Five Facts about the Slave Trade from the 1997 Film 'Amistad'

Poster from the film 'Amistad'. Source: Dreamworks via Wikipedia

1) The 53 Africans who revolted aboard the ship La Amistad in January 1839, were originally kidnapped from Mendeland near Sierra Leone. Once sold into the slave trade they were transported to Cuba, a hub for the transatlantic slave trade, on board the notorious illegal Portuguese slave ship called the 'Tecora'. In Cuba they were fraudulently classified as Cuban-born slaves, and were sold to two Spanish plantation owners who put them on board the Cuban schooner La Amistad for transportation to another Cuban port near a sugar plantation.


2) The abduction of Africans for the transatlantic slave trade violated Anglo-Spanish treaties of 1817 and 1835, making the African slave trade a capital offence.

3) After Britain outlawed the slave trade in 1807, it used its Royal Navy to create the 'West Africa Squadron' (1808) to patrol the West Africa coast for slave ships.

4) The two Spanish slave traders argued for possession of the 53 Africans using property rights under the 1795 'Pinkney's Treaty' in the Supreme Court case 'United States v. Libellants and Claimants of the Schooner Amistad'.

5) The La Amistad case was a significant turning point for the US Abolitionist movement.