The document discusses the origins and justification of the Portuguese slave trade in the 15th century. It summarizes that Portuguese merchants began capturing slaves on the west coast of Africa due to the economic potential. Pope Nicolas V issued papal bulls in 1452 and 1455 that granted Portugal the right to enslave sub-Saharan Africans, arguing it would Christianize "barbarous" pagans. The Pope instructed the Portuguese king to invade, capture, and subjugate pagans and enemies of Christ and reduce them to perpetual slavery.

1. C R A F T I N G W H I T E
S U P E M A C Y
Why The Lie?

2. T U P A C S H A K U R
“Don't
believe everything you hear: Real
eyes, Realize, Real lies”
WHAT INSPIRES US:

3. With Portugal’s expansion into Western Africa in the
fifteenth century, Iberian merchants began to recognize
the economic potential of a large-scale slave trafficking
enterprise. Once Portuguese mariners began to return to
Iberia with captives acquired in West Africa and West
Central Africa.
Notably, the treatment of “black Gentiles” was
addressed in 1452 and 1455, when Pope Nicolas V issued
a series of papal bulls that granted Portugal the right to
enslave sub-Saharan Africans. Church leaders argued
that slavery served as a natural deterrent and
Christianizing influence to “barbarous” behavior among
pagans. Using this logic, the Pope issued a mandateto
the Portuguese king, Alfonso V, and instructed him:
.
Pope Nicolas V and the Portuguese Slave
Trade,https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/

4. We [therefore] weighing all and singular the premises
with due meditation,
and noting that since we had formerly by other letters of
ours granted among
other things free and ample faculty to the aforesaid King
Alfonso—to invade,
search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens
and pagans whatsoever,
and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed, and
the kingdoms, dukedoms,
principalities, dominions, possessions, and all movable
and immovable goods
whatsoever held and possessed by them and to reduce
their persons to perpetual
slavery..
Frances Gardiner. Ed. European Treaties bearing on the
History
of the United States and its
Dependencies to 1648. Carnegie Institution of Washington,
Washington, D.C.: 1917, p. 23.]