Circuitos eléctricos

Because the scope of this research is twofold, moving between two continents and over a century in time, a thematic structure has been chosen. Chapter 2 introduces the main actors of this book, namely West Central Africans. Their interactions with each other will be highlighted, but also with the Portuguese colonizers, missionaries, and traders. Chapter 2 aims to outline the organization of the slave trade in the region, and will also look at the cultural life of Central Africans as they were drawn into the orbit of Atlantic Creole culture.

Chapter 3 is concerned with the demographic presence of Central Africans in the population of Minas Gerais, as far as it can possibly be quantified, and starts by examining the slave trade and how it served as a bridge between Africa and Brazil. Chapter 3 not only charts the flow of slaves to different ports in Brazil from Angola’s two main slaving ports, Luanda and Benguela, but also from other parts of Africa during the eighteenth century, pointing to

shifts in exports from different regions of Africa and to differences between the main ports in Brazil, which were Rio de Janeiro and Salvador during the eighteenth century. Slaves from both of these ports were re-exported to Minas Gerais, again with shifting emphasis during the century. Chapter 3 also outlines the characteristics of slave life in Minas Gerais. Slavery as an institution was often dehumanizing and did not spare its victims, but arguing such general circumstances for eighteenth-century Minas Gerais would be oversimplifying the case because the region offered many opportunities for slaves to gain their freedom.

Chapter 4 examines the processes of identification in West Central Africa and in Minas Gerais. The three major groups that emerged as collective identities in Brazil, namely Angola, Congo, and Benguela, will be discussed with an interpretation of what these terms meant for the individuals pertaining to these groups. This interpretation departs from conventional wisdom in that it seeks to argue that these terms were more than simple labels put on their property by slave owners. Central Africans gave these terms their own significance that was to a great extent influenced by their shared experience of the Middle Passage. The processes of identity formation with regard to Central Africans were assisted by the mutually intelligible Bantu languages that eased communication between individuals originating in this region. By appropriating markers of identity, such as Angola, Congo, or Benguela, Africans created viable communities that gave a meaning to slave life through belonging to a larger group. Chapter 4 also looks at other smaller Central African nations that were present in mineiro society. The chapter concludes with a discussion on stereotypes of different African “nations”.

Chapter 5 discusses religious life in Central Africa by examining indigenous religious traditions, the spread of Catholicism in the region, and the resulting syncretism that came to characterize religious life in some cases. The different trajectories of the spread of Catholicism in the kingdom of Kongo and in the conquest of Angola are given special attention. The chapter also discusses what happened to the religious identity of Central Africans when they were taken to Minas Gerais. It will be argued that there were special characteristics of Central African religious life that were brought to Brazil. One of the most important characteristics was flexibility and openness to new religious ideas.

While presenting a problem for the learned theologians of the Church, there was no conflict for Central Africans in mixing ideas from two religious traditions:

one African, the other European.

Continuing the discussion of religious identity, Chapter 6 deals with healing and divination practices on both sides of the southern Atlantic. Leaning heavily on Inquisitorial sources it examines the role of religious specialists in Central African societies. How Central African therapeutic practices were viewed

by Portuguese physicians in eighteenth-century Angola and how these doctors sought to introduce new medical innovations into Angola will be discussed.

Discerning the African background of healing and divination practices is instrumental in understanding the activities of Central African popular healers in Minas Gerais. By examining the ritual practices of individual healers and diviners, this study seeks to bring greater specificity to the discussion on the meanings of African origins in colonial Brazil and, most importantly, to give a voice to at least a few of the enslaved Africans, numbering over 10.5 million, who were forcibly taken to the Americas.

2.1 Measuring the Slave Trade to Brazil in the Eighteenth Century

Slaves arrived in Brazil from many different parts of Africa. Slave ships loaded their human cargo on the Atlantic African shoreline that extended from Senegambia through the Windward Coast and Gold Coast to the Bights of Benin and Biafra and to West Central Africa. In the eighteenth century, Indian Ocean ports in Southeast Africa were also included among the regions that sent slaves over the Southern Atlantic. These slaves came from widely varying cultural backgrounds and spoke numerous languages. While some areas were culturally and linguistically diverse, others were more homogenous. Studying the background of the African slaves who were exported from their homelands to Brazil is crucial to understanding African agency in colonial Brazil.

