Paper short abstract:

This communication aims to analyze the strategies and trajectories of the social agents involved in the long-distance caravans in the Angolan Central Highlands - the "sertanejos", the pumbeiros and the African porters - in the period after the legal prohibition of transatlantic slave trade.

Paper long abstract:

Even though the 1836's prohibition didn't end with the Atlantic slave trade in Angola, many historians have pointed out that this historic process have caused profound social transformations, because of the colonial needs of diversification of exports to invest in the so called "legitimate" commerce. In the Central Highlands, region outside Portuguese colonial jurisdiction, the growing commerce of ivory and wax also prompted important social transformations through the engaging of Central-Africans of the non-ruling lineages as leaders in the long-distance caravans. In this communication, using information from the daily reports of the Portuguese-born "sertanejo" merchant António Francisco Ferreira da Silva Porto, written between 1846 and 1869, that registers the everyday relations between the members of the caravan society, we aim to discuss the social strategies and personal choices of the main agents of this regional commerce: the chiefs of the caravans - the "sertanejos" - dealing simultaneously with the African chiefs, the Portuguese Colonial administration and the coastal warehouses; their intermediaries - the pumbeiros (also called kesongos) - using the commerce as an opportunity of social ascension in their hierarchic societies; and the crowd of Central African porters, that are constantly negotiating their survival.