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African Freedom Suits and Portuguese Vassal Status: Legal Mechanisms for Fighting Enslavement in Benguela, Angola, 1800–1830

2011; Frank Cass & Co.; Volume: 32; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0144039x.2011.588481

1743-9523

Mariana P. Candido,

Global Maritime and Colonial Histories

Abstract This article focuses on the vulnerability of free blacks in Benguela, in West Central Africa, during the first decades of the nineteenth century at the height of slave exports. After the British abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in 1807, slavers moved south of the Equator leading to the pressure for more captives and the expansion of violence around Benguela. Focusing on the case of a free black woman, Dona Leonor de Carvalho Fonseca, this study discusses how she was captured, enslaved, transported to the coast, and sold. However she did not remain in captivity for a long time, since she was able to claim the principle of 'original freedom.' A legal mechanism created by the vassalage treaty, the principal of original freedom differentiated the local population between vassals and non vassal, Christians and non-Christians. The case of Dona Leonor illustrates how a free black could be subject to arbitrary capture, but also could claim original freedom and hence be protected from enslavement. Like her, others were able to bring freedom cases to the attention of Portuguese authorities and dispute their enslavement. These cases allow us to explore how, where, and why people were captured. It also shows the importance of vassalage treaties in defining who could or not be enslaved. By the early nineteenth century, Portuguese legislation regulated legal and illegal enslavement opening the space for captives to challenge their status. The freedom suits stress the vulnerability of the population living around the Portuguese settlements, and show how the pressures of the international slave market spread instability, even among those who were supposed to be protected by colonial law. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Sue Peabody, Paul E. Lovejoy, Wendy Belcher and Yacine Daddi Addoun for their comments. I also benefitted from José C. Curto, Olatunji Ojo and Stacey Sommerdyk's suggestions and advice on an earlier version. I am also grateful to Zack Kagan Guthrie and Brooke Fitzgerald for help in editing this article. Notes Sertanejos were the agents of coastal merchants in the interior, who transported imported goods inland from the coast and brought slaves, wax and ivory from the interior. See Joseph Miller, Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730–1830 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988), 392; Isabel Castro Henriques, Percursos da modernidade em Angola: dinâmicas comerciais e transformações sociais no século XIX (Lisbon: Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical, 1997), 767. Arquivo Histórico Nacional de Angola (AHNA), Luanda, Códice 323, ff. 28v–29, 19 August 1811; AHNA, Códice 323, ff. 30v–31, 20 August 1811. Sue Peabody, 'There Are No Slaves in France': The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien Régime (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). For more on 'original freedom', see José C. Curto, 'The Story of Nbena, 1817–1820: Unlawful Enslavement and the Concept of "Original Freedom" in Angola', in Trans-Atlantic Dimensions of Ethnicity in the African Diaspora, ed. Paul E. Lovejoy and David V. Trotman (London: Continuum, 2003), 43–64. For other cases, see Mariana P. Candido, 'Enslaving Frontiers: Slavery, Trade and Identity in Benguela, 1780–1850' (PhD diss., York University, Toronto 2006). Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino (AHU), Angola, Códice 544, f. 9, 12 February 1676, ff. 7, 7v, Lisbon. See also Catarina Madeira Santos, 'Entre deux droits: les Lumières em Angola (1750–v. 1800)', Annales HSSS 60, no. 4 (2005): 817–848. Adriano A.T. Parreira, 'A primeira "conquista" de Benguela (século XVII)', História 28 (1990): 67. 