Slavery was a major economic and social institution in Europe during the classical era and a great deal is known about the ancient Greeks and Romans in relation to the topic.
Rome added Portugal to its empire (2nd century BC), the latter a province of Lusitania at the time, and the name of the future kingdom was derived from "Portucale", a Roman and post-Roman settlement situated at the mouth of the Douro River.
The Visigoths and the Suebi (Germanic tribes), of the 5th century AD, seized control of the Iberian Peninsula as the Roman Empire fell.
After the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in the 8th century, in which Moors from North Africa crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and defeated the Visigothic rulers of Iberia, the territory of both modern-day Portugal and Spain fell under Islamic control.
The pattern of slavery and serfdom in the Iberian Peninsula differs from the rest of Western Europe due to the Islamic conquest.
In comparison to the north, classical-style slavery continued for a longer period of time in southern Europe, and trade between Christian Europe, across the Mediterranean, with Islamic North Africa meant that Slavic and Christian Iberian enslaved people appeared in Italy, Spain, Southern France, and Portugal; in the 8th century, the Islamic conquest in Portugal and Spain changed this pattern.
Periodic Arab and Moorish raiding expeditions were sent from Islamic Iberia to ravage the remaining Christian Iberian kingdoms, bringing back stolen goods and slaves.
[citation needed] In addition, the Christian Iberians who lived within Arab and Moorish-ruled territories were subject to specific laws and taxes for state protection.
[14] The first Portuguese raids (around 1336) in search of slaves and loot took place in the Canary Islands, inhabited by a pagan people of Berber origin, the Guanches, who resisted bravely.
[8] The first expeditions of Sub-Saharan Africa were sent out by Prince Infante D. Henrique, known commonly today as Henry the Navigator, with the intent to probe how far the kingdoms of the Moors and their power reached.
[16] The royal chronicler Gomes Eanes de Zurara was never decided on the "Moorishness" of the slaves brought back from Africa, due to a seeming lack of contact with Islam.
In 1455, Pope Nicholas V gave Portugal the rights to continue the slave trade in West Africa, under the provision that they convert all people who are enslaved.
[19] The high demand for slaves was due to a shortage of laborers in Portuguese colonies such as Brazil, Cape Verde, Angola and Mozambique.
[20] Because of Portugal's small population, Portuguese colonization of the new world was only possible with a large number of slaves they had acquired to be shipped overseas.
Slavery did little to alter society in Portugal, due to the slight ease of enslaved people's integration, those who did not assimilate were treated similarly to the poor with most being shipped to Brazil to work in the sugar cane plantation.
King Sebastian feared that it was having a negative effect on Catholic proselytization since the slave trade in Japanese was growing to large proportions, so he commanded that it be banned in 1571.
[56] A testament from 23 October 1562 recorded a Chinese man named António who was enslaved and owned by a Portuguese woman, Dona Maria de Vilhena, a wealthy noblewoman in Évora.
[73] When she died, D. Maria freed twelve of her slaves including this Chinese man in her testament, leaving them with sums from 20,000 to 10,000 réis in money.
[81][47] Diego recalled that he was taken as a slave by Francisco de Casteñeda from Mexico, to Nicaragua, then to Lima in Peru, then to Panama, and eventually to Spain via Lisbon, while he was still a boy.
Military, religious, and civil service secretarial work and other lenient and light jobs were given to Chinese slaves while hard labor was given to Africans.
[91][92] Cooking was the main profession of Chinese slaves around 1580 in Lisbon, according to Fillippo Sassetti from Florence and the Portuguese viewed them as diligent, smart, and "loyal".
[104][105] A Portuguese woman, Dona Ana de Ataíde owned an Indian man named António as a slave in Évora.
[108] A large number of slaves were forcibly brought there since the commercial, artisanal, and service sectors all flourished in a regional capital like Évora.
Manuel Gomes previously owned a slave who escaped in 1558 at age 18 and he was said to be from the "land of Prester John of the Indias" named Diogo.
[111] A capelão do rei, father João Pinto left an Indian man in Porto, where he was picked up in 1546 by the Évora-based Santa Marta convent's nuns to serve as their slave.
Early attempts at establishing such bases, such as those in Ningbo and Quanzhou, were however destroyed by the Chinese, following violent raids by the settlers to neighboring ports, which included pillaging and plunder and sometimes enslavement.
The majority of the defenders were Africans slaves, with only a few dozen Portuguese soldiers and priests in support, and they accounted for most of the victims in the battle.
[144][145][146] In 1814, the Jiaqing Emperor added a clause to the section of the fundamental laws of China titled "Wizards, Witches, and all Superstitions, prohibited", later modified in 1821 and published in 1826 by the Daoguang Emperor, which sentenced Europeans, namely Portuguese Christians who would not repent their conversion, to be sent to Muslim cities in Xinjiang as slaves to Muslim leaders.
Among them was Gaspar da Cruz, a Dominican friar who dismissed any arguments by the slave traffickers that they had "legally" purchased already-enslaved children, among the earliest condemnations of slavery in Europe during this period.
[155][156] Portugal outlawed the Atlantic slave trade altogether in 1836, as a result of Brazilian independence and British diplomatic pressure.