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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.