Page 133 - Transcriptions d'actes notariés - Tome 20 - 1682-1686

this fiiruggle gained new in~ensi~y, remained the Catholic and pro-
Cathulie charaeter oi the Stuart Royal Family, who had much to do with
the formation of England's first important slave-trading Company.
France, ioo, sent hcr ships on slaving expeditions to the Guinea
Coast, and what European power until ~he French Revolution gloried
more in her rule as a deiender and propagator of Catholic Christianity ?
The reader of this part of European history may well ask what
provided the roiionnle which allowed these avowedIy Christian countries
to revive a syetem of Iorced labor which had largely vanished from the
European scene by the twelfth eentury, and which chose for jts victime
the hrown races of North and South Ameriea, but more usnall y, the black
races of Africa.

There is no ready answer. Yet, an inveatjgatjon of this historical
problem is rich in excitement. Since previous eenturies lacked the
blessings of Dr, Gallup and hi9 researchera, to find opinions expressed
in the era from 16U to 1750 about Negro slavery is no easy task. This
face, in itself, would aeem to indicate a general acquiescenee on the part
of the Europeans eoneerned which accepted Negro slavery as a normal
and necessary method of ewploi ting uverseas plantations and of provid-
ing some domestic comfort ai home.
In an effort to look even darkly intu the mentality of this late seven-
teenth and early eighteenth century period, we rnay study some reactions
and opinions ewpressed by eeveral respunsible and observant people of the
time : a wandering, iutelligent and immensely huinan French Doininican
friar; au intelligent and scholarly Dutch official of the Dutch West India
Company located for fourtecn years un the Guinea Coast") ; an apostolic
and tearless Presbyterian Divine, who had defied Cromwell; a famous
Anglican bishop, as well as the judgement passed on slavery in Catholic
empires by a noled English scholar, and in Brazil, by a noted Brazilian
writer.

Most Canadians are ignorani of the faet that Indian and Negro
slavery was a characteristie of colonial lije in Canada boih under the
flag of Bourbon France and the flag of Hanoverian Britain. Any denial
whieh a modern Cansdian might be tempted to make would Le utterlu
invaiidated by the late Justiee William Renwick Riddell's classic w ork on
slavery in Canada, contained in eight inasierly chapters of the July,
1920 issue of the Journal oJ h'egro H&ory. Although it would ewm tliat
the difficult individualistic sort of farming peculiar tri early Canada, and
the very limited scope of its commcree prevented any wideepread use
of the slavery system, yet lndian and Kegro slaves did exiet certainly
unLi1 the early nineleenth century, and perhaps men an unknown iew

(1) In 1621, lie Dutch N'est India Company --as formed wiili a charter which
designaterl iis terriiov 01 operaiions af ihe West Indies, New Amrttrdam
and ~hc West Coasi of Africa.