Zurara Chronicles the First Slave Auction at Lagos
Six caravels return with 235 captive Africans, and a royal chronicler records the sale in the same breath he uses to defend it
Quick facts
- Date
- August 8, 1444
- Location
- Lagos, Portugal
- Number sold
- 235 captives, per Zurara
- Chronicler
- Gomes Eanes de Zurara
What happened
On August 8, 1444, six caravels commanded by the merchant Lancarote de Freitas returned to the Portuguese port of Lagos carrying 235 captive Africans seized in raids along the Mauritanian coast. The royal chronicler Gomes Eanes de Zurara, writing within a decade of the event, described what followed on the beach: officials arrived to divide the captives into shares for the crown, the backers of the voyage, and Prince Henry, tearing apart families in the process. Zurara wrote that the officials had to "part fathers from sons, husbands from wives, brothers from brothers," and that mothers threw themselves over their children rather than be separated from them. Zurara, who supported the trade and framed it as bringing captives to Christian salvation, still could not write the scene without recording the grief of the people being divided.
Why it matters
This is the first slave auction in Europe for which a detailed eyewitness account survives, and it set a pattern of family separation at the point of sale that would recur at every slave market on both sides of the Atlantic for the next four centuries. Zurara's chronicle, written to celebrate Portuguese expansion, became instead one of the earliest primary documents historians use to study how the trade actually operated on the ground.
How we know
Zurara's Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea, written around 1453 and preserved in Portuguese archives, is the primary source for this event; a translated excerpt is hosted by Miami University's Empire studies program. Zurara was present in Lagos and states in the text that he personally saw the descendants of the captives living as Christians in the town years later.
Sources
- Gomes Eanes de Zurara (trans., hosted by Miami University Empire studies program). The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea · Primary source (author-declared)sites.miamioh.edu · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match).
- Lowcountry Digital History Initiative, College of Charleston. Launching the Portuguese Slave Trade in Africa · Reputable sourceldhi.library.cofc.edu · The domain "ldhi.library.cofc.edu" is on our Reputable source registry.
See something wrong? . Corrections with a source get fixed fastest.
Part of a timelineThe Atlantic Slave Trade29 events · Four centuries in which European traders forced an estimated 12.5 million Africans onto ships bound for the Americas, and the enslaved people, revolts, and abolitionists who fought it from the first crossing to the lastView all →