1492: Upon his first voyage to the Caribbean, Christopher Columbus initiated the early practice of Amerindian enslavement by shipping approximately 500 indig…

1492: Upon his first voyage to the Caribbean, Christopher Columbus initiated the early practice of Amerindian enslavement by shipping approximately 500 indigenous people back to Spain. This act was part of a larger commercial network involving Italian traders and bankers in Atlantic ports who were already deeply engaged with sugar plantations. The arrival of Europeans introduced “virgin soil epidemics” such as smallpox and influenza to which the indigenous populations had no immunity. These pandemics, combined with Spanish cruelty and the destruction of local food bases, decimated millions of Caribbean Indians, leading to a critical labor shortage.