29 March 1503
ResistanceBook sources
Spanish Crown acknowledges escapes from slavery on Hispaniola
Hispaniola; royal reply issued at Zaragoza, Spain
A royal reply to governor Nicolás de Ovando acknowledged his report that enslaved Black people on Hispaniola had escaped. The Crown agreed to his request that more enslaved Black people not be sent to the island, showing that resistance was already disrupting colonial plans for forced labor.
Dates preserve the source’s precision. This entry is part of a selected historical record; its qualifications and sources are retained below.
Context / qualification
The date belongs to the royal reply, not to the escapes or the first arrival of Africans. The document gives no names, number of escapees or exact escape dates. Its agreement to restrict shipments was not emancipation or a lasting end to the slave trade.
Sources
- Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, chapter 2; supplied print pages, edition/year unidentified
- CUNY Dominican Studies Institute, manuscript 007: royal reply, 29 March 1503; AGI INDIFERENTE 418, L.1, ff. 101r and 102v, scan and Spanish transcription, PDF pp. 3–4 ↗
- CUNY First Blacks in the Americas, Ladinos and bozales: early arrivals and subsequent slave imports ↗