Paper short abstract:

Through the historiography, chronicles and reports of Portuguese subjects, this communication aims to analyze the importance of warfare in African societies, relating them to forms of enslavement.

Paper long abstract:

Through the historiography, chronicles and reports of Portuguese subjects, this communication aims to analyze the importance of warfare in African societies, relating them to forms of enslavement. If wars between Africans influenced the enslavement, it is necessary to analyze the internal and historical dynamics of Africa to understand the factors that predisposed African societies to produce, maintain or sell slaves.

With the presence of Portuguese subjects, warfare of conquest became a common practice in the region, and conflicts between locals emerged.

Authorities were used to gain greater benefits for the mercantile agents. Wars yielded slaves, territorial dominance and greater administrative influence.

The existence of conflicts in the interior of Angola indicates that the warfare frontier was not yet closed in the eighteenth century, making it necessary to map the wars and campaigns that were taking place in the hinterland of Angola. Also the analysis of the warfare in the hinterland of Angola will allow to know the participation of the Africans in the "Portuguese" military campaigns.

Paper short abstract:

The use of enslaved labor for production in the region of Benguela intensified in African, Portuguese and mixed societies during the height and prohibition of the transatlantic slave trade from the 1760s to the 1860s, transforming social relations and shaping the expansion of Portuguese colonialism.

Paper long abstract:

The use of enslaved labor for production in the region of Benguela intensified in African, Portuguese and mixed societies during the height and prohibition of the transatlantic slave trade in the second half of the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries. While the scholarship on this region has previously focused on the study of the transatlantic slave trade operations during this period and the intensification of the use of enslaved labor locally with the rise of the cash-crop plantation system after the prohibition of the transatlantic slave trade in the 1830s, I explore the role of slavery for production locally since the 1760s, comparing the periods before, during and after the height of the transatlantic slave trade. By looking at nominal lists, ecclesiastical, official, and traveler’s records, I have identified an increase in the use of enslaved labor for the making of profits in detriment of extended-family relations, and the concentration of the expansion of colonial societies around three main centers of agricultural production: Catumbela, Quilengues and Dombe Grande. Agriculture constituted the main economic activity after the slave trade. Rather than limiting themselves to accommodating to the expansion of colonial societies, local chiefdoms and independent producers handled trade, provided and protected labor, and set the pace of foodstuff generation and supply for the Portuguese imperial project. Other types of production, such as minerals' extraction and different products' manufacturing were complementary to the trends in this use of enslaved labor.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes manumission mechanisms as a path to freedom and their meanings in colonial Mozambique. Drawing from instruments to free the enslaved persons, such as wills and letters of manumission, this paper suggests that the freedom recognized to them was uncertain and unstable.

Paper long abstract:

In the past, African societies in present-day Mozambique recognized a range of forms of dependency, including slavery. Specific circumstances brought vulnerable persons into situations of destitution and exploitation. Most of the enslaved individuals sold themselves or were sold by their kin in times of famine and debts while others were captives of war.

Since the 16th century, the Portuguese settlers in Mozambique, along the Zambezi River and some coastal areas, appropriated African practices of bondage to obtain manpower and therefore extending significantly the number of enslaved persons. These slaves worked in commerce, agriculture, domestic service army, and administration according to gender and hierarchical divisions of labour.

Before the legal abolition of slavery, the paths to freedom recognized by Portuguese law consisted of manumission letters, wills and baptism records. While the last two instruments were based mostly on the will of the master, enslaved individuals could also buy their letters of manumission. Portuguese sources suggest that manumissions were rare at least until the early nineteenth century and they expressed gender imbalance options of the slaves' owners.

This paper analyzes manumission mechanisms as a path to freedom and their meanings in colonial Mozambique. Drawing from instruments to free the enslaved persons, such as wills and letters of manumission, this paper suggests that the freedom recognized to them was uncertain and unstable.

Paper short abstract:

The purpose of this communication is to analyze the role of the Inquisition in Angola and its relation to Slavery in the second half of the 18th century in Cambambe. The text reconstructs the trajectory of Francisco Rodrigues de Azevedo accused by the Inquisition of Lisbon for "Magical Arts".

Paper long abstract:

The purpose of this communication is to analyze the role of the Inquisition in Angola and its relation to Slavery in the second half of the 18th century in Cambambe. For this purpose, the text reconstructs the trajectory of Francisco Rodrigues de Azevedo, a resident of Cambambe prison, who was accused by the Inquisition of Lisbon for the crime of "Magical Arts ". The defendant was accused of hiring the services of João Fernandes Zanba, a "black sorcerer", a resident of Quissama province, to kill the former captain Mor Julião da Nóbrega. At the end of the process, Francisco Rodrigues de Azevedo was convicted, led to jail and had his assets seized.

