Senegambia

Senegambia, the region through which the Senegal and Gambia Rivers flow, is where Saharan and Sudanic history and culture mixed.

Senegambia became a unique meeting ground where peoples of the savanna, desert, and rain forests met and interacted. Among the peoples who lived in Senegambia were the Wolof, Tukolor, Pullo, Manding, Berber, Serer, Susu, Nalu, Diola, Baga, Beafada, Bainuk, and Tenda.

The first governments appeared in the 15th century. Power usually stemmed from control of a river. In the south the Kaabu dominated, but they were tributaries to the Mali Empire. In the north along the Senegal River, the Tekrur and Silla maintained control but were later deposed by the Wolof. Senegambian kingdoms operated according to a castelike system that reinforced political hierarchies.

As the Portuguese colonized the Cape Verde Islands in the 15th and 16th centuries, they gradually redirected trade from the interior to the coast. The new Atlantic trade, which focused on GOLD, ivory, and slaves (see SLAVE trade), had political consequences. The Kaabu were able to extricate themselves from Mali dominance and became the local dominant power. The Toli Tenegela, by contrast, emigrated and eventually created the Denyankan kingdom that challenged Wolof dominance in the north.

The arrival of Dutch, English, and French traders broke the Portuguese monopoly. The European powers

Divided the coast into spheres of influence, with trading centers such as Saint Louis, GoREE ISLAND, Fort James, Cacheu, and Bissau. Slaves soon became the leading export, coming from as far away as the mouth of the Niger River.

Further reading: G. E. Brooks, Jr., Yankee Traders, Old Coasters, and African Middlemen (Brookline, Mass.: Boston University Press, 1970);-, Kola Trade and State

Building: Upper Guinea Coast and Senegambia, 15th-17th Centuries (Brookline, Mass.: Boston University Press, 1980); Philip D. Curtin, Economic Change in Precolonial Africa: Senegambia in the Era of the Slave Trade, 2 vols., (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975); Charlotte A. Quinn, Mandingo Kingdoms of the Senegambia: Traditionalism, Islam, and European Expansion (London: Longman, 1972).

—Tom Niermann

Sepulveda, Juan Gines de (1490-1573) scholar A leading humanist of 16th-century Spain, Juan de Sepulveda argued that the Native peoples of the Western Hemisphere were inherently inferior to Europeans.

Sepulveda was a formidable figure in the intellectual life of Spain. He was a dedicated scholar who had studied Aristotle and other classical authors. Erasmus referred to him as “the Spanish Livy.” He is known to have had close contact with several CONQUiSTADORes and wealthy landowners in the Americas. More important, he had a number of powerful friends at court, which ensured that his ideas carried enormous weight with the royal government. Today Sepulveda is primarily remembered for his pivotal debate with Bartolome de Las Casas, which took place in 1550. Las Casas, a champion of indigenous rights, had bitterly attacked a number of colonial institutions, particularly the ENCOMIENDA, as being destructive not only to the Natives, but to the Spanish colonies as a whole. Moreover, he argued that they were abhorrent before God and predicted divine retribution unless they were repealed. Concerned, CHARLES V invited both Las Casas and Sepulveda to argue their cases before the court in Valladolid.

A popular misconception exists about the nature of this great debate. The two figures did not stand before the court, trading insults and flourishes of rhetoric, but rather addressed the court separately. Sepulveda spoke first, taking three hours to state his position. He argued that Natives were inherently inferior to Europeans and that the Spaniards were justified in conquering them for four reasons. First, because of their idolatry and worship of “demons,” the Natives had committed mortal sins against God and deserved punishment. Second, the “barbarous” nature of their habits and customs fit into the Aristotelian notion that some humans are born inferior

And could thus be enslaved. Third, the most effective way to convert the Natives and bring them into civilization was through conquest. Unless the Spaniards used deadly force, he argued, the natives would never willingly give up their religion. Finally, a general conquest of the area would allow the Crown to protect the weaker, less “savage” Natives from the depredations of their more violent neighbors. After an adjournment, Las Casas devoted five days to a rebuttal. There was no proclaimed “victor” to the debate, but ultimately the court sided with Las Casas. As a result, many of the laws passed after 1550 reflected a new concern for the plight of the Natives, in accordance with Las Casas’s arguments.

Sepulveda’s controversial opinions were widely read in Europe, particularly by Spain’s enemies in England, France, and the Netherlands. In these areas Sepulveda was seen as proof that the Spaniards were cruel, vicious, and warlike. These ideas formed one of the cornerstones of the BLACK LEGEND of Spanish cruelty in the Americas.

