black slaves grew, the pressure on the Kongo kings increased. With the Kongo king Afonso I complaining in 1526 to his Portuguese counterpart, John III, bitterly of the damage done to his kingdom by this trade, which was depopulating whole areas and leading to constant wars with his neighbors. At some point even members of the royal family were taken and deported as slaves to work on these plantations. It is estimated that by the end of the 18th century European traders took about 350,000 slaves from the region of the present-day Republic of Congo.
Read more about this topic: History Of The Republic Of The Congo
Famous quotes containing the words slave and/or trade:
“Give the slave the least elevation of religious sentiment, and he is not slave: you are the slave: he not only in his humility feels his superiority, feels that much deplored condition of his to be a fading trifle, but he makes you feel it too. He is the master.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We are the trade union for pensioners and children, the trade union for the disabled and the sick ... the trade union for the nation as a whole.”
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