Slave vessels dispatched from Northwest Europe were larger and more heavily armed than their Iberian and American counterparts. The barricado, a heavy wooden barrier located midship, separating off men-slaves, was a central feature not found among slavers in the South Atlantic. The Portuguese operated vessels in which many crew were Black, including some enslaved. These were able to talk to captives in their own language and provide some assurance that they would not be eaten on arrival and would have some familiarity with their new environmrnt. Rebellions of slaves on Portuguese vessels were unusual. The Portuguese/Brazilians also did very little ship trading. Instead, they used bulking centers on land to hold slaves prior to their embarkation en masse. This reduced the time a captive would spend on board, which was already shorter than those of their Northwestern European rivals because of the shorter voyage times to Brazil from most parts of Africa. The Portuguese were thus the most efficient of all national slave traders. The bulking centers in Upper Guinea and Angola were connected to trade routes through to the interior and manned by lançados, usually half-African and half-European. The shipping part of their system was adopted by all slave traders in the nineteenth century.

The kingdom of Denmark, which then included Norway and Iceland, and the kingdom of Sweden, which encompassed Finland, were influenced early on by the Evangelical movement. It first gained a foothold in maritime towns, particularly in Denmark. The traditionally close ties with Germany played an important role. The Evangelical movement developed into distinct princely Reformations in Denmark and Sweden and resulted in the establishment of two strong Lutheran confessional states. When Christian III emerged victorious from the Danish Civil War in 1536 he enjoyed a uniquely powerful position and quickly implemented a Reformation settlement according to his own Lutheran beliefs. None of the Swedish kings secured as strong a position in the sixteenth century and religious change was effected more slowly in Sweden. Differences in social structure also greatly influenced the impact of the Reformation. The Reformation progressed more quickly in Denmark, which was more urbanised, commercialised and feudal, than in the less developed regions north of the Skagerrak. In Sweden and Finland a larger proportion of the peasants were freeholders compared with Denmark and they showed themselves willing and able to resist the crown’s assaults on their traditional religiosity. In Norway and Iceland too the predominance of freeholder peasants was associated with a slower pace of Reformation than that in Denmark.

This Chapter examines the scope of this book and a number of essential definitions: rebellions and civil wars, ‘insurrectional movements’ and rebels, conduct (including wrongful acts) of rebels and governments, whether the outcome is the establishment of a new government or the creation of a new State, and the important distinction between Matters of ‘Attribution’ and ‘Responsibility’. This Chapter examines the structure of this book.