Using language as a criterion, Thornton has divided Atlantic Africa during the era of the slave trade into three culturally distinct zones, which he has further divided into seven subzones. The Upper Guinea cultural zone extended from the Senegal River down to the area just south of Cape Mount in modern Liberia. This was linguistically the most diverse region. Two completely different language families, the West Atlantic family and the Mande family, were represented in this zone. Despite linguistic differences, economic factors brought people culturally closer to each other. Mande commercial and political dominance led to frequent contacts between different language communities.

Cultural sharing and multilingualism were widespread, and the Muslim faith connected many peoples of the region.

The second great zone was Lower Guinea which stretched from the lagoons of the western Ivory Coast over to Cameroon. Linguistically this second zone was more homogenous than the first, for all the people in the Lower Guinea region spoke languages of the Kwa family. However, the Kwa family is an ancient one with great differences between Akan speakers in the west and the Aja group (including Fon, Yoruba, Edo and Igbos) in the east. Cultural intercommunication within this zone was extensive, and good transportation networks forged close economic and cultural contacts.¹

1 Thornton 1998a, pp. 186-190.

The third cultural zone was the Angola coast, or West Central Africa.

Linguistically this region was much less diverse than the other major zones.

All the people spoke languages of the Western Bantu subgroup, and only three languages, Kikongo, Kimbundu and Umbundu, dominated among the slaves that were exported from this region. Even people brought from the linguistically more diverse interior could learn these languages without much instruction within a few weeks, and they had numerous items of vocabulary in common.

Politically the Angolan zone was more diverse but from the point of view of ordinary people politics probably mattered little.²

The numbers of African slaves exported to the Americas have been studied by many generations of historians. The results of these studies are now stored in the new Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (TSTD) which has been online since 2008. The TSTD enables researchers to search the Voyages Database that contains information on 34,948 documented voyages between 1514 and 1866. However, the documented voyages represent only about four-fifths of the total volume of the Atlantic slave trade. This is due to the fact that all recorded data have not yet been found or have disappeared for good. Like any other trade, the slave trade also involved undocumented smuggling. For this reason, the TSTD includes an estimate on the total volume of the trade that tries to take into account the number of slaves imported in the Americas on slaving voyages which have not been documented. While the documented Voyages Database presents a total that is the absolute minimum number of slaves involved in the Atlantic slave trade, the estimates indicates a calculated approximation of all African slaves who were possibly taken to the Americas.

Because the sources covering Portuguese/Brazilian involvement in the trade have most notoriously been lost, the Estimates give a much higher figure for the Brazilian slave imports than indicated by the documented voyages.³

There are thus two sets of numbers in the database that can be used in assessing the volume of the trade from Africa to the Americas. The current estimate is that over 12.3 million slaves were exported from Africa between 1501 and 1866 and that approximately 10.5 million slaves arrived alive in the Americas. The documented numbers, according to the Voyages Database, indicate that 9,228,134 enslaved individuals were embarked in Africa and that 8,031,702 of them arrived alive in the Americas. It is estimated that, during the eighteenth century, some 2.21 million African slaves were taken on ships heading to Brazil and that 1.99 million of them arrived at their destination. For the eighteenth century, the documented voyages for Brazil list 1,465,341 slaves

2 Thornton 1998a, pp. 190-191.

3 For a discussion on the new TSTD, see Eltis and Richardson 2008. As Verger 1976, pp. 8-9, discusses, much of the Brazilian data concerning the slave trade was destroyed in the aftermath of the abolition of slavery in the country in 1888.

embarked in Africa with 1,320,495 disembarked in Brazil. As can be seen, the estimate is that some 700,000 slaves exported from Africa are missing from the Brazilian import data.⁴

While the documented voyages indicate the number of slaves exported on all ships for which records exist, estimates of the total volume are considerably higher. This has to be taken into account when looking at the regional origins of Africans in Brazil, because calculations of the relative numbers of slaves exported from different African regions yield different numbers depending on whether one uses the Voyages Database or the Estimates. Graphs 2.1 and 2.2 present the regional African origins of slaves disembarked in Brazil during the eighteenth century.

