jccurto_tubmanseminar - The Harriet Tubman Institute

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HARRIET TUBMAN SEMINAR
YORK UNIVERSITY
Sept. 29, 2003
Movers of Slaves:
The Brazilian Community
in Benguela (Angola), c. 1722-1832 1
José C. Curto
Dept. of History
York University
Brazil was by far the single most important destination of the slaves exported from Africa
across the Atlantic Ocean. A recent re-assessment of the volume of the Atlantic slave trade indicates
that, of the 9.7 million Africans landed alive in the Americas between 1519 and 1867, 41 percent or
close to 4 million arrived in the land of Vera Cruz, as Brazil was initially known. 2 Much of this
massive forced migration did not take place under the context of the traditional triangular trade,
involving European merchant capital and trade goods, African slave suppliers, and slave-based
economies in the Americas. Rather, following the second half of the seventeenth century, it operated
largely under a bilateral context. To ensure a steady supply of new slave labour for the expanding
plantation, mining and urban economies they serviced, Brazilian merchant capitalists began to gain
an increasingly important share of the slave trade from western Africa. The strategy involved was
multi-faceted: creating amongst African slave suppliers a taste for their own cheap, slave produced
trade goods such as sugar cane spirits and tobacco; developing their own merchant navy to lower
transportation costs; and forwarding their own representatives to slave exporting towns along the
1
western coast of Africa to manage their commercial interests. 3 As this bilateral connection evolved
during the eighteenth century, Brazilians on both sides of the Atlantic thus became central agents in
the forced movement of large numbers of African slaves to the land of Vera Cruz.
Who were these Brazilian movers of slaves? In the case of the Brazilian trade diaspora in
nineteenth century West Africa, the question has already been the object of a great deal of scholarly
attention. 4 But these communities, with their origins in the northeastern Brazilian seaport of Salvador
(Bahia), were not the only ones from the land of Vera Cruz established along the western coast of the
African continent. Others still were found on the littoral of West Central Africa. 5 Of these, the ones
who settled in Benguela, the second largest slaving port in the Portuguese colony of Angola, may
well have been the most important. The origins of this community lay not in Salvador but in Rio de
Janeiro, the emporium of southern Brazil. Little is known about this other Brazilian diasporic
community. Nevertheless, its role in moving large numbers of slaves to Rio de Janeiro was as
significant if not more so, than those forwarding captives from West Africa to Salvador.
It was perhaps in recognition of this important function that, once the process of census
taking took root in late eighteenth-century Angola, Brazilians residing in Benguela came to be
regularly enumerated as a distinct population group. The first count of Benguela’s population most
probably took place in early June of 1796, when the newly arrived Governor, Alexandre José
Botelho de Vasconcelos, had the core of the town enumerated by household. 6 Another, far more
comprehensive, enumeration by household was produced late in February of 1797, most likely to
represent the town’s population at the end of the previous year. 7 In neither of these early censuses,
which exit but in summarised form, were Brazilians classified as a distinct group of residents.
Rather, they seem to have been listed as part and parcel of the enumerated urban population. In
November of 1797, Manuel José de Silveira Teixeira and José Caetano Carneiro, two mid-level
2
military officers, were entrusted with producing far more detailed demographic information: a
nominal list by household in which the inhabitants of Benguela were enumerated by colour, age,
occupation, social condition, and marital status. 8 These far more comprehensive nominal lists may
well have served as a model for the year-end summary census relating to 1798, where Brazilian
residents were listed, for the first time, as a distinct population group. During the following twentyone years, at least another eleven summary censuses were produced in Benguela, as the Portuguese
central government in Lisbon sought to acquire ever more precise information on its subjects spread
the world over for fiscal and defensive purposes. 9 In each and every case, Brazilians residing in this
port town were enumerated as a distinct population group, by colour and gender. Unlike their
counterparts in West Africa prior to the 1830 ban on slaving in the South Atlantic, the Brazilians in
Benguela thus represent a community that is particularly well documented. 10
Our objective is to reconstruct and analyse this Brazilian diasporic community, particularly
during the last four or so decades of legal slaving in the South Atlantic, when the sources evidencing
it are especially rich. Before proceeding, however, a few issues relating to the documentation at hand
need to be addressed. Between 1798 and 1819, one of the categories used by census takers to
enumerate the urban population behind Cattle Bay was naturalidade or birthplace: while some
residents were Africans by virtue of their place of birth, others were Europeans, and others still
Americans. Since only subjects of the Portuguese Crown could circulate and trade within its
domains, including those overseas, 11 these Americanos had to have been born in Brazil, the sole
colony in the Americas under Portuguese suzerainty. If there is little doubt as to the Brazilian origin
of these Americanos, it is also evident that the summary censuses do not cover the community as a
whole. Birthplace could not have captured all of the Brazilian residents of Benguela. Brazilian born
were not the only ones that made up this community, which also included persons born elsewhere
3
who had Brazilianised over years of life in the land of Vera Cruz and subsequently taken up
residence in central Angola. Moreover, all of the Brazilian-born in the Benguela summary censuses
were listed as civilians. Soldiers, ecclesiastics, and colonial administrators, amongst whom males
from the land of Vera Cruz were always prominent, were not enumerated according to birthplace.
Exclusions such as these would have limited our discussion to Brazilian-born civilians. But, as it
happens, a relatively large number of non-civilian Brazilian and Brazilianised individuals appear in
various other primary documents. 12 Incorporated into our discussion, they not only allow a fuller
reconstruction and analysis of the Brazilian community in Benguela, they also lend a human face to
the anonymity of the aggregate data found in summary censuses.
THE RISE OF BENGUELA AND THE COMING OF THE BRAZILIANS
In 1617, Manuel Cerveira Pereira and some 130 soldiers arrived in the Baía das Vacas or
Cattle Bay, immediately south of the Katumbela River, to found the port town of Benguela. From
this base, they soon began to carve out the Reino, or Kingdom, of Benguela, as central Angola
became known to the Portuguese, tapping into the inland trade of the densely populated highlands
dominated by the emerging constellation of Ovimbundu states. Over the next century or so, this trade
became increasingly concentrated on slaves. The captives produced on the central highlands were not
exported directly to the Americas. Rather, they were first shipped to Luanda, the premier slave
exporting town along the Angolan coast, before being forced to board vessels bound for ports on the
opposite side of the Atlantic Ocean. The number of slaves brought from the interior to Benguela for
export was clearly not significant enough to warrant direct shipment to ports in the Americas. By the
early 1720s, however, this situation changed radically.
4
The late 17th century discovery of gold and diamonds in Minas Gerais created an insatiable
demand for new slave labour throughout Brazil. Merchants in Rio de Janeiro, the closest port town
servicing this emerging mining industry, were forced to look for supplementary supplies of enslaved
labourers. One of these was found in Benguela which, until then, the Portuguese colonial
administration in Angola had failed to develop as a major exporter of captives. In 1722, merchants in
Rio de Janeiro sent a vessel with 100 and some odd pipas or large wooden casks of cachaça, a sugar
cane spirit produced by slave labour within their own backyard, to Cattle Bay to exchange for
slaves. 13 How many captives were acquired through this, one of the earliest Brazilian slavers to
arrive at Benguela, 14 or if these were directly shipped aboard the same vessel to Guanabara Bay
cannot be determined. But this venture appears to have directed Rio de Janeiro's trading interests
permanently to Cattle Bay. Benguela thereafter became an increasingly important destination for
slaving vessels originating from Guanabara Bay. To manage this expanding business, carioca
merchants ordered some of their Brazilian representatives stationed in Luanda to relocate in the
emerging port town of central Angola. 15 Following the 1720s, the incipient Brazilian community in
Benguela would see its ranks increase by the periodic arrival of trade representatives and other
individuals from Rio de Janeiro and, occasionally, from Recife and Salvador in the northeast. The
Reino de Benguela was thereby turned into a colony of the land of Vera Cruz, with “its most sacred
and exclusive interests” determined, in the words of one historian, “primarily, by the draining of
blacks to rejuvenate Brazilian colonial society.” 16
By the 1750s, some 2,260 captives were already being shipped yearly from Benguela across
the Atlantic. The following decades saw the commerce attain even higher volumes. Annual slave
exports jumped to roughly 4,710 during the 1760s, close to 5,300 in the 1770s, about 6,490 in the
1780s, and then some 8,140 during the 1790s. The trade subsequently entered into a period of
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decline, with roughly 6,240 slaves shipped per annum during the first decade of the nineteenth
century, about 4,520 in the 1810s, and some 4,230 during the ten year period preceding the 1830
international ban on slaving in the south Atlantic. Still, between 1730 and 1830, nearly half a million
captives were exported from this central Angolan port town. 17
The volume of slaves shipped directly through Benguela turned the port town into an
important supplier of captive labour. The majority of the Africans trapped in this commerce found
themselves headed for Brazil’s southern emporium: Rio de Janeiro. Of 122,153 captives exported
from central Angola’s port town during 1784, 1791-1794, 1796-1798, 1801-1802, 1806, 1808-1809,
1811-1813, 1815, and 1819, for example, 76.1 percent was destined exclusively for Guanabara
Bay. 18 The Brazilian community behind Cattle Bay was thus not only responsible for developing
much of the slave trade from Benguela but, in doing so, also ensured that roughly three in four slaves
exported through this central Angolan port town were headed for the major Brazilian labour market
they serviced: Rio de Janeiro. And this, in turn, made Guanabara Bay no less dependent upon
Benguela as a major source of new slave labour. Out of a total of 154,849 slaves recorded as landing
alive in Rio de Janeiro between July 24, 1795 and March 18, 1811, 48 percent were shipped
exclusively through Cattle Bay. 19 Such an intense connection had important repercussions on both
sides of the South Atlantic. While captives originating from the hinterland of and exported through
Benguela came to make up a significant proportion of the slave population of Rio de Janeiro, where
they were generically known as “Benguelas,” 20 the movers of these slaves in and around Cattle Bay
came to be dominated by carioca interests.