Through the analysis of inquisitorial sources and documents of an administrative and ecclesiastical nature, in the light of the Microhistory, this communication analyzes the process of creolization that took place in Cambambe, at the individual and institutional level, underlining the characteristics of the work of the Santo Oficio Court of Lisbon in the Hinterland of Angola in the second half of the 18th century.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes two ambassadors’ categories used through the 17th and 18th centuries by both Zambezian peoples and Portuguese, focusing on a larger discussion of the region's slavery characteristics, showing how these categories were often somewhere between slavery and freedom.

Paper long abstract:

Being known as Mutumes or Manamucates, ambassadors were commonly used through the Zambezi Valley at the 17th and 18th centuries by both native peoples and the Portuguese established there. Sometimes they were described in the sources as slaves or captives, but usually with a relative or absolute high social status. This paper analyzes these categories, trying to address its characteristics, similarities and changes through time and space, often opening a larger discussion on slavery and its particular features in the region.

For the modern scholar, the word slavery carries with it some characteristics usually present on the stereotype of its Atlantic form - chattel slavery -, but not on others, specially on the Zambezian case. For this reason, Igor Kopytoff (1982) argued that slavery should only be used as an evocative concept, not useful for cross-cultural use. The analysis made on this paper does not use a simple slave-free antimony as an analytical tool, but an approach borrowed from Ancient History studies - first proposed by Moses Finley (1964) - of comparatively studying each category through a bundle of claims, privileges, immunities, liabilities, and obligations. This approach is obviously limited to what could be found on the available Portuguese contemporary sources, but the analysis of Mutume and Manamucate categories - and some of its associated status as Sachikunda and Bazo de Porta - proved to be very useful and able to bring light to some of its particular features.

Paper short abstract:

In the area of Chefchaouen (south of Tangier) in Morocco, there are four small villages inhabited by descendants of slaves. They are maroons who established distinct settlements that are now a testimony of the resistance to chattel slavery in Morocco.

Paper long abstract:

There are some entire villages in Morocco that are still considered as outcast groups deprived from basic social and administrative services. The Moroccan government is still acting as the old regime of slavery and denies them any claim to legal ownership of their lands. The most illustrative examples are the villages of Khandaq ar-Rayhan (south of Tangier). The ancestors of the inhabitants of these villages were maroons who established distinct settlements that are now a testimony of the resistance to chattel slavery. There are about 500 families living in this area on the legal and social margins. The dominant culture in the region and the political administration do not recognize them and invoke memories which connect the group's past to an origin of slavery and racial discrimination. We may trace the origin of this group to the 'Alawi ruling dynasty. Primary sources attest to the fact that the dispersion of black people in all Morocco happened during the period of the sultan Mawlay Isma'il (1672-1727). This ruler ordered to enslave all black Moroccans to serve under his authority. Their number reached 240.000 and they were scattered all over Morocco. The enslaved population gradually separated themselves from the government and claimed their original status of freedom. I intend to underlay factors that maintained the Moroccan social identities and examine the historical roots of this marginalized group that led to the present dilemma of racial identity and discrimination in Morocco.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper we will explore four judicial cases related to Benguela, between 1850 and 1878. These two decades were key moments in bringing the institution of slavery to an end. The cases allow us to explore experience of captivity, mechanisms of access to freedom, and the transition to freedom.

Paper long abstract:

The slave trade has been a central theme in the history of Angola. From Luanda and Benguela, the main slaving ports along the African coast, more than 4.5 million enslaved Africans were sent to the Americas. However, we know very little about the experiences of those who have remained enslaved in West Central Africa.

This paper explores four judicial cases available in the Benguela Province Court. All of them took place between 1850 and 1878, key moments in the process of bringing slavery to an end in West Central Africa. While after 1836 slave exportation was prohibited, smuggling was prevalent in Benguela and surrounding areas. Alongside other historical documents, court cases reveal the expansion of kidnapping and violence towards vulnerable individuals, particularly women and children, after the expansion of plantation economy in Dombe Grande and Catumbela. Court cases are a valuable primary source for recovering and rebuilding the experience of captives, including their access to the colonial courts. Some were able to use the colonial courts to challenge their enslavement or negotiate access to freedom. Through these four cases we will analyze slavery in Benguela during the 1850-1870 period. Legal cases allow us to explore experience of captivity, the mechanisms of access to freedom, and the transition to the category of liberto, or freed person. The judicial processes are complex, yet they reveal the contradictions of the slave system in its last decades.

