Chapter 1 introduces the reader to the black geographies of New Granada in the eighteenth century, with the structure following the routes of African captives from the Caribbean region across to the mines of the Pacific. It explores how Caribbean New Granada was connected to Antioquia and the Pacific region by the mobilities of people of African descent and thereby offers an alternative geography of colonial Colombia that nuances traditional understandings of region in Colombian history. The chapter outlines the demographics of New Granada’s provinces, demonstrating the central importance of the jurisdiction’s black population to colonial history, and how New Granada was a society governed through slavery. Rivers and slave caravan routes that connected the Caribbean to the interior and the Pacific. Following an analysis of provenance zones of captives arriving in Cartagena de Indias, the chapter sketches the black geographies of the provinces of the Caribbean coastal cities of Cartagena de Indias and Santa Marta and their forested interior before casting its gaze across to the gold mines of southwestern Colombia. Elites ruled the region from temperate cities upon the backs of black and indigenous labourers.