The Dawning of the Apocalypse. Gerald Horne
and, as well, the acceleration of the Inquisition that proved to be catastrophic for the Jewish community. As early as 1501, those preparing to set sail for Hispaniola were instructed that “no Jews, Moors, reconciled heretics or recent converts from Mohammadanism [sic] … allowed.” This proved to be self-defeating, not least since it served to create an embittered class bent on revenge. Moreover, Spain deprived itself of the diaspora networks of the Jewish community that it had helped to create by periodic expulsions, in 1391, for example, paving the way for exploitation of Africa. “New Christians” or “Crypto-Jews” often comprised the very group most apt to control the capital needed to develop colonial trade.42
The foregoing notwithstanding, it is possible that Inquisitorial targets may have had an incentive to flee the Peninsula for the Americas, where the colonizers were desperately in need of forces to confront often rambunctious indigenes, creating “whiteness” by subterfuge in other words. Thus, despite the official ban on their presence, there were reports of Moors and Jews in the Caribbean as early as 1508; their exile to Africa has been noted already.43 Purportedly, there were at least six Jews accompanying Columbus in 1492, and they may have found less overt anti-Semitism upon arrival,44 not necessarily because colonialism was more enlightened than the metropole but because colonizers and settlers needed all the help they could get, including the disfavored back home. Supposedly, “New Christians”—or those who may have been Jewish originally—invested in Columbus’s initial voyage.45 On the other hand, Madrid may have placed itself at a disadvantage in the eventual competition with London by pursuing inquisitorial policies.
Given the Lisbon-London tie, England may have been the beneficiary when Portugal post-1492 allowed certain Jews to arrive—forking over a hefty fee, of course—with about 100,000 accepting this deal. However, some wound up against their will in São Tomé, where the attempt to establish slavery off the west coast of Africa, as we shall see, was thwarted by repetitive rebellions, with the crowning glory spearheaded by the heroic Amador.46 Nonetheless, this African dumping ground had the advantage for these forced exiles in that it was more conducive to being integrated into a cohesive Portuguese identity with their Christian counterparts than in the Peninsula itself. These “Christian” trespassers were more concerned about being overrun by malcontented Africans, 47 and had less fear of what befell their peers in Lisbon in 1506—bloodthirsty massacres of “New Christians.”48
It would have been understandable if this beset community decided that the anti-Semitism of London was tolerable compared to what they had endured to this point. Assuredly, it is now well known that “New Christians” of Portugal and their Sephardic relatives dispersed to Holland, England, France, and the Baltic region, playing a salient role in the colonization process that commenced in the early sixteenth century. In fact, the sugar they helped to capitalize propelled their fortunes and the new order generally.49
London was then lagging in comparison to its European peers; still, English vessels may have reached what became Newfoundland as early as the 1480s and areas to the south soon after but found that to claim the territory, boots on the ground were needed, which opened the door for expulsion of dissidents and the attracting of adventurers, all for the aim of settlement. And this in turn led to a newer identity: “whiteness.” Though the area south of what became Florida was the major site, not far from Newfoundland in what became Maine, a Portuguese freebooter—less than a decade after Columbus’s initial arrival in the hemisphere—abducted about four-dozen indigenes for trafficking purposes.50 Soon, Breton and Norman fishermen were found off the coast of Newfoundland, as the scavenger hunt was on.51 By 1521, the peripatetic Portuguese had landed at what is now Cape Breton, Canada, but as so often happened, were chased away.52
Enslavement had always been an exceedingly ugly process but seemed to reach new depths of decimation when combined with the untold wealth introduced by plundering the Americas. By January 1499, Vasco da Gama was sailing past Mogadishu on the Indian Ocean coast of Africa; it “belonged to the Moors,” meaning Muslims. And as casually as flicking dandruff from his shoulder, he observed, “As we passed before it” and “nearly upon it we fired off many bombards.” Africa was being targeted in part because it represented the path of least resistance for plunderers, as evidenced by a lucrative slave trade then emerging in Congo and the “bombards” aimed at Mozambique, south of Mogadishu.53 The fact that “degradados”—the degraded, the lumpen—were often exiled to Africa, including to da Gama’s vessel, facilitated the utilizing of degraded methods of subjugation.54 And these degraded elements with their degraded methods were essential as Cape Verde, off the coast of western Africa, became a depot for the slave trade by the early 1500s.55 By 1524, exploitative Portuguese had established a foothold in Mombasa, north of Mozambique, which was to become one of the strongest and most important fortresses along the East African coast, complementing the influence they had initiated in the fortified town of Qasr al-Saghir, Morocco, as early as 1458.56
Thus, as the Iberians were bombarding eastern and southern Africa, by 1505 corsairs from Mers-el-Kebir in North Africa were launching a series of devastating raids against the Iberian coast, leading to years of internecine conflict. There were thousands of casualties, leading to the inference that as the Iberians were losing population at home, this fed the felt need to compensate by seizing bonded labor abroad. Iberians were not solely victims either, because from about 1492 and thereafter Christian knights and inhabitants of Granada frequently banded together to launch an annual raid against the Barbary Coast.57
This Mediterranean conflict was nothing new. During the summer of 1397, North African pirates attacked the Valencian port of Torralba, burning it down and seizing the inhabitants as slaves. Arguably, the “threat” from Islam had helped to unite Castile and Aragon and, possibly, a good deal of Europe itself in a Pan-European enterprise, a predicate to “whiteness” and the transition from religion to “race,” a condition precedent for mass enslavement of Africans and dispossession of indigenes in the “New World.” In response, by 1492 Swiss and Germans joined in the final push in Granada to oust the Muslims. Not to be left behind, King Edward IV of England opportunistically dispatched a top admiral to Lisbon, then Cordoba, where the monarch garlanded this seafarer with gifts.58
Decades earlier, in 1437, the Portuguese were subjected to a punishing defeat in Algiers, leading to a virtual cessation of the supply of captives fueling Europe, a trend hastened with 1453. This also led to Castilians and Portuguese bumping up against each other in the Canary Islands, as they hunted for Guanches to enslave, although there were hardly enough to satisfy their seemingly unquenchable hunger for slaves, a hunger that was to be somewhat sated in coming decades when West Africa was targeted. In the half century preceding 1492, one estimate concludes that Portugal seized 80,000 captives from sub-Saharan Africa while ports from Sevilla to Valencia witnessed an increase in the number of enslaved sent from Lisbon, especially after 1480.59
The number of enslaved Africans brought to Iberia and the Caribbean beginning in the sixteenth century and continuing thereafter was astounding by any measure. On the Peninsula itself, including Portugal, there were perhaps 100,000 enslaved of various origins by 1600. Sugar plantations in Valencia and the Canary Islands and salt mines under Madrid’s jurisdiction relied on enslaved labor. At the same time, according to scholar Antonio Feros, Spaniards “feared Africans” yet “tended to see Africans as more useful and superior to Indians,” an awkward combination that guaranteed combustibility.60 This reliance contributed to the aforementioned role of Africans in St. Augustine, Florida, a city that was to bedevil English settlements to the north for some time to come, before the successor state in Washington finally moved to swallow this citadel and impose their rigid racialism in return in the nineteenth century.61
Hence, in nearly all the territories invaded by Spain—sadly enough—Africans and those defined as “mulatto,” often enslaved but with a modicum of the “free” also, accompanied the first arrivals and played a military role that was not insignificant. Some hailed from Angola or thereabouts,62 a nation whose martial traditions continued to flourish in the twentieth century.63
Spain continued to expand its jurisdiction, reaching to the River Plate,