ABSTRACT
Acute labour shortages prevailed in almost all colonies that Europeans established in the New World. Given the high costs of transportation across the Atlantic and the reluctance of ordinary Europeans to risk their lives in strange lands, free migrants could not develop outposts and produce enough profits to sustain colonial enterprises. Europeans tried to remedy the shortfall by appropriating the labour of Native Americans outright, or by recruiting and shipping European indentured and convict servants. Portuguese trade and colonization in Africa opened up possibilities for exploiting a new source of labour: enslaved Africans. These labourers were captured from rival European ships or colonies, or purchased as commodities in Africa in a form of commerce in people unregulated by European law or precedent. They were subsequently treated as commodities, without recourse to the residual rights that European migrants were accorded, or to the occasional protections European intruders extended to native inhabitants.
