This etching is by the Amsterdam publisher, engraver, globe-maker and art dealer, Johannes de Ram. De Ram was best known for his maps and atlases, some of which were based on the maps of other geographers, some of which were drawn by him. Similarly some of his illustrations were informed by the accounts of early European explorers to Asia, Africa and the New World. Each plate in this series shows two figures dressed in the costume of the country illustrated or in some cases in the costume worn by settlers. In the background are accurate topographical views of cities, in most instances showing a port and ships. These images of costumes of various countries would have appealed to the increasingly fashion-conscious public of the eighteenth century and the inclusion of representations of indigenous peoples would have contributed greatly to the interest and popularity of the series.

The Dutch were slow to develop trading interests in Africa but, following a series of conflicts with Portugal, gained possession of a number of slave depots on the West African coast. Responding to a labour shortage in the newly conquered sugar plantations of northern Brazil in 1630 the Dutch slave trade took off and by 1650 thirty thousand slaves had been dispatched to Brazil from West Africa.

The etching depicts a scene on Boa Vista, an island in the Cape Verde archipelago of the west coast of Africa, a historic centre for the slave trade. A white trader has just paid his black assistant, presumably for his help in securing the pile of ivory horns which lie on the ground before them and the shackled Africans emerging from a cave-like prison to the right of the image.