The Portuguese were the first Europeans to bring enslaved Africans to the Americas.

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BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

Statement to evaluate: The Portuguese were the first Europeans to bring enslaved Africans to the Americas.

Option 1: True. This would claim that no other European group carried enslaved Africans to the American continents before the Portuguese. In historical records, however, this is not accurate because other European powers, notably the Spanish, had already begun transporting enslaved Africans to the Caribbean and mainland colonies in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, before the Portuguese significantly expanded their Atlantic slave trade.

Option 2: False. The presence of enslaved Africans in the Caribbean and parts of the Americas predates the large-scale Portuguese slave trade to Brazil. The Spanish had begun to bring enslaved Africans to places like Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic) in the early 1500s, with some sources indicating such labor was present by 1501–1502. This demonstrates that Africans were enslaved and transported to the Americas prior to or concurrent with (and in many cases before) the major Portuguese settlements in Brazil.

Rationale for why the statement is incorrect: The claim assigns primacy to the Portuguese without accounting for earlier African labor in Spanish territories in the Caribbean, where enslaved Africans were used in mining and plantation systems before Brazil became a major slave-holding colony. Recognizing these earlier deployments is essential to understanding the timeline of the transatlantic slave trade.

Rationale for why this is not True: It misstates the historical sequence by implying exclusivity or primacy of the Portuguese without acknowledging documented Spanish involvement earlier in the Americas. Since enslaved Africans were present in the Americas due to multiple European actors at different times, the blanket claim about the Portuguese being the first is inaccurate.

ETHN150 #59537 Online (7/14/25 - 8/10/25) 🪡 Quiz#2 (Group 2)

The Portuguese were the first Europeans to bring enslaved Africans to the Americas.

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