The Atlantic Slave Trade: Economies of Enslavement in Seventeenth-Century Angola

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Abstract

Slavery was central to everything that was done in seventeenth-century Angola. The Municipal Council, Portuguese residents in Angola, bishops, priests, governors, soldiers, schools, and hospitals were all economically dependent on the slave trade for their survival. To achieve their ambition, the Portuguese entered into the trade illegally by enslaving Africans and acquiring their land. Conquered and subjected to Portuguese rule, Angolan kings and sobas, or local rulers, who had been conquered and were loyal to the king of Portugal were made subject to annual tax payment of 100 in human beings in 1626, thus turning people into a currency. All loyal kings and sobas in both Angola and Kongo who had been conquered by the Portuguese were forced to give obedience to the Portuguese Crown through payment of taxes, recruitment of soldiers, open up regional markets, offer up land, allow priests to evangelise to the local population. These changes radically changed local political dynamics in Angola.

Sharing findings from his new monograph Lourenço da Silva Mendonça, and the Black Atlantic Abolitionist Movement in the 17th Century (Cambridge University Press, 2022), José Lingna Nafafé, argues that slavery is alien to African political, economic and cultural structure. From this innovative and ground-breaking book, he provides substantial new evidence to support this claim. 

Biography

José Lingna Nafafé is Senior Lecturer in Portuguese and Lusophone Studies, co-Director of Teaching for the Department of Hispanic, Portuguese and Latin American Studies, and co-Director of the MA in Black Humanities at UoB. His academic interests embrace a number of inter-related areas linked by the over-arching themes of: the Black Atlantic abolitionist movement in the 17th Century; the Lusophone Atlantic African diaspora; seventeenth and eighteenth century African, Portuguese and Brazilian histories; slavery and wage-labour, 1792-1850; race, religion and ethnicity; Luso-African migrants’ culture and integration in the Northern and Southern Europe; ‘Europe in Africa’ and ‘Africa in Europe’; and the relationship be-tween postcolonial theory and the Lusophone Atlantic.

Dr Lingna Nafafé was nominated on ‘The BME Power List 2018 – Bristol’s 100 Most Influential BME People’ for having “advanced the history on resistance to enslavement through ground-breaking research which African Voices Forum shared at the Afrika Eye Film Festival in 2017.”

His second mono-graph Lourenço da Silva Mendonça, and the Black Atlantic Abolitionist Movement in the 17th Century, Cambridge University Press, 2022 (part of the Studies on the African Diaspora series and features in the Cambridge lists in Atlantic history, Latin American history, African history, and the history of slavery). This innovative book provides substantial new evidence of the transnational and highly organised African abolitionist movement (including oppressed peoples of the Atlantic world such as, New Christians and Native Ameri-cans) in a crucial period in global history.

He is currently writing his third monograph on: Beyond Wilber-force’s Experiment in Abolitionism: The Yellow Fever Epidemic, Unfree Labour, Wages, and the Market, 1792-1850.

Simultaneous translation

The event will be delivered in the medium of English. You are welcome to ask questions in the medium of Welsh during the Q&A session. If you intend to do this, please contact mlang-events@cardiff.ac.uk by Friday 27 October to request simultaneous translation. Please note that 10% or more of those planning to attend will need to request this provision in order for it to be sourced and will be subject to resource availability.

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