Women in the Americas in early modern North America. Throughout the Americas, bondage existed—in warmer climates, where plantation systems developed, or in the northern areas, where women were either transported as criminals or worked as indentured servants. As early as the 1530s, Portugal began using slave labor in Brazil to work sugarcane plantations. Initially, the Portuguese used indigenous people as slaves, but in 1574, the crown decreed that unless the native people were cannibals, already slaves, or were spoils of a "just war", they could not be enslaved. The Spanish also used native people as forced labor, but because under the "encomienda" system, neither
Portuguese in the United Kingdom Portuguese in the United Kingdom Portuguese in the United Kingdom are British citizens and residents of the UK who are connected to the country of Portugal by birth, descent or citizenship. The New Christians, who had converted from Judaism to Roman Catholicism to avoid persecution but many of whom continued to practise their previous faith, began to migrate in small numbers to Britain in the late 15th century. As a result, by 1550 there were approximately 100 Portuguese Jews in London. Because England's religious status was unsettled at the time, the community remained secretive. The community centred around the Anes