Chapter Three. Sending People: Labor Migration And Forced Labor

Abstract

The social and ethnic groups present in the Dutch and Portuguese societies in Western Africa in a comparative perspective, played by each social group in the economic growth of the posts and settlements and in the building of the Dutch and the Portuguese Atlantic empires. The members of the local elites also managed to dominate the municipal governments, the religious confraternities, and the cathedrals of the main urban centres. Moreover, due to the high mortality rate among royal officers, the members of these local elites often occupied the vacant civilian, military, and Church posts as interims. The number of enslaved people employed by the Dutch and the Portuguese differed, as did the type of activities in which they engaged. Therefore, enslaved Africans played a distinctive role in the local societies and economies of the posts and settlements, as well as in the Dutch and the Portuguese Atlantic economies in general. Keywords:Atlantic empires; Dutch; enslaved Africans; Portuguese societies; Western Africa