During the 1780s, with the slave export trade from Benguela expanding at an unprecedented
rate to reach its apex in the first half of the following decade, most of the Brazilian traders there
operated around three or four large firms with close commercial ties in Rio de Janeiro. According to
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a contemporaneous chronicler of colonial Angola, they dominated most of the commerce carried out
in and from the town. 21 Of the eighteen known traders living behind Cattle Bay in 1791, 22 the bulk
would thus have been made up by these individuals. One was most probably António José de Barros,
still a resident there when Lieutenant Teixeira was entrusted with enumerating the south side of the
town in November of 1797. White, single, and about 35 years of age, Barros was by then one of
Benguela’s affluent inhabitants. A trader, he owned 14 male and 8 female slaves, as well as an
unspecified number of two-storey buildings adorned by red-clay shingles, some of which still
unfinished. When Lieutenant Teixeira carried out his nominal household census, Barros happened to
be away in Rio de Janeiro on unspecified business, 23 for which he had received the proper licença or
dispensation from the Governor of Benguela. 24 Another may well have been António de Souza Vale,
since the 1797 nominal census relating to the north side of Benguela lists a certain Valle as owning
the 6th senzala (residential areas for free, freed, and enslaved Africans), with a total of 20 conical
homes. Valle was then deceased. 25 That so few of the Brazilian traders residing in this central
Angolan port town around 1791 were still there towards the end of 1797 points to an extremely high
turn-over rate within this diasporic community. One cause was certainly the disease environment in
Benguela, which exacted a steep death toll amongst all foreigners. 26 Another was far less lethal. If
they survived, the trade representatives dispatched from Brazil to Cattle Bay were eventually recalled
home and replaced by fresh “troops.” Few seem to have become permanent residents of Benguela.
THE PROFILE OF THE BRAZILIAN COMMUNITY IN BENGUELA
A heterogeneous group of individuals from the land of Vera Cruz eventually established
themselves around these trade representatives to comprise the Brazilian community of Benguela.
This is clearly borne out by the twelve extant summary censuses that evidence the demographic
7
history of the town located on Cattle Bay between 1798 and 1819. 27 Over the course of these twentytwo years, an annual average of 80 Brazilian-born civilians were part of this community. 28 Of these,
census takers listed 14 as white, 35 as mulatto and 31 as black. With four out of five Brazilians either
mulatto or black, 29 this pattern has important implications for our understanding of migration
patterns in the South Atlantic during this period. First, it evidences a migration to Africa that was not
the exclusive preserve of whites, but far more representative of the overall population of Rio de
Janeiro: 30 in other words, darker skinned individuals also moved, if only on a semi-permanent basis,
into the African continent. Most of the mulatto Brazilians would have been free, since in Rio de
Janeiro, as indeed throughout Brazil in general, this sub-group rarely found itself amongst the
enslaved. 31 Within the black category, on the other hand, would have been individuals who, through
self-purchase or the “benevolence” of their owners, had been legally turned into forros or freed
people. 32 This, in turn, indicates an earlier “back to Africa” movement from the land of Vera Cruz
than has generally been acknowledged by scholars who have worked on Afro-Brazilian returnees in
West Africa. 33 And, last but not least, it also points to Angola as an important component of this
circular interchange. 34
Census takers in Benguela did not break down this Brazilian civilian population group
according to social status, that is the free and the enslaved. However, since mulattos and blacks
account for the overwhelming bulk, not a few of these Brazilians must have surely been enslaved.
This was particularly true in the case of blacks, whether born in the land of Vera Cruz or in Africa.
While some of these Afro-Brazilians would have accompanied their amos or owners when travelling
across the South Atlantic to Benguela, others made the voyage unaccompanied. The latter would
obviously have been some of the most trusted captives held by Rio de Janeiro slave owners, the kind
of property which travelling documents from the second half of the 1820s and early 1830s later
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classified under the ethnonym of “Benguela.” 35 With first-hand knowledge of central Angola and
probably still speaking one or more of the local languages, they landed alone in Benguela
undoubtedly to oversee the economic interests maintained there by amos who preferred to remain in
the more salubrious, metropolitan, and economically diverse environment of Guanabara Bay. The
circular interchange that developed between Cattle Bay and Rio de Janeiro was not limited to free
persons, whether these be white, mulatto, or black: it also involved individuals enslaved in central
Angola who, following years of servitude in Brazil, made it back to their place of birth.
Irrespective of phenotype and legal condition, however, males accounted for the
overwhelming majority of Brazilians in Benguela. Out of the median 80 Brazilian-born civilians in
this port town between 1798 and 1819, four in five were male. Brazilian-born females were scarce in
this community. Of the 12 women from the land of Vera Cruz that, on average, were enumerated as
such, almost all were mulatta or black, with the former (6.5) slightly outnumbering the latter (5). 36
Throughout this twenty-two year period, census takers recorded the presence of Brazilian-born white
females only once in 1804, 1805, and 1808, and twice in 1805. None listed as single, 37 these women
had most probably arrived in Cattle Bay with their spouses. The summary census data
notwithstanding, none of the primary documentation presently available, including the late 1797
nominal lists, allows us to identify any of these particular females. Nevertheless, given the
numerically unknown Brazilian component within the military personnel, administrators, and
ecclesiastics residing in Cattle Bay, all of who were male, the weight of women from the land of
Vera Cruz in this community was surely lower than the extant data indicates.
Individuals of different occupational backgrounds also made up this male dominated
Brazilian community. Within the civilian group, not everyone was a representative of merchants in
Rio de Janeiro. Over and beyond the above cited cases of António José de Barros and António de
9
Souza Valle, individuals such Domingos Ferreira Leite, Chrispim da Silva e Souza, and Francisco
Lourenço Rodate, all white negociantes, the last two having married but left their wives in Brazil, 38
were always a minority amongst the Brazilian male residents of Benguela. Others were tradesmen,
skilled in oficios mecanicos or occupations that were always in short supply in this central Angolan
port town. Late in 1797, these included the shoe-maker António Botelho da Cruz, the carpenter and
caulker João Coelho, the carpenter João da Matta, the stone-mason Manuel Gomes de Campos, and
the goldsmith Felippe José da Graça: while the first was black and the others mulatto, all were free
persons who had also married in the land of Vera Cruz, where they too had left their spouses. Almost
all appear to have actually earned a living through their respective trades. The exception was João
Coelho, who had turned taberneiro or tavern-keeper. And here this former carpenter and caulker was
not alone. Tavern-keeping was a particularly important occupation in a slaving port such as
Benguela, 39 attracting other, apparently unskilled, free Brazilians such as Valentim Martins de
Siquera, João Nunes, Joaquim Teixeira, Miguel Ferreira, and Victoriano de Sousa: while the latter
was a mulatto and the others black, they had all married and also left their wives in Brazil. Even the
white negociante Francisco Lourenço is known to have operated a tavern. As was the case in Luanda,
the taverns behind Cattle Bay also functioned as veritable commercial institutions where transactions
of all kinds took place, including trade in slaves. 40
What of the other Brazilian males not listed in the extant documentation as negociantes,
skilled tradesmen, or taberneiros, who surely comprised an even larger component of the
community? This is a question which, at present, can only be tentatively and partially answered.
Some of the Brazilian males headed households where aggregados or dependents also lived. This
was the case, for example, of the black taberneiro João Nunes, in whose dwelling the black forra
Juliana and her 7 year old son resided; the mulatto tavern-keeper, Victoriano de Sousa, who lived
10
with the black female Maria; the mulatto goldsmith Felippe José, with whom lived the white female
Gertrudes Maria de Rozario and her 10 year old daughter; the black taberneiro Miguel Ferreira, in
whose household also lived the 40 year old, single, black male Sebastião Ferreira, possibly a family
relation; the mulatto João Coelho, carpenter and caulker turned taberneiro, who lived with his 8 year
old daughter; and the mulatto stone-mason Manoel Gomes, within whose household also resided the
single, black male Thomas Nicolao. 41 Like the individuals under whom they worked, a number of
these aggregados surely had roots in the land of Vera Cruz. And the same most probably holds true
for part of the 32 male and 44 female slaves owned by 11 of 16 suspect Brazilian males residing in
Benguela towards the end of 1797. 42 Not all of these captives had necessarily always lived in
Benguela or its hinterland: some, whether Angola-born or not, could certainly have accompanied
their owners from the land of Vera Cruz as these relocated behind Cattle Bay. Regardless of
occupation, birthplace, phenotype, and legal condition, however, few of these Brazilian males found
themselves in positions directly or indirectly disassociated with Benguela’s only economic activity of
note: the slave export trade and, consequently, Rio de Janeiro.
In the case of Brazilian females, there is little more concrete that can be added to what has
already been highlighted above. Nevertheless, drawing upon a certain amount of conjecture, other
characteristics also emerge. The few white, married women in Benguela from 1804 to 1808, were
most probably the spouses of some of the most important Brazilian traders, military personnel, and
colonial administrators. They were housewives whose only “job” was to manage the households
headed by their husbands. The larger numbers of mulattas and black women, on the other hand, were
quite different. Some of these had undoubtedly arrived from the land of Vera Cruz in the company of
male lovers who, irrespective of phenotype, rarely brought their wives to Benguela. Others may have
been aggregadas who had moved across the South Atlantic to help the individuals under whom they
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were in charge with the economic activities they intended to pursue behind Cattle Bay. Others still
were probably slaves who either accompanied their amos across the South Atlantic or were sent there
alone to oversee their economic interests. And then there must have been a few, even more
enterprising types: quintandeiras, who dominated the retail sale sector in urban markets, others who
invested accumulated wealth in escravos de ganho or skilled slaves for hire, and those who owned
multiple, large-scale businesses which, irrespective of colour or previous legal status, enabled them
to acquire the very respectable title of Dona (or Lady). As is well known, these were the kinds of
venues that in Rio de Janeiro, not to mention elsewhere in Brazil, attracted mulattas and black
women. 43 What is far less recognized, however, is that these same entrepreneurial skills had deep
roots in Angola, 44 including Benguela and its surroundings, the birthplace of a significant proportion
of Rio de Janeiro’s slave population that through manumission and offspring produced the mulatta
and black females who subsequently migrated to Cattle Bay. That women with these profiles also
migrated from Brazil to Cattle Bay should not be surprising. Over and beyond the intense
commercial relations that developed between this central Angola town and Brazil’s southern
emporium, both ports were part of the Portuguese Empire until the early 1820s, which facilitated the
movement of subjects across the South Atlantic. Moreover, population size excepted, colonial
society in each of these coastal urban centres was not that dissimilar: regardless of gender, not to
mention birthplace, phenotype, legal status and occupation, whites, mulattos, and blacks from one
side of the ocean could integrate a familiar urban environment on the other with relative ease. And
the slave export driven economy of Benguela, always in chronic need of specialized labour, offered a
number of attractive, though risky, opportunities which, directly or indirectly underpinning this
commerce, also provided the possibility for some enterprising women to return close to their place of
birth or that of their parents.
