ABSTRACT
The place of Portugal and Spain in the slave trade was in many ways shaped by the two Iberian powers’ colonisation projects in the Americas and Africa. To begin with, Spain never had any significant foothold in Africa, a sharp contrast with Portugal, a country whose history of maritime expansion had since the fifteenth century been deeply intertwined with the African continent. In addition to positioning Portugal as a key force in shaping the history of the slave trade, this dynamic also led to a set of complex relationships between the two Iberian powers and their colonies during the era of the slave trade from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries.