Further reading: Lewis Hanke, The Spanish Search for Justice in the Conquest of America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1949); Benjamin Keen, The Aztec Image in Western Thought (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1971); Bartolome de Las Casas, The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992).

—Scott Chamberlain

Sequeira, Diogo Lopes de (Diego Lopez de Sequeira) (1465-1520) Portuguese explorer Diogo Lopes de Sequeira was a Portuguese commander who led voyages to India and the SpiCE Islands, helping his country lay a claim to what was in the early 16th century one of the most lucrative locales in the world.

De Sequeira did not leave extensive documentation about his own life. Surviving documents reveal that he left Portugal in 1504 on a journey bound for Africa, and that among those on board was Ferdinand Magellan. He commanded a vessel in Francisco de Almeida’s assault on Muslim traders in the Indian Ocean, allowing the Portuguese to establish themselves at Mozambique in 1507. In 1509 de Sequeira led an expedition toward the Spice Islands, arriving in Sumatra in August. Eventually he traveled to the booming port of Malacca and hoped to establish Portuguese dominance there.

Unfortunately for the expedition, local leaders decided that they had had enough of the Portuguese and planned to eliminate them. Tipped off in advance, de Sequeira instead launched an attack, which eventually succeeded with the assistance of ALfONSO DE Albuquerque. In later years, he continued to explore the region before returning to Portugal in 1512, where he spent the final years of his life.

De Sequeira’s efforts to secure the Spice Islands fed Portuguese fantasies that they could establish a monopoly of trade in the region. Such claims troubled many Europeans, and led the Portuguese legal theorist Hugo GrOTlUS to write his Mare liberum (The free sea) a century later, a tract that would prompt Richard Hakluyt THE Younger to translate it to encourage the English to send expeditions into the region.

Further reading: Angus Konstam, The Historical Atlas of Exploration, 1492-1600 (New York: Facts On File, 2000).

Settle, Dionyse (fl. 1577) explorer, writer

Dionyse Settle sailed with Martin Frobisher on the

English mariner’s second journey to the North Atlantic.

Frobisher (1535?-1594) led expeditions westward in search of the NORTHWEST PASSAGE in 1576, 1577, and 1578. None on board ever discovered the passage, which did not exist (though global warming in the 21st century might make this 16th-century fantasy a reality). But the voyages also generated a series of important TRAVEL narratives, particularly by those who claimed to offer a “true” account of what had happened. Settle’s version, which appeared shortly after his return from the 1577 voyage, was among the group. Entitled A True Reporte of the Laste Voyage into the West and Northwest & c., worthily atchieved by Capteine Frobisher and printed in LONDON, Settle’s account provided details about what Frobisher’s crew witnessed during their journey. His account told of the crew’s capturing an InuiT woman and ripping off her buskins to see if she had cloven feet. Why would they think such a thought? Because they believed that monsters trolled the lands beyond Europe and it was possible that this woman might be one. The Inuit were not monsters, of course, but that discovery did not prevent the English from looking at them with suspicion and contempt—and Settle’s account demonstrates how those views shaped the encounter.

Still, despite the bias that can be found here, Settle also reported that the Natives had mastered their environment by perfecting the weapons they would need to kill the region’s fauna, a skill the English often lacked. He told, too, about their clothing, diet, appearance, architecture, boats, and religious beliefs. “What knowledge they have of God or what Idol they adore, we have no perfect intelligence,” Settle wrote. “I think them rather Anthropophagi, or devourers of man’s flesh, than otherwise: for that there is no flesh or fish, which they find dead (smell it never so filthily) but they will eat it, as they find it, without any other dressing. A loathsome spectacle, either to the beholders, or hearers.” Like other Europeans who ventured into this region, Settle’s report contained ample details about the weather and especially the dangers posed by the ice (see icebergs).

It is difficult to know the popularity of any particular travel narrative, but it seems clear that Settle’s account contained the right kinds of details to attract an audience. That was certainly the conclusion of Richard Hakluyt the Younger, who reprinted the narrative in his collection of narratives in 1589 and again in the expanded edition at the end of the 16th century. Within three years of its initial appearance, it was translated and published on the continent in French, Latin, and German, another sign of the European intellectual appetite for news about the peoples and places of the Atlantic basin.

Further reading: Peter C. Mancall, ed., Travel Narratives from the Age of Discovery: An Anthology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); Dionyse Settle, A True reporte of the laste voyage into the West and Northwest regions, & c. 1577, worthily atchieved by Capteine Frobisher (London: 1577).