12
THE BRAZILIAN COMMUNITY IN BENGUELA OVER TIME
The Brazilians who settled behind Cattle Bay were not only a diverse group of individuals.45
Their community also experienced significant mutations over time. As we have seen, slave exports
from Benguela reached their highest level in 1792-1796. We can assume that the number of
Brazilians who resided behind Cattle Bay during this period was also at it height. Slave exports from
Cattle Bay thereafter started to tumble. Still, the Brazilian community in this central Angolan port
town remained relatively strong during 1798 and 1800, with an annual average of 62 individuals.
Over the course of the first decade of the nineteenth century, its numbers even increased substantially
to a medium of nearly 103 per year. The first half of the 1810s seems to have been a low ebb for the
community. But from 1815 to 1819, its numbers increased again to an annual average of 64, a
demographic recovery that probably persisted until Brazil gained its independence from Portugal in
1822, if not after. 46 The continued presence of such relatively large numbers of Brazilians in
Benguela can be largely explained by the fact that the price of newly imported slaves kept on
escalating in Rio de Janeiro: in other words, although slave exports from Benguela were on a
downward spiral, profits from their sale around Guanabara Bay were on the rise.
In spite of the fact that mulattos and blacks predominated amongst Brazilian-born civilians,
with whites accounting for just 18 percent, not all of these groups experienced the same mutations as
those operating on the community as a whole. Compared to period before the early 1810s, whites
actually saw their weight within the total number of Brazilian civilians rise during 1815-1819 by
nearly 2 percentage points and mulattos by 3. The losers were blacks, whose proportion within the
community fell correspondingly by almost 5 percent. As a result, the colour of the Brazilian-born
13
civilian population became slightly lighter over the course of the twenty-two year period under
consideration. 47
Far more important was the transformation that took place in the gender make-up of this
community. As we have seen, this was not a population made up exclusively of males. Overall,
females accounted for 15 percent of Brazilian civilians. However, the demographic divide of the
early 1810s also had a significant impact upon their number and, consequently, the gender make-up
of the community as a whole. Women represented 18.5 percent of the Brazilian civilian total prior to
the early 1810s. Thereafter, the proportion of females tumbled by more than half, while that of males
rose correspondingly to 91.5 percent. Thus, following the early 1810s, the number of women within
the Brazilian-born civilians experienced a significant decline. The community became
overwhelmingly made up of males. 48
An analysis of the gender make-up of the Brazilian-born population by phenotype also
evidences that not all women and men experienced similar demographic mutations. As we have
already seen, white women were scarce in this expatriate community: only 5 of these females are
known to have resided in Benguela from 1798 to 1819, all making their appearance between 1804
and 1808, a period characterised by demographic expansion. With Brazilian-born civilian males
accounting for nearly all of their phenotype within the community and their numbers remaining
relatively stable throughout the whole period, the post-1808 era thus saw them experience what must
have been one of their most ubiquitous features: that is, their community had no pool of white
females. 49
The gender make-up amongst mulattos was somewhat better balanced. Overall, males
accounted for 81 percent and females the remaining 19 percent of this group. The demographic
divide of the early 1810s operated differently upon these individuals. While the gender proportion
14
was 76.5 percent male and 23.5 percent female prior to the early 1810s, thereafter mulatto civilian
males saw their weight rise to 88 percent, with a corresponding decrease to 12 percent experienced
by mulattas. The small increase in the mulatto Brazilian-born population that took place following
the 1810s was thus centred on males. Still, unlike their white counterparts, not a few Brazilian-born
mulattas remained in Benguela 50
The same occurred essentially with the black Brazilian-born civilians. Overall, this group was
made up of 83.5 percent males and 16.5 percent females, a slightly less balanced proportion than that
of mulattos. Prior to the early 1810s, their gender make-up was not that different: 81percent were
males and 19 percent females. Just like in the case of mulattas, however, black Brazilian-born
females thereafter saw their weight fall by half to 8.5 percent. Consequently, the somewhat declining
black civilian male population found itself with far fewer black females in its midst. 51
Over the course of the twenty-two year period under consideration, the expatriate civilian
community of Brazilians in Benguela thus experienced relatively significant mutations. The very end
of the eighteenth century saw the number of individuals who made up this population group remain
appreciable. And this in spite of tumbling slave exports from Cattle Bay. Brazilian-born civilians
seem to have remained there hoping for better economic circumstances: that is a recovery in the
slave export trade to Rio de Janeiro. The first decade of the 1800s then saw the community swell
through the arrival of additional compatriots. This was surely a reaction to ever-increasing prices in
Guanabara Bay for newly imported slaves triggered by the Napoleonic wars raging in continental
Europe, which disrupted French and English shipping, and the Anti-Abolition movement in England,
whose objective of banning the trans-Atlantic slave was then gaining ground. Under these
circumstances, merchants in Rio de Janeiro probably forwarded additional commercial
representatives to Benguela, the only slave-exporting town along the western coast of Africa where
15
their economic control was paramount, to safeguard their slave supplies. By the end of that decade,
however, the growth of this expatriate Brazilian population withered and its numbers rapidly
declined. As we have seen, such a decrease did not involve all sub-groups of the community. Rather,
it was disproportionately acute amongst mulatto and black men, as well as white and black women:
for white males and mulattas, on the other hand, the demographic contraction was far less significant.
What factors explain the declining Brazilian community in Benguela at the end of the first
decade of the nineteenth century? According to Joseph C. Miller, “the ensuing flow of British trade
goods through metropolitan merchants effectively put the Brazilian slavers, who had always been the
main traders active at Benguela, out of business [in the 1810s and 1820s].” 52 The implication here is
that with the 1808 opening of Brazilian ports to free trade, which came to be dominated by the
English in alliance with their commercial partners in Portugal, permanently forced the
representatives of Rio’s trading houses out of this central Angolan port town. However, given what
the post-1808 Benguela censuses evidence, such a conclusion is untenable. First, although the
Brazilian-born community did experience a significant decrease, the commercial representatives of
Rio’s merchant houses were not forced out of Benguela by competition from British merchant
capital. This is quite clear from the relative stability of the white Brazilian-born civilian males
residing in this port-town throughout the whole period in question. Secondly, the said decline was
not permanent but temporary, limited to the first half of the 1810s. The years following 1815 saw
this Brazilian-born community undergo a demographic recovery, which predominantly involved
males, especially mulattos and to a lesser extent blacks.
The demographic mutations experienced by the Brazilian population in Benguela after 1808
need to be understood in a context different from that drawn upon by Miller. The stability of the
white Brazilian male group in the Benguela censuses, along with the complete disappearance of
16
white women, as well as declining numbers of blacks and mulattos of both genders, suggests that the
underlying cause was the arrival of the Portuguese court in Rio de Janeiro at the beginning of 1808.
The few white Brazilian-born females previously residing in Benguela, wives of the more important
of their compatriots, quickly left a small town on the central Angolan coast for a bustling Brazilian
city that, literally overnight, became the economic, administrative, and cultural centre of the
Portuguese empire. They do not seem to have set foot in Benguela again. The new opportunities
emanating from this context would also have attracted a relatively large number of Brazilian blacks
and mulattos of both genders to return to, if not their birthplace, a port town that they certainly knew
well. The slave-export based economy of Benguela, after all, had not recovered to the high levels of
the early and mid-1790s. Under these circumstances, not a few of the Brazilian mulattos and blacks
underpinning the slave export businesses of their white male compatriots had become excess
baggage; that is, expendable.
However, such a return movement to Brazil was not definite for all of the groups involved.
To be sure, no white Brazilian female again took up residence in Benguela until 1820. But by the
middle of the 1810s, as we have seen, the Brazilian community began to experience a demographic
recovery through the addition of new arrivals from the opposite side of the Atlantic Ocean, especially
mulatto and black males, but also mulattas. Yet another external development had led individuals
from these groups back to Benguela. This was the 1815 British-imposed ban on slaving north of the
Equator, which forced Brazilian merchants, including those in Rio de Janeiro, to increasingly draw
slave labour from port towns along the coast of Angola. This created an unsurpassed boom in the
slave-export based economies of Luanda and other ports to the north. But in Benguela such did not
materialize. Its Brazilian community, growing through new arrivals from Rio de Janeiro to deal with
the anticipated boom, could only witness the continuation of slowly declining slave exports.
17
In spite of this turn of events, however, the white Brazilian representatives of Rio’s
commercial houses, assisted by larger numbers of mulatto male and female compatriots, not to
mention blacks of either gender, continued to manage and underpin the slave trade much the same
way as they had done before 1819. The one significant difference was that their dominance over
Benguela’s only economic activity of note was now even more pronounced. While 88.9 percent of
the 10,373 slaves exported between 1823 and 1825 were forwarded to Guanabara Bay,53 97.6 percent
of the 4,808 shipped in 1828 experienced the same fate. 54 Although slaving in Benguela continued
on the decline, it persisted under the ever-increasing control of Rio’s commercial houses through the
Brazilian-born representatives sent to reside and other compatriots who migrated there. And this, in
turn, was to emerge has an important, complicating element in the subsequent political life of
Benguela.
