África - History Lab

Portulan chart of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic coasts of Europe and Africa

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:30:33 +0000

The representation of the portulan chart covers the Mediterranean and the European Atlantic from Iceland and the southern coast of Scandinavia to Gambia and Cape Rouge in Africa. It includes enough ocean space to depict the Azores, Madeira, the Canary Islands and Cape Verde. There is no section of the South American coastline. There are two longitude scales over the Atlantic, in red and blue; next to the southernmost one, the authorship and date are mentioned, stating: ‘[Rubric] Joan Vespuchi, pilot of his Highness, me fecit en Sevilla, anno de 1520 [Rubric]’. Coats of arms appear over England, Scotland and Ireland. There are symbols of major cities on seven identical monuments, red over Tunis, Milan and Belgrade (possible sources of threat) and green over Jerusalem, Venice, Genoa, Seville and over Morocco. Flags over Turkey, Crimea, France and the islands of Madeira and the Canaries. The chart, whose author is Juan, or Giovanni, Vespucci, was drawn according to the Mediterranean chart kept at the Casa de la Contratación. It introduces the theme of navigation to the west across the Atlantic by means of the double graduation system, embodied in the use of two longitude scales. The coastal outlines are very similar to Gabriel de Valseca’s chart of 1439. The coastline is drawn in sepia and green, the place names in sepia and red, and the islands in red, blue and gold.

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Plan and section of slave ship

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:30:14 +0000

During the Modern Age, the slave trade was commonplace. The Spanish were the first Europeans to use African slaves in the New World on islands such as Cuba, Puerto Rico and Hispaniola. The first African slaves would arrive on Hispaniola in 1501. Likewise, the increased Portuguese presence in the Americas also created a strong demand for slave labour in Brazil, mainly for harvesting and mining, and so slave labour economies quickly expanded to the Caribbean and the southern part of what is now the United States, where Dutch traders brought the first African slaves in 1619. As European nations grew more powerful, especially Portugal, Spain, France, Britain and Holland, they began to fight for control of the African slave trade, although soon the British Crown’s naval control of the Atlantic forced other major countries to abandon their ventures. Thus, the Royal African Company held a monopoly over the African slave trade routes until 1712. The Atlantic slave trade reached its peak towards the end of the 18th century, when more slaves were captured in expeditions in the West African interior. These expeditions were usually conducted by African kingdoms against weaker local tribes, so Europeans rarely penetrated the African interior for fear of tropical diseases or African resistance.

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Annual series of immigration entries of African slaves in Matanzas, 1755-1810

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:29:48 +0000

At the end of the seventeenth century, the island of Cuba underwent a series of institutional transformations that resulted in a reformulation of the colonial pact between the local elites and the crown. This series of changes affected the structure of property ownership, agricultural production and the growth and composition of the population, making the island the world’s leading colonial sugar producer. Until the 17th century, the weight of the sugar economy in the province was minimal. The jurisdiction had five mills in 1778 and eight in 1792, producing 1.5% of the island’s total sugar. The migration calculation, through the registration data, shows a very low immigration of slaves. The reasons for this are that the expansion of the agricultural frontier was from Havana towards Matanzas, which means that, if there was immigration, it should have been in this direction, and that the mobility of the slave depended on his owner, so it is expected that the slave population remained in Matanzas with their masters at the time of the sugar expansion. The flow of slave imports in the second half of the 18th century increased tenfold and was marked by strong oscillations. The largest inflows corresponded to an international context of internal transformations that made it possible to increase the black labour force through the slave trade in three periods. In the first period (1775-1785), slave imports seemed to be more sporadic and dependent on external events, such as the British invasion of 1762 and the American War of Independence. During the second period (1785-1795), there was a change in the trend towards a regular increase in forced immigration, and the effect of the French Revolution in Saint Domingue in 1791 led to a smaller influx of slaves. The growth of the curve coincided with medium-term internal transformations, such as the liberation of the slave trade (1789-1798), the application of duties favourable to production, alcabalas or tithes on sugar, coffee, indigo, cotton and the stimulation of the sugar trade, such as the increase in tariffs for free trade between Spain and the Indies. The last period, from 1795-1810, saw a stabilisation of the massive influx of slaves.

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Imperial Glory

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:28:22 +0000

Imperial Glory places the player in the mid-18th century in the lead-up to the French Revolution, providing the tools and historical keys to strengthening an empire during the early stages of the game, and then resolving it by confronting the other colonial powers in a race for expansion in the more than fifty royal enclaves in Europe and Africa. To more accurately recreate the game’s mapping, Pyro Studios has created an actual provincial map for each of the game’s territories, showing characteristic elements such as the palace of Potsdam or the barren fields of Castile.
It is essential to understand and apply real war tactics, in which height on the battlefield, the search for natural and artificial cover and the creation of specific formations against the enemy army distribution must be mastered. In addition to this, the game seeks to represent as truthfully as possible the transition between 18th and 19th century tactics, with cavalry and artillery gaining importance to the detriment of a potentially more numerous but volatile infantry. Finally, one of the most interesting game modes is that of “historical battles”, focused on military history enthusiasts and based on historical documentation to show as realistically as possible such battles as Waterloo or Arapiles.

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3D video of a slave ship

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:28:06 +0000

The European colonisers trafficked millions of slaves captured mainly in Africa in order to use them as labour for numerous activities. Thus, thousands and thousands of people were transported to various regions of the planet, as we know well in the case of the American continent. This 3D reconstruction details with great precision each compartment and operation of the 18th century slave ship called L’Aurore. This resource is available in the “Transatlantic Slave Trade Database”, which contains an immense amount of information on the development of slavery from the 16th century to the end of the 19th century. It is a project supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (United States) and is the result of the efforts of scholars from different institutions, including historians, cartographers, and slave trade specialists and researchers.

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