 The first African slaves arrived in the Spanish territory of Hispaniola in 1501.Over the next centuries, millions of Africans were taken to the New World in the African Slave Trade.The theoretical approach of the church to contacts with less-developed peoples in Africa and the Americas carried over from conflicts with Muslims the principle that resistance to Christian conquest, and to conversion, was sufficient to make people, including whole populations, "enemies of Christ", who could be justly enslaved, and then held in slavery even after conversion.