When, in 1821, Brazil entered the road to separate from the Crown of Portugal, the continued
presence of the Brazilian community in Benguela created serious problems for the Portuguese
colonial administration. A foreign community within one year, it spearheaded a movement seeking
the political annexation of the central Angolan port town to the new nation emerging across the
South Atlantic. Attempts to wrestle Benguela away from the Portuguese Crown and integrate it into
an independent Brazil, the source of its economic well-being, lasted well into the 1820s. Unlike
Luanda, where Brazil and its trading community were not as economically dominant, these were
particularly nasty affairs. The local colonial administration, loyal to the Portuguese Crown,
periodically imprisoned members of the Brazilian party, 55 confiscating their property in the process,
and impounded vessels originating from Brazilian ports. 56 Yet, even these political squabbles failed
to perturb the century old relationship between Benguela and Rio de Janeiro. Many Brazilians
remained in this central Angolan town beyond 1830, when slave trading in the Atlantic world was
18
banned: not only to oversee and underpin the last years of the legal commerce but, more importantly,
to carry on with the business of what soon developed into a thriving illegal slave trade. And to do so,
their ranks kept on being reinforced by “fresh troops” from Guanabara Bay.
Between the beginning of 1827 and that of 1832, 22 individuals are known to have left
Guanabara Bay for the port town of Benguela. 57 This total involved 13 men and 9 women, which
works out to a ratio of roughly 3 to 2. All were slaves. Of these, 2 were escravos novos or slaves that
had been recently imported into Rio de Janeiro. Ladinos, that is captives well acculturated to the
slavocratic societies behind both Guanabara Bay and Cattle Bay, numbered 14: 7 females and 7
males. Of 18 slaves whose names are known, half were listed under the surname of Benguela, the
nação or nation they were assigned to or integrated in Rio de Janeiro. These “Benguelas” included 7
males and 2 females. Of the 16 captives whose owners are known, 5 were rejoining proprietors who
actually resided behind Cattle Bay: Justiniano José dos Reis and Dona Eugenia da Costa Faria each
owned one of the returning slaves, and António de Carvalho Soares owned three. The others were all
sent to the port town of Benguela by proprietors who resided, and remained, in Rio de Janeiro, with
Francisco Marques d'Oliveira (3) and Padre or Father Thome Fernandes Alfonço Pinha (4) 58
accounting for the majority. Although the documents evidencing the passage of these 22 slaves to the
central Angolan coast provide no clues as to why they were on the move, they do establish that not
all of the slaves who left Benguela for Guanabara Bay were necessarily destined to live out their lives
in the “hell for blacks” that Brazil epitomized. 59 While some moved back and forth in the South
Atlantic to service the interests of their owners residing behind Cattle Bay, even more did the same
for proprietors in Rio de Janeiro who were part of a society that controlled Benguela’s slaving
economy.
19
CONCLUSION
Following the opening of the slave export trade from Cattle Bay to Rio de Janeiro in 1722,
Brazilians became an ubiquitous feature of Benguela. Central agents in the movement of half a
million slaves from this central Angolan port to Guanabara Bay, they persisted in Benguela as long
as the trade itself continued. Whites and especially mulattos and blacks, men, but also a few women,
engaged in various occupations, some free, others convicts, others still freed, and even slaves
periodically arrived in Cattle Bay from the land of Vera Cruz to manage and to support the enslaving
connection with Rio de Janeiro. The declining post-1795 slave exports, the 1808 relocation of the
Portuguese Court in Rio de Janeiro, the independence of Brazil in 1822, and the 1830 ban on slaving
in the Atlantic world reduced but did not end the Brazilian presence behind Cattle Bay. Even under
these circumstances, the captives shipped from Benguela remained a most lucrative leg of the
Atlantic slave trade for the merchants based around Guanabara Bay.
The continuous presence of Brazilians in Benguela offers important implications for our
understanding of the South Atlantic. This was clearly a world on the move: beyond the thousands of
slaves shipped from Cattle Bay to Rio de Janeiro in any given year, smaller numbers of all kinds of
people headed in the opposite direction to underpin their movement. Moreover, since slaves, forros,
and free mulattos and blacks were, regardless of birthplace, part and parcel of this Brazilian
community, their presence in Benguela further indicates an earlier “back to Africa” movement from
the land of Vera Cruz than that associated with West Africa following the mid-1830s. The 1835
Malê uprising in Bahia or the subsequently expanding abolitionist movement in Brazil did not
generate the first slaves, former slaves, and their descendants to return to the “motherland.” Another
return had been quietly underway well before.
20
And the implications are no less significant at the micro level. The Brazilian community in
Benguela played more than a determining role in the economic life of this central Angolan port town.
If its slave exports went overwhelmingly to Guanabara Bay, there was little imported that did not
originate within or was re-exported through Rio de Janeiro. The connection between Guanabara Bay
and Benguela was enslaving in more ways than one. And it was precisely because of such an intense
economic dependency that Brazilians were able to exert a great deal of influence over Benguela’s
political life. Not only did some occupy key positions in the municipal and colonial governments,
thereby protecting the interests of their financial backers in Rio de Janeiro, but they also nearly
succeeded is wrestling this part of Angola from the Portuguese Crown. Yet another area where
Brazilians played a fundamental role was in the demography of Benguela, not to mention that of its
hinterland. An early, not to mention prolific, student of central Angola remarked en passant that by
about 1850, which roughly coincides with the end of the slave export trade in the region, the “sons of
Brazil” had vanished. 60 If this was indeed the case, it also true that Brazilians left behind relatively
large numbers of sons and daughters through their liaisons with enslaved, freed and free local
women. How could it have been otherwise when so few brought their women with them? In short, if
Benguela and its hinterland can be said to represent the “mother” of a significant percentage of the
pre-1850 population of Rio de Janeiro, the enslaving connection also resulted in Brazil as the
“father” of an appreciable portion of the population of central Angola.
21
Table I. Probable Brazilian Male Residents in Benguela, 1797
Name
Color
Marital
Status
Single
Age
Antonio Jozé de
Barros
Domingos Ferreira
Leite
Antonio Botelho da
Cruz
White
Black
Single
33
Valentim Martins de
Siqueira
João Nunes
Black
Married,
Bahia
Married,
Bahia
55
65
Ajudante dos Henriques,
Taverneiro
Joaquim Teixeira
Black
Married,
Rio de Jan.
Married,
Bahia
Married,
Bahia
Married,
Rio de Jan.
52
45
White
Black
Mulatto
João Coelho
João da Matta
35
Occupation
Mulatto
34
Chrispim da Silva e
Souza
White
Vitoriano da Sousa
Pardo
Married,
Bahia
50
Manoel Gomes de
Campos
Pardo
Married,
Rio de Jan.
60
Felippe
Graça
da
Pardo
Married,
Pernamb.o
35
Francisco Lourenço
Rodate
White
Married,
Pernamb.o
30
Jose
28
Antonio Jose Pinto
Pedro da Silva
Black
Married,
Rio de Jan.
Miguel Ferreira
Black
Married,
Rio de Jan.
Source: See footnote 8.
60
32
Sargento
mor
dos
Auxiliares, Negociante
Negociante, morador no
Rio de Jan.
Tenente dos Henriques
dum dos terços do Rio
de Janeiro, Sapateiro
Taverneino
Slaves
Owned
14 M 8 F
Property Owned in
Benguela / Dependents
Cazas telha de sobrado
cazas de telha terries servem
de alugueis
1F
telha terrias
2M
4F
Taberneiro
2M
2F
Cazas de palha terrias; 1
negra forra Juliana, 40 annos
com 1 filho mulatto de id.e 7
Cazas de telha terrias
Taberneiro, officio de
carpinteiro e calafate
Carpinteiro
4M
7F
Assistente em casas
terrias
de
Palha,
Negociante bolante
Assistente em casas
terrias
de
Palha,
Taverneiro
Pedreiro, assistente em
cazas de sobrado de
telha
Ourives, assistente em
cazas terrias de telha
Negociante, assistente
em cazas terrias de telha,
Taverneiro
Capitão, assistente no
Rio de Janeiro
Assistente em cazas
terrias de palha
Taverneiro assitente em
cazas terrias de palha
22
1F
cazas de palha terrias; 1 filha
Anna Joaquina mulatta id.e 8
cazas de palha terrais
3M
3F
1 aggregada, preta Maria
2M
6F
agregado, Thomas Nicolão
preto solteiro idade 40 com 7
escravas
Agregada,Getrudes Maria do
Rozario idade 30 annos
branca e sua filha Thereza de
Jezus branca idade 10 annos
5F
2M
4F
cazas de sobrado e outras
terrias de telha
3M
3F
Agregado, Sebastiao Ferreira
preto idade 40 annos Solteiro
Table II: Enslaved Africans Dispatched from Rio de Janeiro to Benguela, 1827-1832
Name of
Slave
S
e
x
M
New
n.g.
Jan. 15, 1827
Source: ANRJ, Códice
424, Registro de Polícia,
Saída de Escravos.
Vol. I, fl. 156
Francisca
Benguela
Francisco
Benguela
Not Listed
F
Ladina
Justino Martins da Roza
Oct. 02, 1829
Vol. III, fl. 106v
M
Ladino
Justiniano José dos Reis*
June 04, 1830
Vol. IV, fl. 177v
F
New
n.g.
July 12, 1830
Vol. V, fl. 10
Francisco
Benguela
Diogo
Benguela
João
Benguela
Not Listed
M
n.g.
Francisco Marques d’Oliveira
July 05, 1830
Ibid, fl. 25
M
n.g.
July 05, 1830
Ibid, fl. 25
M
n.g.
July 05, 1830
Ibid, fl. 25
M
n.g.
Aurelio José Antunes
Aug. 11, 1830
Ibid, fl. 28
Not Listed
M
n.g.
Aurelio José Antunes
Aug. 11, 1830
Ibid, fl. 28
Andre
Benguela
Anacleto
Benguela
Lourenço
Benguela
António
Songo
Feliciana
Benguela
Manuel
M
Ladino
Maria Antónia de Carvalho
Sept. 09, 1830
Ibid, fl. 92v
M
Ladino
António de Carvalho Soares*
Jan. 01, 1831
Ibid, fl. 104
M
Ladino
Jan. 01, 1831
Ibid, fl. 104
M
Ladino
Jan. 01, 1831
Ibid, fl. 104
F
n.g.