As Graph 2.1 indicates, Central Africa was by far the biggest exporter of slaves to Brazil during the eighteenth century, accounting for approximately half of the 1,320,495 known disembarked slaves. However, the estimated number of slave exports from Central Africa raises the volume even higher, accounting for 1.23 million people, or 62% of the total volume, whereas the documented voyages only account 665,000 imported Central Africans in Brazil.

Thus, the significance of Central Africa as a major exporting region of slaves is indisputable. Portuguese, or during the eighteenth century, Brazilian presence in Angola was based on over two centuries of trade and cultural contact. Earlier centuries of contact had effectively established the conventions of trading.

Portuguese power in West Central Africa offered both Portuguese and Brazilian slave traders a monopoly position in the local slave market. In Angola, they did not have to compete with traders of other European nations as fiercely as in West Africa.

But even if Brazil absorbed the majority of its slaves during the whole of the eighteenth century from West Central Africa, there were considerable variations in the patterns of trade over time. Judging by the number of documented imports, slaves from the Bight of Benin dominated the first three decades of trade in the eighteenth century. However, from 1701 to 1720, the estimated number raises the proportion from West Central Africa enormously and at the same time indicates only a slight increase from the Bight of Benin, giving West Central Africa a lead in the numbers. Only during the 1720s, the position of the Bight of Benin was indisputable. The high proportion of imports from West Africa, from what the Brazilians called Costa da Mina (Mina coast) during the early eighteenth century, probably reflects the high demand for West African slaves, generically called Mina, in colonial Brazil.

4 http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/database/search.faces;

http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/assessment/estimates.faces [both accessed 21 June 2011].

Source for Graphs 2.1 and 2.2: TSTD Voyages Database and Estimates (see Appendix for figures)

0 20 000 40 000 60 000 80 000 100 000 120 000 140 000 160 000

1701‐1710 1711‐1720 1721‐1730 1731‐1740 1741‐1750 1751‐1760 1761‐1770 1771‐1780 1781‐1790 1791‐1800

Graph 2.1: Regional origins of slaves disembarked in Brazil  1701‐1800 (documented)

Senegambia and offshore Atlantic Gold Coast Bight of Benin Bight of Biafra and Gulf of Guinea islands West Central Africa Southeast Africa and Indian Ocean islands

0 50 000 100 000 150 000 200 000 250 000

Graph 2.2: Regional origins of slaves disembarked in Brazil  1701‐1800 (estimated)

Senegambia and off‐

shore Atlantic Gold Coast Bight of Benin Bight of Biafra West Central Africa South East Africa and Indian Ocean Islands

Source for Graphs 2.1 and 2.2: TSTD Voyages Database and Estimates (see Appendix for figures)

Many studies have emphasized the dominance of Mina slaves in Minas Gerais during the first half of the eighteenth century. This will be analyzed in subchapter 3.2 by looking at sources from Minas Gerais, but here it is important to note that slave imports in the coastal ports of Brazil have to be taken into account when assessing the composition of the slave population that was transported into the interior of Brazil. Central Africans already arrived in Brazil in much higher proportions in the early decades of the eighteenth century than has been assumed. The documented imports show a dominance of Central Africans from the 1730s onwards, a domination that only grew as the century progressed. Only Senegambia shows similar consistent growth throughout the century, although on a much smaller scale than Central Africa.

