Slavery had existed in Europe from Classical times and did not disappear with the collapse of the Roman Empire. Precisely in 1492 Pedro Cabral of Portugal discovers Brazil, landing at Porto Seguro, southern Bahia that everything changed. Then in 1502, Juan de Córdoba of Seville becomes the first merchant we can identify to send an African slave to the New World. Córdoba, like other merchants, is permitted by the Spanish authorities to send only one slave. Others send two or three. <u>The Middle Passage </u>was the stage of the triangular trade in which millions of Africans were forcibly transported to the New World as part of the Atlantic slave trade. Ships departed Europe for African markets with manufactured goods, which were traded for purchased or kidnapped Africans, who were transported across the Atlantic as slaves; the slaves were then sold or traded for raw materials, which would be transported back to Europe to complete the voyage. Slaves' treatment was horrific because the captured African men and women were considered less than human; they were "cargo", or "goods", and treated as such; they were transported for marketing. Slaves resisted in many ways. The two most common types of resistance were refusal to eat and suicide. Aboard ships, the captives were not always willing to follow orders. Sometimes they reacted in violence.
