OTHER NATIONS ENTER THE SLAVE TRADE Portugal’s hold on the slave trade began to weaken in the 17th century, as the Netherlands entered the fray After 1630, the Dutch imported into northern Brazil slaves they wrested from Portugal Taking Curaỗao in 1634, the Dutch used it to funnel slaves to their colonies and to those of Portugal, Spain, Britain, and France In 1637, the Netherlands captured the Portuguese fortress at Elmina, making it the point of origin of the Dutch slave trade After 1667, the Netherlands imported slaves into Surinam In total the Netherlands brought 39,900 slaves to the New World between 1601 and 1650 with the number rising to 76,400 between 1726 and 1770 Thereafter the Netherlands’s share of the slave trade decreased rapidly Britain also contested Portuguese dominance The spread of tobacco in Virginia after 1617 opened British North America to the slave trade In 1619, the Dutch landed 20 slaves, the first shipment of its kind, in Jamestown During much of the 17th century, the slave trade in the thirteen colonies was more trickle than deluge In 1640, Virginia had only 150 slaves and in 1670, fewer than 1,000 In contrast to Latin America and the Caribbean, slaves in the thirteen colonies increased their numbers through reproduction, diminishing the need to import slaves The slave trade in British North America was strongest after the decline of indentured servitude around 1670 and the rise of rice plantations along the Carolina coast about 1700 The thirteen colonies, according to one estimate, imported between 1619 and 1750, roughly 201,500 slaves, an average of 1,550 per year By comparison the French imported 1,690 slaves per year on average into the island of Martinique between 1664 and 1735 and the Spanish 3,880 per year on average into its colonies between 1640 and 1750 Following the pattern of British North America, the colonization of the Caribbean opened it to the slave trade Settling Barbados in 1624, Britain imported the first slaves in 1627 Thereafter the slave trade grew with the spread of sugar cultivation as the trade had in the thirteen colonies with the tobacco boom Barbadian imports increased from 6,500 slaves between 1640 and 1644 (an average of 1,300 per year) to 36,400 between 1698 and 1707 (an average of 3,640 per year) In Jamaica sugar and the slave trade took hold in the middle of the 17th century Between 1651 and 1675, planters imported 8,000 slaves, an average of roughly 330 per year, roughly one-sixth the number imported into Barbados By the turn of the century, however, Jamaica had eclipsed slave trade, Africa and the 365 Barbados, importing between 1676 and 1700 77,100 slaves, an average of roughly 3,210 per year Extrapolating the number of imports from the Royal African Company, a slave trading firm granted a monopoly by King Charles II, to all traders throughout Jamaica, planters imported into the island roughly 7,800 slaves between 1708 and 1711, an average of 2,600 per year Between 1655 and 1674, Barbados supplied Jamaica with one-third of its slaves though the proportion fell by the turn of the 18th century to percent By then most imports came from Africa though the voyage to Jamaica was 1,000 miles farther west than Barbados The Leeward Islands were the last of Britain’s Caribbean holdings to enter the slave trade By 1670, island planters had imported only 7,000 slaves The numbers grew to 44,800 between 1672 and 1706, an average of 1,280 per year, with another 43,100 between 1707 and 1733, an average of 1,600 per year In total the British imported 250,000 slaves into the Caribbean by 1700, and throughout the Americas, traders of all nations bought and sold 266,100 slaves between 1519 and 1600 This represents an average of 3,300 per year, with the number rising to roughly 1.3 million between 1726 and 1750, an astonishing average of 52,000 per year In all the New World absorbed more than 1.5 million slaves between 1519 and 1750 See also epidemics in the Americas; sugarcane plantations in the Americas; tobacco in colonial British America Further reading: Curtin, Philip D The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969; Drescher, Seymour From Slavery to Freedom: Comparative Studies in the Rise and Fall of Atlantic Slavery New York: New York University Press, 1999; Dunn, Richard S Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713 Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972; Eltis, David, Stephen D Behrendt, David Richardson, and Herbert S Klein, eds The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD ROM Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999; Eltis, David, and David Richards, eds Routes to Slavery: Direction, Ethnicity and Mortality in the Atlantic Slave Trade London: Frank Cass, 1997; Inikori, Joseph E., and Stanley L Engerman, eds The Atlantic Slave Trade: Effects on Economies, Societies, and Peoples in Africa, the Americas, and Europe Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992; Klein, Herbert S The Atlantic Slave Trade Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999; Manning, Patrick, ed Slave Trades, 1500–1800: Globalization of Forced Labor London: Ashgate Publishing, 1996; Palmer, Collin A The First Passage: Blacks in the Americas, 1502–1617 Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995; Postma,