Slaves arrived in Minas Gerais mainly through two gateways, Bahia and Rio de Janeiro. The principal route in the early decades of the eighteenth century was the Caminho da Bahia that connected Salvador with Sabará and Vila Rica. The connection from Minas Gerais to Rio de Janeiro led through the Caminho Velho and then increasingly through the Caminho Novo. Comparing the regional origins of slaves being disembarked in the ports of Bahia and Rio de Janeiro gives further clues of how the slave population in Minas Gerais was shaped. The documented voyages in the TSTD indicate that, during the eighteenth century, Bahia received 752,000 slaves whereas Rio de Janeiro received 302,000 or four-tenths of the number that went to Bahia. As can be seen from Graphs 2.3 and 2.4, the African origins in Bahia and Rio de Janeiro differed markedly from each other.

West African slaves from the Mina coast, or the Bight of Benin, dominated slave imports into Bahia throughout the eighteenth century.⁵ Only during the 1770s were they surpassed in number by imports from West Central Africa. West Central Africans were the second most imported group in Bahia, accounting for about a third of the total disembarkations during the century.⁶ The proportion of Central Africans remained fairly steady throughout the century. Slaves from the Bight of Benin and West Central Africa comprised over 90% of the slave population imported to Bahia. Re-export of slaves from Bahia to Minas Gerais was at its highest during the first half of the century, so a considerable number of Mina slaves would have arrived in the interior through the Caminho da Bahia.

In Rio de Janeiro, the number of slave imports shows a much closer connection to West Central Africa than to any other African region. Almost 95%

of slaves offloaded in Rio de Janeiro came from Central Africa. Only during the 1720s and the 1760s were the imports from the Bight of Benin of some significance.

The rise in West African imports in the 1720s probably reflected the high

5 On the trade relations between Bahia and Costa da Mina, see Verger 1976.

6 On the links between Bahia and West Central Africa, see Candido 2011b.

Source for Graphs 2.3 and 2.4: TSTD Voyages Database and Estimates (see Appendix for figures)

0 10 000 20 000 30 000 40 000 50 000 60 000

Graph 2.3: African origins of slaves disembarked in Bahia  1701‐1800

Senegambia and offshore Atlantic Gold Coast Bight of Benin

Bight of Biafra and Gulf of Guinea islands West Central Africa

0 10 000 20 000 30 000 40 000 50 000 60 000 70 000 80 000 90 000 100 000

1701‐1710 1711‐1720 1721‐1730 1731‐1740 1741‐1750 1751‐1760 1761‐1770 1771‐1780 1781‐1790 1791‐1800

Graph 2.4: African origins of slaves disembarked in South‐

East Brazil (Rio) 1701‐1800

Gold Coast Bight of Benin

Bight of Biafra and Gulf of Guinea islands West Central Africa and St. Helena Southeast Africa and Indian Ocean islands

Source for Graphs 2.3 and 2.4: TSTD Voyages Database (see Appendix for figures)

demand for slaves in Minas Gerais. This is reflected especially in the number of imports from the Gold Coast during that decade. It is notable that imports from the Gold Coast also peaked in number during the 1720s in Bahia. However, even during the 1720s, Central Africans formed the majority of the slaves imported into Rio de Janeiro, although that was the decade when the proportional number of Central Africans was at its lowest. In fact, taking the total number of slave disembarkations in Bahia and Rio de Janeiro during the 1720s, the number of Central Africans is almost 45%, with slaves from West African ports accounting for the rest.

The numbers provided by the TSTD on the regional African origins of slaves taken to Brazil, and to Rio de Janeiro and Bahia specifically, challenge the long held notion that West Africans completely dominated the slave population of Minas Gerais in the first half of the eighteenth century. This argument is valid for the first two decades, and, if one accepts the estimates presented in Graph 2.2, it would also be true for the 1720s. However, in light of documented slave disembarkations in Rio de Janeiro and Bahia, Central Africans were already close behind West Africans in the 1720s. It is of course possible that only West African slaves were re-exported into the mines of Minas Gerais while all the Central Africans stayed on the coastal plantations and towns. To know whether this was the case, sources from Minas Gerais are needed to clarify the constitution of the local slave population. This question will be addressed in Chapter 3. The remainder of this chapter focuses on West Central Africa to give a clearer picture of the origins of slaves in this region.