Early British Slave Trade

Britain and the Slave Trade
Exploration and Interest in the “New World”
Britain’s involvement in the slave trade began with sailors and merchantmen’s increasing interest in the financial temptations of West Africa and other destinations such as the Americas or the New World and also the thrall of adventure and exploration. In the fifteenth century England became more enthusiastic about improving its international trade with others nations, headed by sailors and Merchantmen, still very much small in scale, efforts were made to open up North American trade routes but at this stage, the safer already mapped out trade routes of South America (made by the Spanish and Portuguese), these voyages were popularly set from Bristol, partly due to John Cabot’s (a venetian) interest in the Atlantic, therefore fifteenth century trade was focused on South America and the Caribbean.
Britain became interesting in Africa as a trade destination due to Spanish and Portuguese success in directly trading with West Africa already, also a West African voyage was much safer due to the shipping routes already having been pioneered as previously mentioned as and faster than travels to the Americas. In 1562, John Hawkins made the first English slave trading voyage, he was familiar with the Canaries where Negros already worked the land, he took three vessels on the voyage, first to Tenerife and then onto Sierra Leone, accordingly through this voyage he acquired 3000 slaves and he sailed onto Hispaniola where he sold all those slaves with apparently prosperous result and success.
The Spanish Colonial Empire depended on the trade of vast riches from the huge resources of Central and Lower America, the Caribbean trade was a much more attractive target for England because of this. Privateering profits were huge when preying on venerable Spanish settlements and the lucrative trading fleets, this pirating in the years 1508-1603 resulted in approximately 235 privateers operating around the...