US History

By 1500, Ferdinand and Isabella would begin to attack the trade in Amerindian slaves, thereby establishing an essential distinction between the two groups of “others” who resided on the bottom of the colonial Spanish scale of humanity.

From the Canaries, the Spanish followed the Portuguese to Africa, where they would become eager, if ill-fated, participants in the fifteenth-century rush for gold and slaves. At the same time, Iberian notions linking black skin and perpetual servitude began to crystallize.