Slavery Routes: For All the Gold in the World

To expand their wealth, the Portuguese set up the slave trade, in which Africa was the centre.

At the end of the Middle Ages, Europe opened up to the world and discovered that it was at the margins of the world's main area for wealth generation: Africa.

Portuguese explorers were the first to set out to conquer Africa's gold. When explorers reached the coast of West Africa, they saw its people as a supply of labour and the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade was established.

Economic ambition coupled with a religiously driven effort to expand Christendom Pope, Nicholas V morally endorsed the Portuguese enterprise and a legal framework for the enslavement of Africa.