Dona Eugenia da Costa Faria* Feb. 05, 1831
Ibid, fl. 117v
M
Ladino
Pe Thome F. Alfonço Pinha
Feb. 05, 1831
Ibid, fl. 118
João
M
Ladino
Feb. 05, 1831
Ibid, fl. 118
Genoveva
F
Ladina
Feb. 05, 1831
Ibid, fl. 118
Izabel
F
Ladina
Feb. 05, 1831
Ibid, fl. 118
Sabina
F
Ladina
n.g.
Feb. 26, 1831
Ibid, fl. 127v
Luiza
F
Ladina
Maria Carneiro**
Jan. 04, 1832
Ibid, fl. 173
Victoria
F
Ladina
Maria Carneiro**
Jan. 04, 1832
Ibid, fl. 173
Joana
F
Ladina
Maria Carneiro**
Jan. 04, 1832
Ibid, fl. 173
Not Listed
Type of
Slave
*residents of Benguela
Owner
Date
**free black, former owner
23
24
25
26
ENDNOTES
1
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Instituto de Filosofia e Ciencias Sociais, Universidade
Federal do Rio de Janeiro, and the African Studies Centres of the Universidade de Lisboa, Universidade
Tecnica de Lisboa, and the Universidade do Porto. I am particularly indebted to Alberto da Costa e Silva,
President of the Academia de Letras do Brasil, Professors Manolo G. Florentino (UFRJ), Isabel C. Henriques
(UL), and Joana P. Leite (UTL), and José Capela (UP) for their constructive comments.
2
David Eltis, “The Volume and Structure of the Transatlantic Slave Trade: A Reassessment,” The William and
Mary Quarterly. 3rd Series, Vol. 58, 2001, pp. 17-46.
3
See, for example: Verger, Pierre. “Rôle joué par le tabac de Bahia dans la traite des esclaves au Golfe de
Bénin,”Cahiers d'études africaines. Vol. 4, 1964, pp. 349-369; idem, Trade Relations Between the Bight of
Benin and Bahia from the 17th to the 19th Century. Ibadan, 1976; José C. Curto, “Vinho verso Cachaça: A
Luta Luso-Brasileira pelo Comércio do Álcoól e de Escravos em Luanda, 1648-1703,” in S. Pantoja and J.F.S.
Saraiva, eds. Angola e Brasil nas Rotas do Atlântico Sul. Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand do Brasil, 1999, pp. 69-97;
and idem, Álcool e Escravos: O comércio luso-brasileiro do álcool em Mpinda, Luanda e Benguela durante o
tráfico atlântico de escravos (c. 1480-1830) e o seu impacto nas sociedades da África Central Ocidental.
Lisbon: Editora Vulgata, 2002.
4
Aside from the works by Verger cited in the preceding footnote, see: Lorenzo D. Turner, “Some Contacts of
Brazilian Ex-Slaves with Nigeria, West Africa,” Journal of Negro History. Vol. 27, 1942, pp. 55-67; Pierre
Verger, “Influence du Brésil au Golfe du Bénin,” Les Afro-Americains, Memoires de l’IFAN. No. 27, 1953, p
11-101; idem, ARetour des ‘Bresiliens’ au Golfe du Benin au XIXeme Siecle,” Études Dahoméennes. No. 8,
1966, pp.5-28; J.F. de Almeida Prado, “Les Relations de Bahia (Brésil) avec le Dahomey,” Revue d’Histoire
des Colonies. Vol. 16, 1954, pp. 167-226; Norberto Francisco de Souza, “Contribution a l'histoire de la famille
de Souza,” Études Dahoméennes. Vol. 15, 1955, pp. 17-21; Anthony B. Laotan, “Brazilian Influence on
Lagos,” Nigerian Magazine. No. 69, 1964, pp. 156-165; David A. Ross, “The Career of Domingo Martinez in
the Bight of Benin 1833-64,” Journal of African History. Vol. 6, 1965, pp. 79-90; idem, “The First Chacha of
Whydah: Francisco Felix da Souza,” Odu. New Series, Vol. 2, 1969, pp. 19-28; D.E.K. Amenumey, “Geraldo
da Lima: A Reappraisal,” Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana. Vol. 9, 1968, pp. 65-78; Richard D.
Ralston, “The Return of Brazilian Freedmen to West Africa in the 18th and 19th Centuries,” Canadian Journal
of African Studies. Vol. 3, 1969, pp. 577-592; Júlio Santanna Braga, “Notas Sobre o ‘Quartier Bresil’ no
Daomé,” Afro-Ásia. Nos. 6-7, 1968, pp. 56-62; Jerry Michael Turner, “Les Brésiliens: The Impact of Former
Brazilian Slaves upon Dahomey,” Unpublished Ph. D. Dissertation, Boston University, 1974; idem, “Cultura
afro-brasileira na África Ocidental,”Estudos Afro-Asiáticos. No. 1, 1978, pp. 19-25; idem, “Africans, AfroBrazilians and Europeans: 19th Century Politics on the Benin Gulf,” África (Universidade de São Paulo). No. 4,
1981, pp. 3-31; idem “Identidade étnica na África Ocidental: o caso especial dos afro-brasileiros no Benin, na
Nigéria, no Togo e em Ghana nos séculos XIX e XX,” Estudos Afro-Asiáticos. No. 28, 1995, pp. 85-99;
Manuela Carneiro da Cunha, “Religião, Comércio e Etnicidade: Uma Interpretação Preliminar do Catolicismo
Brasileiro em Lagos, no Século XIX,” Religião e Sociedade. No. 1, 1977, pp. 51-60; idem, Negros,
Estrangeiros: Os Escravos Libertos e Sua Volta à África. São Paulo: Brasilience, 1985; Marianno Carneiro da
Cunha, Da Senzala ao Sobrado: A Arquitectura Brasileira na África Ocidental. São Paulo: Nobel, 1985; S.Y.
Boadi-Siaw, “Brazilian Returnees of West Africa,”Joseph E. Harris, ed. Global Dimensions of the African
Diaspora. Wash. D.C.: Howard University Press,1993, 2nd edition, 421-439; and Lisa A. Lindsay, “`To
Return to the Bosom of their Fatherland’: Brazilian Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century Lagos,” Slavery and
Abolition. Vol. 15, 1994, pp. 22-50. More recent studies include: Bellarmin C. Codo: “Les Afro-brésiliens de
retour,” in Doudou Diene, ed., La Chaine et le lien: une vision de la traite negrière. Paris, 1998, pp. 95-105;
Milton Guran, Agudás: Os ‘brasileiros’ do Benim. Rio de Janeiro, 1999; Robin Law and Kristin Mann, “West
Africa in the Atlantic Community: The Case of the Slave Coast,” The William and Mary Quarterly. Vol. 46,
1999, pp. 306-34; J. Lorand Matory, “The English Professors of Brazil: On the Diasporic Roots of the Yorùbá
27
Nation,” Comparative Studies in Society and History. Vol. 41, 1999, pp. 72-13; Robin Law, “The Evolution of
the Brazilian Community in Ouidah,”in Slavery and Abolition. Vol. 22, 2001: Special Issue edited by Kristin
Mann and Edna G. Bay, Rethinking the African Diaspora: The Making of a Black Atlantic World in the Bight
of Benin and Brazil; Edna G. Bay, “Protection, Political Exile, and the Atlantic Slave Trade: History and
Collective Memory in Dahomey,” in ibid; Elisée Soumonni, “Some Reflections on the Brazilian Legacy in
Dahomey,” in ibid; and Olabiyi Babalola Yai, “The Identity, Contributions, and Ideology of the Aguda
(Afro-Brazilians) of the Gulf of Benin: A Reinterpretation,” in ibid. See also the following forthcoming work:
Robin Law, “Francisco Felix de Souza in West Africa, 1800-1849,” and Silke Strickrodt, “Afro-Brazilians on
the Western Slave Coast of Africa in the Nineteenth Century,” both in José C. Curto and Paul E. Lovejoy, eds.
Enslaving Connections: Africa and Brazil During the Era of Slavery. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, in press;
and Elisée Soumonni, “The Afro-Brazilian Communities of Ouidah and Lagos in the Nineteenth Century,” in
José C. Curto and Renée Soulodre-LaFrance, eds. Africa and the Americas: Interconnections During the Slave
Trade. New Brunswick, NJ: Africa World Press, forthcoming.
5
Bits and pieces of this history are dispersed within the following works: Ralph Delgado, A Famosa e
Histórica Benguela: Catálogo dos Governadores (1779 a 1940). Lisbon: Edições Cosmos, 1940; Mary C.
Karasch, “The Brazilian Slavers and the Illegal Slave Trade, 1836-1851,” Unpublished M. A. thesis,
University of Wisconsin, 1967; Manuel dos Anjos da Silva Rebelo, Relações entre Angola e Brasil (18081830). Lisbon:Agencia Geral do Ultramar, 1970; Joseph C. Miller, Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and
the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730-1830. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988; Manolo G. Florentino,
Em Costas Negras: Uma História do Tráfico Atlântico de Escravos entre a Africa e o Rio de Janeiro (Séculos
XVIII e XIX). São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2002, 2nd edition; and Roquinaldo Amaral Ferreira, “Dos
Sertões ao Atlântico: Trafico Ilegal de Escravos e Comercio Licito em Angola, 1830-1860,” Unpublished M.
A. thesis, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 1996.
6
See “Mappa das pessoas livres e escravos … de que se compõe a Cidade de Benguella em 15 de Junho de
1796,” Arquivo Histórico Nacional de Angola, Luanda (AHNA), Códice 441, 2-E-1-2, fl. 19. A copy of this
same document is also found in the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, Lisbon (AHU), Angola, Cx. 83, Doc. 66.
A published version is available in Ralph Delgado, O Reino de Benguela (Do descobrimento a criação do
govêrno subalterno) Lisbon: Imprensa Beleza, 1945, p. 381. According to Governor Vasconcelos, the more
than 1,000 homes inhabited by blacks around the town’s core were not included in this count. As far as can be
determined, no census was carried out in Benguela before the middle of 1796. See José C. Curto, “Sources for
the Pre-1900 Population History of Sub-Saharan Africa: The Case of Angola, 1773-1845,” Annales de
démographie historique. 1994, pp. 319-338.
