John Hawkins

The Origins of the English Slave Trade

The history of the European slave trade, taking Africans from the Gold Coast and Guinea Coast and transporting them across the Atlantic to the New World, originated in the late fifteenth century when Portuguese traders started supplying plantations in their colonies in Brazil. By the mid-sixteenth century, despite delivering 2,000 slaves a year, the Portuguese were pushed to meet demand: they had more of their own Brazilian plantations, whilst they also shipped slaves to Hispaniola after the Spanish colonists there had decimated their indigenous Arawak labour force.

The first Englishman recorded to have taken slaves from Africa was John Lok, a London trader who, in 1555, brought to England five slaves from Guinea. A second London trader taking slaves at that time was William Towerson whose fleet sailed into Plymouth following his 1556 voyage to Africa and from Plymouth on his 1557 voyage.

Despite the exploits of Lok and Towerson, John Hawkins of Plymouth is widely acknowledged to be the first English slave trader. He made three slavery voyages in the 1560s, preparing the way for what became the slave trade triangle that developed between England, Africa and the New World. The triangular slave trade worked to maximise profits. English goods were traded in Africa, slaves were carried on the infamous middle passage from there across the Atlantic, and goods produced in the New World were transported back to England.

John Hawkins was born in 1532 into a prominent and wealthy Plymouth family of ship owners, seafarers and merchants. Hawkins’ father, William, had himself traded, separately, in Guinea and Brazil in 1530 and 1532. The young Hawkins, raised in the family’s house in Kinterbury Street above Sutton harbour, went to sea at an early age. During the late 1550s, Hawkins, already a Freeman of Plymouth, made several voyages to the Canaries, trading mainly textiles for sugar, although there are stories too of involvement in piracy.

By 1561 Hawkins was very aware of the profits that could be made from the slave trade. His father had seen and told of Portuguese ships loading slaves in Africa and unloading them in Brazil, whilst Hawkins' Spanish partners and contacts in the Canaries spoke about slaves being transported across the Atlantic. That year Hawkins struck an agreement with Pedro de Ponte of the powerful Canaries merchant family. De Ponte agreed to supply Hawkins with food and water, warehouses and further details about the trade, and pilots to get him to the Guinea Coast and thence to the West Indies.

Learn more about slavery and abolition and the Plymouth connection:

John Hawkins

Slave Trade Triangle

Abolition

Conclusion

Glossary

Suggested reading

Slavery and abolition web links

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