'Benguela e seu sertão', (Lisbon: Impressa Nacionale, 1881). AHU, Códice 555, f. 52v, 25 January 1758; Ralph Delgado, O reino de Benguela: do descobrimento à criação do governo subalterno (Lisbon: Imprensa Beleza, 1945): 38–63; David Eltis, Paul E. Lovejoy and David Richardson, 'Slave-Trading Ports: Towards an Atlantic-Wide Perspective', in Ports of the Slave Trade (Bights of Benin and Biafra), ed. Robin Law and Silke Strickrodt (Stirling: Centre of Commonwealth Studies, University of Stirling, 1999), 21. See the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database at http://www.slavevoyages.org. Based on a calculation of missing voyages and incomplete data, the estimated number of slaves who embarked in Benguela is 635,160. See David Eltis and David Richardson, 'A New Assessment of the Transatlantic Slave Trade', in Extending the Frontiers: Essays on the New Transatlantic Slave Trade Database (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 1–60. Candido, 'Enslaving Frontiers', 135. Miller, Way of Death, 15. Ordenações Filipinas, Livro 4, Titulo XI, 'Que ninguém seja Constrangido a vender seu Herdamento e cousas que tiver, contra sua vontade', 790. See also Keila Grinberg, Liberata – a lei da ambiguade: as ações de liberdade da Corte de Apelação do Rio de Janeiro no século XIX (Rio de Janeiro: Relume Dumará, 1994), 20–32; Hebe M. Mattos, Das cores do silêncio: os significados da liberdade no sudeste escravista, Brasil, século XIX (Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1998), 173–180. Beatrix Heintze, 'Luso-African Feudalism in Angola? The Vassal Treaties of the 16th to the 18th Century', Separata da Revista Portuguesa de História 18 (1980): 111–131 (116). For the obligations of vassals, see Beatrix Heintze, 'The Angolan Vassal Tributes of the 17th Century', Revista de História Económica e Social 6 (1980): 57–78. Cruz e Silva argues that African rulers and Portuguese officials had different interpretations of vassalage and dependency. See Rosa Cruz e Silva, 'The Saga of Kakonda and Kilengues', in Enslaving Connections: Changing Cultures of Africa and Brazil during the Era of Slavery, ed. José C. Curto and Paul E. Lovejoy (New York: Humanity Books, 2004), 245–259. AHU, Caixa 111, doc. 1, 4 September 1804. Heintze, 'Angolan Vassal Tributes'; Heintze, 'Luso-African Feudalism in Angola?' See Linda M. Heywood and John K. Thornton, Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Making of the Foundation of the Americas, 1585–1660 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007); John K. Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998); James H. Sweet, Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Religion in the African-Portuguese World, 1441–1770 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003). Carlos Couto, Os capitães-mores em Angola, (Lisbon: Instituto de Investigação Científica e Tropical, 1972), 323–338. Carlos Couto, 'Regimento de governo subalterno de Benguela', Studia 45 (1981): 288–289. See AHU, Caixa 83, doc. 41, 13 April 1796. Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo (ANTT), Lisbon, Conde de Linhares, mc 52, doc. 14, 11 November 1769. This was not the first time that governors clashed on issues related to slavery; see Curto, 'Story of Nbena', 54–59. For more on the use of the title Dona, see Maria Beatriz Nizza da Silva, Donas e plebeias na sociedade colonial (Lisbon: Editorial Estampa, 2002), 64–65. See AHU, Caixa 83, doc. 41, 13 April 1796; Sidney Challoub, Visões da liberdade: uma história das últimas décadas da escravidão na Corte (São Paulo: Cia das Letras, 1990); Grinberg, Liberata; Mattos, Das cores do silêncio; Eduardo S. Pena, Pajens da casa imperial: jurisconsultos, escravidão e a lei de 1871 (Campinas: Unicamp, 2001); Regina Xavier, A conquista da liberdade: libertos em campinas na segunda metade do século XIX (Campinas: Unicamp, 1997). On West Central Africa, see José C. Curto, 'Struggling against Enslavement: The Case of José Manuel in Benguela, 1816–20', Canadian Journal of African Studies 39, no. 1 (2005): 96–122; José C. Curto, 'Un butin illégitime: razzias d'esclaves et relations luso-africaines dans la région des fleuves Kwanza et Kwango en 1805', in Déraison, esclavage et droit: les fondements idéologiques et juridiques de la traite négrière et de l'esclavage, ed. Isabel C. Henriques and Louis Sala-Molins (Paris: UNESCO, 2002), 315–327. Grinberg, Liberata, 25; Maria do Rosário