7
“Mappa das Pessoas livres, Escravos, e Cazas de sobrado, tereas, cobertas de palha, e sanzalas, de que se
compoem a Cidade de Beng.a no anno de 1796,” 28 February, 1797, AHU, Angola, Cx. 85, Doc. 28. A copy
of this same document is also found in Arquivo do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro, Rio de Janeiro
(AIHGB), DL81,02.28, fl. 81.
8
While Silveira Teixeira covered the north side of the town, Carneiro took care of the south side. See “Relação
de Manuel José de Silveira Teixeira … [d]os moradores da [parte sul da] cidade de São Felipe de Benguela,”
(not dated) AIHGB, DL32,02.02, fls. 7-17v; and “Relação de José Caetano Carneiro … dos moradores da
parte do norte da cidade de São Felipe de Benguela,” 20 November, 1797, AIHGB, DL32,02.03, fls. 20-32v.
9
José C. Curto and Raymond R. Gervais, “The Population History of Luanda During the Late Atlantic Slave
Trade, 1781-1844,” African Economic History 29 (2001) pp. 1-59. For other Portuguese colonial overseas
territories, see: Rudy Bauss, “A Demographic Study of Portuguese India and Macau as well as Comments on
Mozambique and Timor, 1750-1850,” The Indian Economic and Social History Review. Volume 34 (1997),
pp. 199-216; António Carreira, Cabo Verde: Formação e Extinção de Uma Sociedade Escravocrata (146028
1878) (2nd edition, Lisbon, 1983; originally published in 1972); and Dauril Alden, “The Population of Brazil
in the Late Eighteenth Century: A Preliminary Study,” Hispanic American Historical Review 43 (1963) pp.
173-205.
10
“Mappa da Cidade de Benguela, e suas mais proximas vizinhanças…” in AHU, Angola: 1798 in Cx. 89,
Doc. 88; 1804 in Cx. 113, Doc. 6; 1805 in Cx. 116, Doc. 87; 1806 in Cx. 118, Doc. 21; 1808 in Cx. 120, Doc.
1; 1809 in Cx. 120, Doc. 32; 1813 in Cx. 127, Doc. 59; 1815 in Cx. 131, Doc. 45; 1816 in Cx. 133, Doc. 32;
1817 in Cx. 136, Doc. 19; and 1819 in Cx. 138, Doc. 1. Another one of these summary censuses, relating to
1800, is found under the same generic title in AHNA, Códice 442, fls. 161v-162.
11
A. J. R. Russell-Wood, A World on the Move: The Portuguese in Africa, Asia, and America, 1415-1808.
Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1992, pp. 58-147.
12
A case in point is João Nepocumeno Souza, a pardo born in Rio de Janeiro who, having voluntarily moved
to Benguela, is listed as Escrivão da Provedoria dos defuntos e ausentes in the report of 03 February, 1800,
penned by the Governor of Angola, Miguel António de Mello, and published as “Angola no Fim do Século
XVIII: Documentos,” Boletim da Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa. Vol. 6, 1886, p. 287. He was already there
at the end of 1796, when he made a donation to open up a new road to the Cuvaco River: see documento No. 2
[15 December, 1796] in Ralph Delgado, Ao Sul do Cuanza: Ocupação e Aproveitamento do Antigo Reino de
Benguela, 1483-1942. Lisbon: n, p., 1944, Vol. I, pp. 531-532. João Nepocumeno also appears in a late 1797
source, still holding the position escrivão dos ausentes, as a 34 year old widowed mulatto, and owning red-clay
shingled houses in the southern part of Benguela. Aside from a 13 year old son, the household which he then
headed included 1 male and 3 female orphaned minors, as well as 6 male and 7 female slaves, all of whom
were his property. See “Relação de Manuel José de Silveira Teixeira sobre os moradores da cidade de São
Felipe de Benguela,” AIHGB DL32,02.02, fls. 12-12v. João Nepocumeno was still a resident of Benguela at
the beginning of 1826 when, as Vigario Encomendado, he was responsible for producing the “Mappa da
Povoação, Nascimentos, Casamentos e Mortes na Cidade de São Felippe de Benguela no anno de 1825,”
AHU, Angola, Cx. 159, Doc. 29. Shortly thereafter, he became full Vigario of the town’s single parish. It was
precisely in this capacity that, between April of 1832 and February of the following year, João Nepocumeno
headed the Triumvurate that then ruled Benguela. See Delgado, Famosa e Histórica Benguela, p. 107.
13
António Albuquerque de Carvalho [Governor of Angola] to the Crown, 26-09-1722, AHU, Angola, Cx. 21,
Doc. 136.
14
See José C. Curto, “Luso-Brazilian Alcohol and the Legal Slave Trade at Benguela and its Hinterland, c.
1617-1830,” in H. Bonin and M. Cahen, eds. Le grand commerce en Afrique noire, du 18e siècle à nos jours.
Paris: Éditions de la Société française d'histoire d'outre-mer, 2001, pp. 351-369.
15
Joseph C. Miller, “The Paradoxes of Impoverishment in the Atlantic Zone,” in David Birmingham and
Phyllis Martin, eds. History of Central Africa. London, 1983, Vol. I, p. 135; and idem, Way of Death, pp. 260262, 468-469, and 565. This was not, however, the first contingent of Brazilians to have settled in Benguela.
The recapture of this port town late in August 1848 from the Dutch, who had held it since 1641, was primarily
carried out by military personnel from Brazil, not a few of whom remained in Benguela: Ralph Delgado, Reino
de Benguela, pp. 173-188; Charles R. Boxer, Salvador de Sá and the Struggle for Brazil and Angola, 16021686. London: University of London Press, 1952, pp. 195-271; and Luiz Felipe de Alencastro, O Trato dos
Viventes: Formação do Brasil no Atlântico Sul. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2000, pp. 231-238, 266276, and 369-370.
16
Delgado, Famosa e Histórica Benguela, p. 80.
29
17
José C. Curto, “The Legal Portuguese Slave Trade from Benguela, Angola, 1730-1828: A Quantitative Reappraisal,” África (Universidade de São Paulo). No. 16-17 (1993-1994), pp. 101-116. Since this publication, a
few more annual export figures have been located: 5,862 slaves exported in 1799, “Mappa dos Generos que se
exportarão… no Anno de 1799…de Benguela,” AHNA, Códice 441, fls. 122v-123; as well as 3,046 captives
shipped in 1823 and a further 2,933 in 1824, “Demostração da qualidade, e quantidade dos generos exportados
desta Cidade de Benguela, com declaração dos portos para onde forão nos annos de 1823, 1824, e 1825,”
AIHGB, DL82,01.18, fl. 40.
18
Joseph C. Miller, “The Number, Origins, and Destinations of Slaves, in the Eighteenth Century Angolan
Slave Trade,” in Joseph. E. Inikori and Stanley L. Engerman, eds. The Atlantic Slave Trade: Effects on
Economies, Societies, and Peoples in Africa, the Americas, and Europe. Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
1992, p. 100.
19
See Herbert S. Klein, “The Trade in African Slaves to Rio de Janeiro, 1795-1811: Estimates of Mortality and
Patterns of Voyages,” Journal of African History. Vol. 10, 1969, pp. 538 and 540. Elsewhere, this same
historian shows the Benguela proportion of slaves landed in Rio de Janeiro to have decline to 12 percent during
the second half of the 1820s: “O Tráfico de Escravos Africanos para o porto do Rio de Janeiro, 1825-1830,”
Anais de História. No. 5, 1973, p. 89. Nevertheless, as we will see below, the commerce in and around Cattle
had by then become under the exclusive control of carioca trading interests.
20
Mary C. Karasch, Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro, 1808-1850. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987.
Amongst other, more recent studies, see also: Mariza de Carvalho Soares, Devotos da Cor: Identidade Étnica,
Religiosidade e escravidão no Rio de Janeiro, século XVIII. Rio de Janeiro: Civilizacão Brasileira, 2000; and
Carlos Eugênio Líbano Soares, A Capoeira Escrava e Outras Tradições Rebeldes no Rio de Janeiro, 18081850. Campinas: Editora da Unicamp, 2002, 2nd edition.
21
Elias Alexandre da Silva Correia, História de Angola. Lisbon: Editorial Ática, 1937 (introduction and notes
by Dr. Manuel Murias), Vol. I, p. 39 and Vol. II, p. 158.
22
These were: António Jozé da Costa, António de Souza Vale, António Jozé de Barros, António Jozé Pinto
Sequeira, António Felype Calderone, Fructuozo Jozé da Cruz, João Pedro Barrocas, Jozé Maria Arcenio de
Lacerda, Jozé António da Costa, Ignacio Jozé de Souza, Jozé da Costa, Joaquim Mendes Bicho, Jozé Ferreira
Gomes da Silva, Lourenço Pereira Tavares, Lourenço de Carvalho Gameiros, Manuel Jozé da Cruz, Nuno
Joaquim Pereira e Silva, and Sebastião Gil Vaz Lobo. See “Negociantes de Benguela,” 22 June, AHU, Angola,
Cx. 76, Doc. 45. Five years later, the “Mappa das pessoas livres e escravos … de que se compõe a Cidade de
Benguella em 15 de Julho de 1796,” carried out under the auspices of the recently arrived GovernorAlexandre
José Botelho de Vasconcelos, AHNA, Códice 441, 2-E-1-2, fl. 19, lists a total of 19 unnamed negociantes or
traders. The “Mappa das Pessoas livres, Escravos, e Cazas de sobrado, tereas, cobertas de palha, e sanzalas, de
que se compoem a Cidade de Beng.a no anno de 1796,” dated 28 Fevreiro de 1797, AIHGB, DL81,02.28, fl.
81, lists a far higher total of 33 unnamed negociantes. And the summary census relating to the end of 1797,
gives a total of 44 unnamed traders, 31 of whom classifed as white, 7 as mulatto, and 6 as black: see “Mappa
das Pessoas livres, Escravos, Empregos e os Oficios … de que se compoem a Cidade de Beng.a no anno de
1797,” dated 01 January, 1798, AHU, Angola, Cx. 91, Doc. 41.