Paper short abstract:

Africans' involvement in the abolition of slavery is often confined to sporadic cases, none of which examines the highly-organised, international-scale legal liberation headed by Mendonça in the Vatican on 6 March 1684. Mendonça questioned slavery using: Human, Natural, Divine, and Civil Laws.

Paper long abstract:

Africans' involvement in the abolition of slavery is often confined to sporadic cases namely those of 'shipboard revolts', 'maroon communities', 'individual fugitive slaves", and 'household revolts'. Notwithstanding, none of these studies have gone beyond the obvious economic disruptions caused by slaves on plantations, to examine the highly-organised, international-scale legal liberation headed by Mendonça in the Vatican on the 6th of March 1684. The court case presented by Mendonça on the abolition of slavery included different organizations, brotherhoods of Black people, and interest groups of 'men', 'women' and 'young people' of African descent in Spain, Portugal, Brazil and Africa. In addition to these groups, Mendonça also included other constituencies such as New Christians and the Native Americans. This scale of international initiative in the Atlantic led by Africans themselves has not before been researched since the inception of the Lusophone Atlantic slavery in the 15th century by Europeans. Mendonça questioned the institution of the Atlantic slavery, using four core principles to bolster his argument: Human, Natural, Divine, and Civil Laws.

I argue that the relationship between Africans' abolition discourse, the Inquisition of the New Christians, Native Brazilians and their common search for liberty, and how the denial of religious freedom was implicated with the denial of enslaved Africans' humanity, is a nexus of dialogues that have not been considered as a whole in the context of the Atlantic.

Paper short abstract:

After the abolition decree in Algeria in 1848, slaves were still held under servitude by the colonial officers, as well as the Church and the Muslim Scholars. This is the case even if all of these categories claim the opposite.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I explore the limitations of the abolition of slavery in Algeria from the mid to the end of the nineteenth century. Looking at colonial reports, slave sale, and emancipation records, I examine how captivity, labor exploitation, and social subjugation continue to permeate Algerian society after emancipation. In fact, I show that the revolutionary decree abolishing slavery in Algeria in 1848 turned out to be a dead letter. This was witnessed by the slaves themselves who struggled to attain their freedom. I argue in this paper that military officers, the Catholic Church, and Muslim scholars were agents of slavery, rather than committed to emancipation. While the colonial military officers were struggling to attract trans-Saharan traders, they closed their eyes when it came to commerce in human begins. The Catholic Church developed a scheme to recruit slaves in exchange for their freedom, which was effective between 1889 and 1892. Muslim scholars, ignored by the colonial forces, tended to devise strategies to disguise the sales of captives, such as the case of 1905 Berriane. In sum, all actors contributed in the expansion of slavery in Algeria during the so-called era of abolition. This study engaged with a broader historiography on slave studies in Africa, colonialism, imperialism, and emancipation.

Paper short abstract:

This paper is focused on the intellectual debates in Muslim West Africa on enslavement and remedies for illegal enslavement from the 1500s to the mid-1800s.

Paper long abstract:

The academic discourse on the abolition of slavery is dominated by a focus on European abolitionist arguments and actions, and more recently on the role of freed slaves in the Americas and Europe in the abolitionist movement. Often ignored is that the legality and ethics of slavery were not only debated in European and European-derived societies starting in the 1700s but were also debated in other societies and among various faith groups across Africa and Asia. During the slave trade era, both Muslim and non-Muslim Africans also had clear ideas about who was enslaveable and who was not. Depending on the society, insider-outsider status in Africa could be based on ethnicity, citizenship or religion broadly defined. All Africans had an interest in protecting from enslavement those whom they considered to be "insiders." African states, including those involved in the trans-Atlantic slave trade in West Africa and West Central Africa, sought to regulate the slave trade and facilitate what they considered to be legal enslavement and slave-trading while preventing what they determined to be illegal enslavement. For West African Muslims, the intellectual discourse on slavery was focused on religious status as the basis for enslavement, the onus to prove freeborn Muslim status, and remedies for illegal enslavement. This paper is focused on the intellectual debates in Muslim West Africa on enslavement and remedies for illegal enslavement from the 1500s to the mid-1800s.

Paper short abstract:

In my paper I intend to discuss the different meanings of D. José’s decrees on slavery and how they were transformed by nineteenth century Portuguese legal doctrine.

