The most pressing and constant challenge for the crown in this era, in fact, was how to maintain control of a business that generated such lucrative revenue streams. Toward this end, Lisbon introduced increasingly restrictive statutes and codes aimed at regulating business on the African mainland. Soon, travel to the continent without authorization was made a capital offense, according to a law that read, “no person, irrespective of rank or station, should throw himself with the Negroes, on pain of death.”