23
“Relação de Manuel José de Silveira Teixeira … [d]os moradores da [parte sul da] cidade de São Felipe de
Benguela,” fl. 7. Barros was already a resident of Benguela in1789, when he made a significant contribution
toward the construction of the town’s hospital: see document No. 5 [28 Septembre, 1789] in Delgado, Ao Sul
do Cuanza, Vol. I, p. 534. This earlier source lists him as a Sargent-Major. He was also a significant landowner
along the Katumbela River, immediately north of Benguela, with one libata and 5 arimos which produced a great
deal of milho and feijão: see “Relação de diligência do alferes Alexandre José Coelho de Sousa para [Alexandre
30
José Botelho de Vasconcelos], governador de [Benguela], acerca da descrição do Sítio de Catumbela e as
relações das casas dos moradores, libatas e cubatas,” 06 January, 1798, AIHGB, DL32,02.07, fls. 50v, 57, 57v,
61v and 67v.
24
The equivalent of the modern passport, licenças were required of all individuals travelling within the
Portuguese South Atlantic Empire from 1720 onward. See Curto and Gervais, “Population History of Luanda,”
p. 14.
25
“Relação de José Caetano Carneiro …dos moradores da parte do norte da cidade de São Felipe de
Benguela,” fl. 28v. Vale too was already a resident of Benguela in1789, when he made the single most
important contribution toward the construction of the town’s hospital: see document No. 5 [28 Septembre,
1789] in Delgado, Ao Sul do Cuanza, Vol. I, p. 534. This earlier source lists Vale as a Lieutenant-General.
26
As is clear from Delgado, O Reino de Benguela; and idem, A Famosa e Histórica Benguela.
27
See Graph I.
28
This was but the largest of a number of groups of Brazilians established in central Angola. Another was
based in Novo Redondo, a small port town to the north of Cattle Bay. At the end of October 1797, four out of
the ten merchants operating there were born in the land of Vera Cruz: the 39 year old Manoel Izidorio dos
Santos; João Luiz da Silva, 31 years old; João Pereira Dormundo, married to Roza Maria da Conceição, a black
woman from the interior of Novo Redondo; and the 35 year old, single António Rodrigues dos Santos. Manoel
Izidorio was born in Salvador (Bahia) and the remainder in Rio de Janeiro. While António Rodrigues was
mulatto, the others were white. And although Manoel Izidorio and João Luiz were both married, neither of had
their wives with them in Novo Redondo. The commercial operations of these four Brazilians were supported
by 59 slaves (29 male and 30 female) slaves, property of theirs which accounted for more than half of the 108
enslaved residents of Novo Redondo. See “Ofício de Fernando da Silva Correia, tenente regente, a d. Miguel
Antônio de Melo, [governador de Angola], comunicando o envio do mapa das pessoas de artilharia da
Fortaleza de Novo Redondo, das imagens da igreja de Nossa Senhora da Conceição, pagamento dos sacerdotes,
sobas, armamentos, dos moradores, batismos, casamentos e óbitos, prédios rústicos, gado e escravos existentes
no Presídio Novo Redondo,” October 25, 1797, AIHGB, DL31,09, fls 14-14v and 22-22v. Between 17971799 and 1804-1806, the Brazilian-born in this small port town averaged 6 males: 3 white, 2 mulatto, and 1
black. Only one woman born in Brazil, a black, was enumerated in this 6 year period. A somewhat larger group
of Brazilians was also established the presídio of Caconda, inland from Benguela. Summary census materials
for 17 extant years between 1798 and 1832 record an annual average of 8 Brazilian civilians living in this
presídio: they too were almost exclusively men, and almost all were either mulatto or black. My thanks to
Mariana P. Candido for sharing this information from her doctoral research. Caconda was the springboard for
many sertanejos or bush traders who operated deep in the interior, men like the Bahia born José da Assumpção
e Mello, who by the late 1790s has already made 3 commercial trips to the Luvalle: see the c. 1798 “Relação
dos sobas potentados, souvetas seus vassalos e sobas agregados pelos nomes das suas terras, que tem na
capitania de Benguela,” AIHGB, DL32,02.01, fls. 5v-6. On the extant summary census materials for Novo
Redondo and Caconda, see Curto,”Sources for the Pre-1900 Population History of Sub-Saharan Africa.” And
Brazilians also resided in other areas of Benguela’s hinterland. This was the case of Manoel da Silva Pinto,
who lived in Quilengues to the south of Caconda: a 46 year old black barber married in Bahia, he prefered to
work the land, probably with his only slave, a female slave. See “Ofício de Miguel Antônio Serrão, capitão
regente [da província de Quilengues a Alexandre José Botelho de Vasconcelos, governador de Benguela] sobre
os problemas encontrados no sertão,” 28 February, 1798, AIHGB, DL32,02.06, fl. 41v. According to Cruz e
Silva, “The Saga of Kakonda and Kilengues,” the presence of these Brazilians led to widespread enslavement
in the interior, particularly during the 1790s, producing many of the captives shipped by their compatriots in
Benguela.
31
29
The significant weight of mulattos and blacks amongst Brazilian residents is given further weight by the data
found in the nominal census lists of November 1797. Although neither give information on place of birth, they
do offer indications that some of the enumerated were, if not born in the land of Vera Cruz, most probably
Brazilianized after having lived there for years. These indications include individuals having married in various
Brazilian cities but tellingly, not moving to Benguela with their spouses, having practiced previous occupations
in the land of Vera Cruz, or having retained their status as residents of urban landscapes in Brazil. Of the
sixteen individuals in the 1797 nominal lists that fall into these criteria, 4 are listed as white, 5 as mulatto, 6 as
black, and 1 with no phenotype assigned. See Table I.
30
See, in particular, Karasch, Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro; and Alden, “The Population of Brazil in the Late
Eighteenth Century.”
31
Ibid. The same was true in Angola. For the case of Luanda, which is better studied, see: Curto and Gervais,
“Population History of Luanda,” pp. 33-35; and José C. Curto, “`As If From a Free Womb’: Baptismal
Manumissions in the Conceição Parish, Luanda, 1778-1807,” Portuguese Studies Review 10 (2002), pp. 26-57.
With respect to Benguela, the extant summary census data work out to an annual average of less than 10
mulatto male and female slave residents.
32
Such occurrences were certainly common enough in Rio de Janeiro which explains, in part, the need of slave
owners there to continuously seek new captive labor in Africa, Benguela included. See, amongst others:
Florentino, Em Costas Negras; Karasch, Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro; and Alden, “The Population of Brazil in
the Late Eighteenth Century.” As it happens, there was no shortage of forros both within Benguela and
throughout its immediate hinterland. See, for example: “Relação de Manuel José de Silveira Teixeira … [d]os
moradores da [parte sul da] cidade de São Felipe de Benguela,” AIHGB, DL32,02.02, fls. 7-17v; “Relação de
José Caetano Carneiro … dos moradores da parte do norte da cidade de São Felipe de Benguela,” AIHGB,
DL32,02.03, fls. 20-32v; and “Relação feita por João da Costa Frade, do Presídio de Caconda em Benguela,
sobre moradores, escravos, forros, mantimentos e gados existentes,” 31 Decembre, 1797, AIHGB, DL31,05,
fls. 1-19. The existence of these individuals in Angola, which has been totally neglected by historians, is a
promising topic of analyses for an enterprising graduate student.
33
Unlike Verger, Trade Relations Between the Bight of Benin and Bahia, few scholars have highlighted the
movement of Brazilians and Brazilianized individuals into West Africa before the 1830s. As recently pointed
out by Law and Mann, “West Africa in the Atlantic Community,” p. 315, this earlier period is also crucial to
“understand the construction and character of the Atlantic community” as an historical process over the longue
dureé.
34
One of the better known cases of returning slaves is that of Manuel do Salvador who was exported from
Luanda to Brazil as a young child, along with a brother and his mother, and then returned to the colonial
capital of Angola as a young man, still enslaved, sometime in the late 1760s. See the extensive documention on
this unusual, though not uncommon, case in AHU, Angola, Cx. 55, Doc. 43. A preliminary analysis is found in
Selma Pantoja, “Aberturas e Limites da Administração Pombalina em África: Os Autos da Devessa sobre o
negro Salvador,” Estudos Afro-Asiáticos. Vol. 29 (1996), pp. 143-160. Another case is that of António
Marcelino, a black male from Rio de Janeiro who on June 16, 1782, baptised in the Conceição Parish of
Luanda a daughter he had had with Theresa José, a local black slave owned by Dona Beatrix de Queiros
Coutinho: Arquivo da Arquidiocese de Luanda (AAL), Conceição, Baptismos, 1770-1786, fl. 278v. Yet
another, even more interesting case, is that of Francisco Lourenço, a black slave from Brasil who on August
18, 1802, baptised in the same parish a daughter he had had with Maria Antónia, black slave of the widowed
Dona Joanna Moreira Rangel from Pungo Andongo: while the baptism was being registered by the officiating
priest, he refused to name his owner, not to mention parish in Brazil: AAL, Conceição, Baptismos, 1801-1809,
32
fl. 54. Francisco was most likely a runaway slave.
35
On the returning “Benguelas,” see the discussion below.
36
See Graphs IV through VI.
37
Of the white female residents, who averaged 5 during each of these years, one was a widow in 1806 and the
remainder married. See the 1804-1808 summary censuses in fn. 10.
38
See Table I.
39
Curto, Álcool e Escravos, pp. 299-301.
40
José C. Curto, Enslaving Spirits: The Portuguese-Brazilian Alcohol Trade at Luanda and its Hinterland, c.
1550-1830. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, “Atlantic World: Europe, Africa and Americas 1500-1900
series,” forthcoming.
41
See Table I.
42
Ibid.
