Revealing the African Presence: Introduction (Part Three)

"..., beginning in the late 1400s, three large historical shifts of peoples were taking place. Muslim Berber, Arab, and black African populations, originally from North Africa were pushed out of Spain, where they had ruled for centuries, many returning to North Africa. The Ottomans, a Muslim Turkish dynasty, expanded their territorial dominions, toward Eastern and Central Europe and across North Africa, where Ottoman and European (more specifically Habsburg) interests would conflict sharply, calling for intense diplomatic efforts. Most significantly, the importation of Africans into Europe as slaves, from markets in West and also North Africa, gradually supplanted the trade in slaves of Circassian or Slavic origin. The result was a growing African presence in Europe, some of the evidence for which is found exclusively in the visual arts."

Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe, pgs. 9-10