Question

What BEST describes why the Spanish and Portuguese decided to use African slave labor in the New World? African slave labor was cheaper and easier to obtain than American Indian slave labor. American Indian tribes were successful in defeating European attempts to enslave them. The American Indian slave population had a high mortality rate due to European diseases. The African slave population was not familiar with the New World and found it more difficult to escape than earlier American Indian slaves.

Answer 1

Step-by-step explanation:

In 1510 the Spanish government legalized the sale of slaves in its colonies. The first full cargo ship of Africans arrived in the Americas eight years later. Over the next century, more than a million enslaved Africans were brought to the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the New World. The Dutch and English also became active in the slave trade.

Spain and Portugal established sugar plantations that relied on large numbers of native laborers. In the 1600s English tobacco farmers in North America also needed workers for their plantations. With a lack of Native American workers, they, too, needed another source of labor. Plantation owners in both North and South America wanted a cheap workforce.

Some colonists, including Spanish priest Bartolomé de Las Casas, suggested using enslaved Africans as workers. Africans had already developed immunity to European diseases. The colonists soon agreed that slaves from W​est Africa​could be the solution to their labor needs.