43
Carlos Eugênio Líbano Soares and Flávio dos Santos Gomes, “`Dizem as Quitandeiras...’Ocupações urbanas
e identidades étnicas numa cidade escravista: Rio de Janeiro, século XIX,” in O Arquivo Nacional e seus
pesquisadores, Vol. 15, número 2, 2002, pp. 3-16; Luiz Carlos Soares, “Os escravos de ganho no Rio de
Janeiro do século XIX,” Revista Brasileira de História. Vol 8, 1988, pp. 107-142; idem, Urban slavery in
nineteenth century Rio de Janeiro. London, University College, 1988; and Marilene R. Nogueira, O negro na
rua: uma nova perspectiva da escravidão, Rio de Janeiro: Hucitec, 1988. See, as well, the extensive work of
Mary C. Karsch, including: “From Porterage to Proprietorship: African occupations in Rio de Janeiro, 18081850" in Stanley Engerman and Eugene Genovese, eds. Race and Slavery in the Western Hemisphere:
Quantitative Studies. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975, pp. 369-393; “Suppliers, Sellers, Servants,
and Slaves,” in Louisa S. Hoberman and Susan M. Socolow, eds. Cities and Society in Colonial America.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986, pp. 251-283; and , especially, Slave Life in Rio de
Janeiro.
44
The phenomenon of Donas is relatively well studied, particularly in the setting of Luanda. See: Julio de
Castro Lopo, “Uma Rica Dona de Luanda,” Portucale. Vol. 3, 1948, pp. 129-138; Mário A. Fernandes de
Oliveira, Alguns Aspectos da Administração de Angola em Época de Reformas (1834-1851). Lisbon:
Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 1981, pp. 36-64; Miller, Way of Death, pp. 289-295; Douglas L. Wheeler,
“Angolan Woman of Means: D. Ana Joaquina dos Santos e Silva, Mid-Nineteenth Century Luso-African
Merchant-Capitalist of Luanda,” Santa Barbara Portuguese Studies. Vol. 3, 1996, pp. 284-297; Selma
Pantoja, “Donas de `Arimos’: Um negócio feminino no abastecimento de gêneros alimentícios em Luanda
(séculos XVIII e XIX),” in Selma Pantoja, ed. Entre Áfricas e Brasis. Brasília: Paralelo 15, 2001, pp. 35-49;
and Curto, “As If From a Free Womb.” The quintandeiras, however, remain largely understudied. See: Ana de
Sousa Santos, “Quitandas e Quitandeiras de Luanda,” Boletim do Instituto de Investigação Científica de
Angola. Vol. 4 (1967), pp. 80-112; and Selma Pantoja, “Quitanda e quitandeiras: história e deslocamento na
nova lógica do espaço em Luanda,” in Maria E. Madeira Santos, ed. A África e a Instalação do Sistema
Colonial (c. 1885 – c. 1935): Actas da III Reunião Internacional de História da África. Lisbon, Centro de
Estudos de História e Cartografia Antiga, 2000, pp. 175-186. For a short discussion of the quitanda or public
market of Benguela, see Delgado, Ao Sul do Cuanza, Vol. I, pp. 71-75.
33
45
And this assortment also included Brazilian or Brazilianised degradados or political and criminal exiles,
both free and enslaved women and men of all backgrounds. Starting with the second half of the 1600s, Angola
became a relatively important destination for these individuals. See Timothy J. Coates, Degradados e Orfãs:
colonização dirigida pela coroa no império português, 1550-1755. Lisbon: Commissão Nacional para as
Comemorações dos Descobrimentos Portugueses, 1998, pp. 74, 115, 141, 143, 146-47, 148, 161, 171-72, 220,
and 270. Although most were destined for Luanda and its hinterland, they were also found in and around Cattle
Bay. Charles R. Boxer, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1415-1825. London: Hutchinson, 1969, p. 312,
stretches the point by stating that “notoriously unhealthy or ill-famed regions, such as Benguela…, hardly
received anyone else save these exiles and government officials after the mid-seventeenth century.” One of the
these degragados was the wealthy fazendeiro, or large estate owner, Coronel António de Oliveira Lopes,
whose active part in the failed 1788-1789 Inconfidência Mineira or Conspirary of Minas Gerais earned him
banishment to Bihé. In Benguela by the mid-October of 1792, António de Oliveira died there within one year.
Delgado, Famosa e Historica Benguela, p. 21. During the late 1840s, the Brazilian state was still deporting
people to Cattle Bay. Césario Mina, a freed man in Rio de Janeiro, was one. Having failed to meet the
conditions to remain forro, he was deported to Benguela early in 1848. Life in the land of the “Benguelas” was
not particularly attractive for a “Mina” from Guanabara Bay. Within months, Césario was back in Rio de
Janeiro, where he was soon caught by the police, who put him on another vessel bound for an unspecified
place in Angola. See Soares, Capoeira Escrava e Outras Tradições Rebeldes, pp. 385-86 and 423, who
suggests that other “Mina” troublemakers may have been deported to Benguela.
46
See Graph I.
47
See Graph II.
48
See Graph III.
49
See Graph IV.
50
See Graph V.
51
See Graph VI.
52
Miller, “Angola central e sul,” p. 39.
53
“Demostração da qualidade, e quantidade dos generos exportados desta Cidade de Benguela, com declaração
dos portos para onde forão nos annos de 1823, 1824, e 1825,” AIHGB, DL82,01.18, fl. 40.
54
Joseph C. Miller, “The Number, Origins, and Destinations of Slaves, in the Eighteenth Century Angolan
Slave Trade,” in Joseph. E. Inikori and Stanley L. Engerman, eds. The Atlantic Slave Trade: Effects on
Economies, Societies, and Peoples in Africa, the Americas, and Europe. Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
1992, p. 100.
55
Three individuals stand out as the leaders of the Brazilian party. One was Justiniano José dos Reis, in whose
house the conspirators met regularly during the mid-1820s. Born in the land of Vera Cruz, he was by then an
important slave trader in this port town. In December of 1826, having risen to the rank of Lieutenant-Coronel
of the Milicia, Justiniano José was appointed to the biumvurate that temporarily governed Benguela until the
end of March of the following year. He was again appointed, along with his compatriot João Nepocumeno
Souza, to the Interim Government that administred the port town from March of 1832 until February of 1833.
Subsequently elevated to Fidalgo da Cota d’Armas and Comendador of the Order of Christ by the Portuguese
Crown, he was given the position of Interim Governor of Benguela on November 19, 1835, an appointment
34
which subsequently became permanent. He died, still in this position, on June 01, 1838. Another was António
Lopes Anjo, who appears to have been scribe of the presídio of Novo Redondo before relocating south to
Benguela around 1808. Once there, he too emerged into a signficant slave trader and is known to have been
part owner of at least one vessel, the Brigue bergantim Desengano. Captain of the Ordenanças, Juiz pela
Ordenação, Provedor e Presidente of the Municipal Council of Benguela, and Interim Governor of Benguela
in late 1823, António Lopes subsequently asked permission from the local colonial authorities to answer the
call of the Brazilian state for its citizens to return to the motherland. He was nevertheless to remain in this
central Angolan port town until the mid-1830s. And, last but not least, there was Francisco Ferreira Gomes, a
Lieutenant. Having settling in Benguela sometime before 1820, he also subsequently became a slave trader of
substantial means and partner owner of the Desengano. Lieutenant Francisco Ferreira returned to Rio de
Janeiro in 1834, leaving his son José Ferreira Gomes to manage the family business in Benguela. Details on
these individuals are found in: Delgado, Famosa e Histórica Benguela, pp. 52 and 72-127; and Silva Rebelo,
Relações entre Angola e Brasil, pp. 167, 247, 249-50, and 261. See also Florentino, Em Costas Negras, p.
133. For the less fortuned victims of the backlash against Brazilians, some of whom went so far as to publish
their mishaps as pamphlets in Rio de Janeiro, see: Joaquim Lopes dos Santos, Memoria da violência praticada
pelo Governador de Benguella. Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional, 1824; Vieira da Cunha Joaquim,
Exposição para tornar pública a injustiça praticada pelos membros da Junta Provisória da Cidade de
Benguela. Rio de Janeiro: Typographia Mercantil, 1824. See also the sources listed in the following footnote.
56
See, for example: “Documentos referentes ao sequestro de bens e propriedades de brasileiros em Angola,
antes do reconhecimento da independencia,” 1823, Biblioteca Nacional do Rio de Janeiro, Seçcão de
Manuscritos, II-31, 2, 11; “Ordem regia, de D. João VI, mandando levantar o sequestro em Angola e Benguela,
de todas as propriedades de Brasileiros,” September 1823, ibid, II-31, 24, 4 No. 4; “Ofícios (extratos) de
Nicolau de Abreu Castelo Branco, governador de Angola, dos períodos de 15/05 a 10/06 [1825] informando
sobre acontecimentos entre o Batalhão Expedicionário e o governador Cristóvão Avelino Dias,” AIHGB,
DL76,02.23, fls. 56-65v; “Ofício de Domingos Pereira Dinís, [tenente coronel das duas Companhias de
Infantaria e Artilharia de Benguela], a Inácio da Costa Quintela, [ministro e secretário de Estado dos Negócios
do Reino no Brasil e da Marinha em Portugal], sobre os desmandos praticados por Nicolau de Abreu Castelo
Branco, governador e capitão general de Angola,” 01 February, 1827, AIHGB, DL125,11.02, fls. 5-36v;
AHNA, Códices 444 through 449, which contain a great of the outbound official correspondence from the
Governors of Benguela during the 1820s; and AHU, Angola, Caixas 140 through 157, which also contain
many documents on these events. Some of these primary sources are published in: Delgado, A Famosa e
Histórica Benguela, pp. 457-481; and Silva Rebelo, Relações entre Angola e Brasil, pp. 405-421.
57
See Table II. I am indebted to Professor Manolo Florentino for sharing with me this part of his archival
research.
58
This priest had almost certainly resided in Benguela, since a Thomé Fernandes Affonço da Penha, Vigario
Encomendado, was responsible for the 1827 and the 1828 “Mappa da Povoação, Nascimentos, Casamentos, e
mortes da Cidade de São Felippe de Benguela,” both in AHU, Angola: Cx. 167, Doc. 33.
59
Part of a Brazilian proverb, first written in 1711, as found in André João Antonil, Cultura e opulência da
Brasil por suas drogas e minas. São Paulo: Companhia Melhoramentos, 1922, pp. 92-93.
60
Delgado, Ao Sul do Cuanza, Vol. I, p. 122.
35

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