1562-1571: Sir John Hawkins led a series of English slaving ventures to the Sierra Leone region in a bold attempt to challenge the established Iberian monopo…

1562-1571: Sir John Hawkins led a series of English slaving ventures to the Sierra Leone region in a bold attempt to challenge the established Iberian monopoly on the transatlantic traffic. He aimed to sell African captives to Spanish colonists on the Caribbean mainland in exchange for precious metals, despite formal Spanish prohibitions on such trade. While his presence was initially met with resistance from Spanish authorities, his voyages signaled a growing northern European interest in both colonization and slave trafficking. Undertaken with the tacit approval of the English Crown, Hawkins’s activities highlighted the early and vital alliance between private enterprise and state power in promoting racial slavery.