Paper short abstract:

Catharina Juliana was an enslaved woman who lived in Angola during the 18th century and was deeply immersed in an Atlantic World. Her experiences enlighten us about its movements. This paper will explore her life, the resistance strategies possible in her position and the complex choices she made.

Paper long abstract:

Catharina Juliana was an enslaved woman who lived in Angola during the first decades of the XVIII century. Born in Luanda, she later moved to Ambaca, an important town in the transatlantic commercial routes. She was accompanying her master and lover João Pereira da Cunha. He was the "Capitão-mor" of Ambaca, and thus controlled the commercial traffic from the Angolan hinterland to the cost and vice versa. In 1749 both of them were accused of heresy and sorcery by the portuguese Inquisition. In 1750 they were arrested in Lisbon.

It is possible to trace a lot of Catharina's life based on the archive traces left by the inquisition records, where she is described as a black woman, a slave, a heretic, a sorcerer. All categories that should be historicized. To accuse Catharina of heresy is to confirm the permanence of the central African religious rites and spirituality. To treat her as a sorcerer -usually a womans’ crime - is to constrict a African woman to a European femininity, and to treat her as an enslaved woman, when it's made clear she was freed, is an act of violence. All of this possible because of her race, gender and vulnerability. Nonetheless Catharina still exercised her agency and constructed her survival and resistance strategies utilizing her knowledge of both Portuguese and central African traditions, making her an skilled player in an Atlantic context. In this paper intend to retell and analyse her experiences in an Atlantic context. To put microhistory in movement.