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Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes how the Ovimbundo of Benguela´s hinterlands (nowadays Angola) regulated slavery and compulsory labor and how their legal framework clashed with the Portuguese one. It draws on court cases involving enslaved people in West Central Africa stored in Angolan and Portuguese archives.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyzes how the Ovimbundo of Benguela´s hinterlands (nowadays Angola) regulated slavery and compulsory labor and how their legal framework clashed with the Portuguese one. Among the Ovimbundo, compensation was the cornerstone of law. When someone did something prohibited or that damaged another person´s body, status, kinship, or property, the culprit did not suffer punishment but had to materially compensate the victim or the victim´s kin. In this system of compensation, it became common practice to assign value to people, either free or enslaved. Because people had measurable value, their bodies and services could be used for compensation when their kin did not have other means to pay for an offense or a debt. Since slavery and compulsory labor were linked to compensation, once people had other material means to pay for the damage, they could redeem someone from slavery or compulsory labor. Thus, slavery was perceived as a temporary institution. On the other hand, from the point of view of Portuguese law, if someone had been for a long time perceived and treated as an enslaved person, he was legally a slave. These legal ideas clashed with Ovimbundo law and very often Portuguese and Ovimbundo litigated over status operating with different conceptions about what was legal or illegal enslavement. This paper draws on court cases involving enslaved people in West Central Africa stored in Angolan and Portuguese archives.