‘The Kingdom of Angola is not Very Far from Here’: The South Atlantic Slave Port of Buenos Aires, 1585–1640

Abstract

This article draws upon sources from Spain's Archive of the Indies and elsewhere to survey the early seventeenth-century slave trade to Buenos Aires, exploring the diversity of ways in which slaves were transported to Buenos Aires, strategies of contraband traders, and the city's rich economic and social links to port cities in Brazil and Angola. Taken together, these diverse sources reveal how Buenos Aires was a key port of the South Atlantic. This article also suggests some revisions of the major characteristics of the early slave trade to Spanish and Portuguese America – notably, the significant presence of children among the enslaved.