Valencia and Seville were the main centres where the indigenous people of the Canary Islands, who had been captured during the Conquest of the islands by the Crown of Castile between the 15th and 16th centuries, were sold into slavery.
This is the conclusion of a study carried out by Rocío Jiménez Díaz, a researcher at the University of Teramo (Italy), as part of a joint supervision programme run by the two public universities in the Canary Islands. The study reveals how the dynamics of the enslavement of the indigenous peoples of the Atlantic islands set a precedent for what was to come with the then-emerging conquest of the Americas.
According to a press release from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC), Jiménez has reconstructed the dynamics of the enslavement of the islands‘ indigenous peoples and how they were drawn into the Atlantic trade networks that were taking shape at that time, as a precursor to the slave trade that brought millions of African slaves to the Americas in the centuries that followed.
Indigenous peoples of the Canary Islands: Young men and women were caught up in the trade
Most of the people who were taken as slaves from the Canary Islands were transported to Valencia, where they were valued less highly than in Seville, given Valencia’s role as a redistribution centre in the Mediterranean context, as opposed to Seville’s dependence on other primary ports.
The author points out that these people were used as a financial resource to settle debts and generate profits.
The predominant age group was between 14 and 25 years old, although there are documented cases of enslaved people under the age of 13 in Valencia and over the age of 35 in Seville. Both men and women were traded in these markets.
Study shines a spotlight on enslaved Amazigh people from the Canary Islands
Jiménez Díaz points out that «enslaved Amazigh-Canarian people have always been the subject of a subsidiary study within monographs or broader studies on slavery in Europe».
For this reason, her work seeks to deepen our understanding of the dynamics of slavery originating in the Canary Islands, with a view to gathering more information about the lives of these people: who they were, where they came from, how they arrived in this city, how they fitted into the diverse group of enslaved people, how they were valued, and what processes are reflected in the historical records.
Similarly, the researcher believes it is necessary to review the historiographical language that has traditionally been used: she prefers to avoid the word ’slave‘, because «it objectifies the person», and to use ‚enslaved person‘ instead, as she considers that «it shifts the focus onto the enslaver».
In his view, «avoiding dehumanising perspectives» and «rejecting colonial discourse enables us to place these people back at the centre of their own experiences, and of the geographical dispersal to which they were forced».
Enslaved Canarians lost their names, language and identity
Another aspect highlighted in the study concerns the depersonalisation suffered by enslaved people, which entailed the loss of their cultural and linguistic identity.
Thus, for example, baptism replaced their indigenous names with Christian names, which made it difficult to trace them through official records.
Living away from their place of origin also encouraged the adoption of European languages and customs, and the gradual erosion of their original identity, this research adds.
«Study reveals Canarians were sold as slaves in Valencia and Seville»
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