Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

by Jonathan Kennedy

With the Reconquista coming to an end, access to the Black Sea slave markets blocked by the Ottomans, and all the islands except the Canaries uninhabited, they found a variety of alternative sources of forced labor.[15] This included Berbers from northwest Africa and conversos—Iberian Jews and Muslims who had converted to Christianity yet were treated with deep suspicion. But as Spanish and Portuguese merchants developed closer links with West Africa, it became the most reliable source of slaves. In fact, Black Africans were increasingly being transported back to Europe too: by the mid-sixteenth century they constituted over 7 percent of Seville’s population and 10 percent of Lisbon’s.