Zurara and the Emergence of Racialized Justifications for Enslavement During the Transatlantic Slave Trade

Abstract

Zurara and the Emergence of Racialized Justifications for Enslavement During the Transatlantic Slave Trade
This essay examines the evolving justifications for the 15th and 16th-century Portuguese Atlantic slave trade, focusing on how Gomes Eanes de Zurara and later authors depicted enslaved sub-Saharan Africans. It traces the transition from religious and Islamophobic rationales to a racialized discourse that emphasized bodily features as markers of inferiority. This shift in justifications was connected to a change in elite moral and ideological conceptions as well as changes in practical aspects of the slave trade, including the necessity to verify that enslavement in major hubs such as Luanda was “lawful”.