More than 15 million Africans were enslaved during the Atlantic slave trade, which lasted for more than 400 years. Many of those slaves were brought to North and South America and the Caribbeans. The American colonists relied heavily on slave labor to build the country, but the British were not the first to bring slaves to America. Though Portugal was the first to buy slaves out of Africa, Spain was the first country to send them to America. In 1502, a Spaniard named Juan de Cordoba became the first merchant to send an African slave to America, and Spain soon began relying on African slaves for its labor in the New World.