Paper long abstract:

In my paper I intend to discuss the different meanings of D. José’s decrees on slavery and how they were transformed by nineteenth century Portuguese Mps and jurists into an argument to i) invoke the presence of an old and almost theological ?abolitionist tendency? in Portuguese legislation on slavery (a tendency which, they claimed, had already made its presence in inner Portuguese legislation on the native people of Brazil, the Pombal´s decrees being a core moment of a previous historical process oriented towards abolition); ii) to state that, since 1761, there were no slaves in Portugal but only in its African possessions, where they were temporarily tolerated. The equivocal nature of these statements and the reasons explaining it will be core subjects in my paper.

Paper short abstract:

This communication uses the perspective of local actors to analyse the impact of abolitionism on Mozambique Island at the height of slave trade in Portuguese East Africa.

Paper long abstract:

In contrast to the Atlantic World, slavery and slave trade in the Indian Ocean World has received scant attention despite a growing body of literature devoted to it. This communication aims to contribute to this growing historiographical field by bringing forward the case of Mozambique Island, the capital of Portuguese East Africa and a leading slaving port in the 1820s and 1830s when the exportation of enslaved people amounted an estimated 15,000 per year. The slave trade was outlawed by the decree of 10 December 1836. However, one thing was to outlaw it, another thing was to abolish it. The abolition of slave trading in Portuguese East Africa was fiercely resisted or simply non-applied by the local elites and the colonial authorities, while on the other side Lisbon lacked the political will and the means to enforce it. But, whereas some attention has been paid to the abolition of the slave trade from a Lisbon's perspective, there are much less studies built upon the Portuguese East Africa' perspective. This communication uses the perspective of local actors − such as governors, other colonial administrators and slave traders − to analyse the impact of abolitionism on Mozambique Island. The analysis will draw on primary sources gathered in the Portuguese and the Mozambican archives.

Paper short abstract:

One-third of the Liberated Africans who arrived in Sierra Leone from 1808 to 1834 were classified as children. For the large majority, apprenticeship was a compulsory duty. This paper provides an analysis of their experiences inside of the households to which they were forcibly sent.

Paper long abstract:

By the early nineteenth century, Sierra Leone had developed as one of the world's first post-slavery societies with a population comprised of diverse migrant groups of African origin and descent. Liberated Africans between 1808 and 1864 were released from intercepted slave ships. Analyses on the Registers of Liberated Africans from 1808 to 1834 demonstrated that more than one-third of these recaptives were classified as children. The vast majority of those classified as children were allocated to apprenticeships. By tracing patterns of 'disposal' among Liberated African children, this paper aims to review their experiences inside of the households after the resettlement. The focus of this analysis is on artificial family formation, which was a characteristic feature of administrative policy for the large number of recaptives who arrived in the colony. This analysis contributes to an understanding of the position of Liberated African children as orphans under the guardianship of the Liberated African Department. Tracing the masters and mistresses to whom these children were allocated offers an insight into the apprenticeship system, which is analysed from a micro perspective. Understanding the place of the child in the family formation is essential, as it reflects on their 'orphanhood' and 'alienation' and the limits imposed upon their freedom. As gender was an important marker as far as freedom and 'disposal' were concerned, this variable is also taken into account in this paper.

Paper short abstract:

Through an analysis of public culture and ethnographic studies around Cape Town, South Africa, how are narratives of slavery explored in the colonial and postcolonial contexts? And what does this mean in the face of spatial apartheid's legacy regarding legitimate claims to space, land and belonging?

Paper long abstract:

This paper is a reflection on an earlier project I carried out in an African studies course, 'Public Culture in Africa' at the University of Cape Town. The aforementioned project looked at dress and food as interwoven collective practices and experiences by the Cape Malay during apartheid. I looked specifically at wedding practices using my own family as a lens and an auto-ethnographic exploration of Cape Malay-Afrikaaner dynamics during apartheid. I review this methodology to interrogate whether it is an appropriate means to analyse the histories of social dynamics between slaves brought over by the Dutch colonists in the 17th century to the Cape of Good Hope, the colonists themselves, and the indigenous/native black populations. Throughout this paper, I will reflect on and discuss alternative methodologies for articulating the topic of slavery and what implications these have in differing sociopolitical contexts in Cape Town, South Africa during and after apartheid.

I will also be looking at the methodologies and conceptual frameworks employed by scholars such as Gabeba Baderoon, Nick Shepherd, and Nigel Worden. In addition to contemporary issues mentioned earlier, we can also consider efforts by South African heritage bodies and initiatives to reflect on these histories. And what does this entail when we study issues of space, land and belonging with forced evictions and gentrification in areas like the Bo Kaap - a heritage site and former residence of Cape Malay slaves (the Malay Quarter).