Pimentel, Viagem ao fundo das coinciências: a escravatura na época moderna (Lisbon: Colibri, 1995), 195–237; Sue Peabody, '"Free upon Higher Ground": Sain-Domingue Slaves' Suits for Freedom in US Courts, 1792–1830', in The World of the Haitian Revolution, ed. David P. Geggus and Norman Fiering (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 264–265. Grinberg, Liberata, 74. AHNA, Códice 292, ff. 214v–216, 16 September 1805; 'Instruções para o novo governador de Benguela', in Textos para a história da África Austral (século XVIII), ed. Maria Emília Madeira dos Santos (Lisbon: Alfa, 1989), 39–40; Lauren Benton, 'The Legal Regime of the South Atlantic World, 1400–1750', Journal of World History 11, no. 1 (2000): 34; Maria Fernanda Bicalho, 'As câmaras municipais no Império Português: o exemplo do Rio de Janeiro', Revista Brasileira da História 18, no. 36 (1998): 251–280. AHNA, Códice 90, ff. 91–91v, 9 November 1799; 'Instruções para o novo governador', 44. José Subtil, 'Os ministros do rei no poder local, ilhas e ultramar (1772–1826)', Penélope 27 (2002): 52. Ordenações Filipinas, Livro 1 (Brasília: Senado Federal, 2004), 135. AHNA, Códice 292, f. 220, 11 November 1805. See also Manuel Nunes Gabriel, Angola: cinco séculos de cristianismo, (Braga: Literal, 1978), 234–235. A passage quoted in Robin Law, 'Legal and Illegal Enslavement in West Africa', in Ghana in Africa and the World: Essays in Honor of Adu Boahen, ed. Toyin Falola (Trenton, NJ: African World Press, 2003), 514. Lauren Benton. Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400–1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 49–55. Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 105. See also Paul E. Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 1–9. For cases of individuals kidnapped and seized by trusted people, see Curto, 'Story of Nbena'. For a parallel situation in West Africa, see Jennifer Lofkrantz, 'Ransoming Policies and Practices in the Western and Central Bilad al-Sudan, c.1800–1910' (PhD diss., York University, Toronto, 2008). Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery; Claude Meillassoux, Anthropology of Slavery: The Womb of Iron and Gold (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Paul E. Lovejoy, introduction to The Ideology of Slavery in Africa, ed. Paul E. Lovejoy (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1981); David Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). For more on skin colour and social status, see C.R. Boxer, Race Relations in the Portuguese Colonial Empire, 1415–1825 (London: Clarendon Press, 1963), 103–113; A.J.R. Russell-Wood, 'Iberian Expansion and the Issues of Black Slavery: Changing Portuguese Attitudes, 1440–1770', American Historical Review 83, no. 1 (1978): 16–42; Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, Tensions of Empire: Colonial Culture in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 609–621. See John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 98–125. Candido, 'Enslaving Frontiers', 42–97. Roquinaldo Amaral Ferreira. 'Transforming Atlantic Slaving: Trade, Warfare and Territorial Control in Angola, 1650–1800.' PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2003, 177–178. Luis Candido Cordeiro Pinheiro Furtado to Barão de Mossamedes (Governor of Angola), 22 September 1785, Biblioteca Nacional, Lisbon, Códice 8094. See also Claude Meillassoux, L'esclavage en Afrique precolonial (Paris: Maspero, 1975); Paul E. Lovejoy, 'Slavery in the Context of Ideology', in Lovejoy, Ideology of Slavery, 11–38; Martin Klein and Paul E. Lovejoy, 'Slave Marketing in West Africa', in The Uncommon Market: Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic Slave Trade, ed. Henry A. Gemery and Jan S. Hogendorn (New York: Academic Press, 1979), 213–35; Edward Alpers, 'The Story of Swema: Female Vulnerability in Nineteenth Century East Africa', in Women and Slavery in Africa, ed. Claire Robertson and Martin Klein (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), 185–219. Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro, Rio de Janeiro, DL 45, 11, 'Proposta sobre escravaria das terras da conquista de Portugal'. For the similarities between the legal systems, see Lauren Benton, Legal Regime of the South Atlantic World, 1400–1750: Jurisdictional Complexity as Institutional Order. Journal of World History 11, no. 1 (2000): 3 Mariza de Carvalho Soares highlights the affinity between Christianity and legislation in Portuguese expansion. See Mariza de Carvalho Soares, 'Descobrindo a Guiné no Brasil colonial', Revista do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro 161, no. 407 (2000): 71–94. AHU, Caixa 159, doc. 55, 9 August 1828. For the purchase of slaves directly from gentio ('heathen'), see AHU, 'Correspondência dos governadores', Pasta 1B, 12 September 1837. Lauren Benton, Colonial Law and Difference: Jurisdictional Politics and the Formation of the Colonial State, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 41, no. 3 (1999): 586. Curto, 'Struggling against Enslavement'. See also his Resistência á escravidão na África: o Caso dos escravos fugitivos recapturados em Angola, 1846–1876. Afro-Ásia, 33 (2005): 67–86, as well as Silvia Lara, Campos da violência: escravos e senhores na capitânia de São Vicente, 1750–1808 (São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 1988). Benton, 'Colonial Law and Difference', 564. Joseph C. Miller, 'Angola central e sul por volta de 1840', Estudos Afro-Asiáticos 32 (1997): 7–54. See the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database at http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/database/search.faces. For the suppression of the trade, see Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery. AHU, Caixa 125, doc. 42, 5 October 1812. See Couto, 'Regimento de governo subalterno', 289; AHU, 1812, Caixa 125, doc. 22. Part of the duties of the priest in charge of baptising slaves before embarkation was to brand the bodies. See AHNA, Códice 292, f. 115v, 10 July 1802. AHNA, Códice 446, ff. 112v–113v, 31 January 1817; AHNA, Códice 446, f. 136v, 12 July 1817. See also AHU, Caixa 132, doc. 30, 31 January 1817. In Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, Heywood and Thornton analyse the impact of the enslavement of people exposed to Portuguese culture in the Americas. See also Linda Heywood, 'Portuguese into Africa: The Eighteenth Century Central African Background to Atlantic Creole Cultures', in Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora, ed. Linda Heywood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 91–115; Paul E. Lovejoy and David Trotman, 'Enslaved Africans and Their Expectations of Slave Life in the Americas: Toward a Reconsideration of Models of "Creolisation"', in Questioning Creole: Creolisation Discourses in Caribbean Culture, ed. Verene Shepard and Glen L. Richards (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle, 2002), 67–91. AHNA, Códice 508, ff. 74–74v, 4 October 1826. For a discussion on the baptism and branding of slaves in Angola, see Antônio Carreira, Notas sobre o tráfico português de escravos (Lisbon: Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 1978), 60. For an interesting report on this matter, see AHU, Caixa 40, doc. 25, 21 March 1755. See AHU, Caixa 83, doc. 41, 13 April 1796. AHNA, Códice 508, f. 74v, 4 October 1826. Couto, Capitães-mores em Angola, 69, 96. William G. Clarence-Smith, 'Runaway Slaves and Social Bandits in Southern Angola, 1875–1913', in Out of the House of Bondage: Runaways, Resistance and Marronage in Africa and the New World, ed. Gad Heuman (New York: Routledge, 1986), 23–33; Roquinaldo A. Ferreira, 'Escravidão e revoltas de escravos em Angola (1830–1860)', Afro-Ásia 21–22 (1998–1999): 9–44; Beatrix Heintze, 'Asiles toujours menacés: fuites d'esclaves en Angola au XVIIe siècle', in Esclavages: histoire d'une diversité de l'océan Indien à l'Atlantique sud, ed. Katia de Queiros Mattoso (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1997), 101–122; Aida Freudenthal, 'Os quilombos de Angola no século XIX: a recusa da escravidão', Estudos Afro-Asiáticos 32 (1997): 109–134; Curto, 'Butin illégitime'. Paul E. Lovejoy, 'Identifying Enslaved Africans in the African Diaspora', in Identity in the Shadow of Slavery (London: Cassell Academic, 2000), 3. Additional informationNotes on contributorsMariana P. CandidoMariana P. Candido is Assistant Professor in the Department of History, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.