All three authors – Jeremy Ball, William Beinart and Toby Green – have painstakingly read the book, and their engagement with it is really superb. They have demonstrated that they understand the historical setting of Mendonça’s case and the issues involved. Apart from their engagement with the book, they also raised some fundamental issues that I will address in this article. First, I provide a brief analysis of Beinart’s review. Second, I look at Green’s engagement, and, third, that of Ball.
I revisited the Vatican archives following the publication of my book in 2022, and have encountered new data about Mendonça – namely, the verdict and the follow-up debate surrounding the case. The verdict consists of eleven questions and answers. They are not part of my book; they represent new research findings that emerged after its publication. There had been a continued discussion concerning the verdict and its implications throughout the centuries. The verdict became law on 20 March 1686. Owing to the continued unlawful enslavement of Africans and Native Americans, to which Capuchin missionaries working in Africa and the Americas were exposed, they persistently brought back the case and the unlawful enslavement of Africans into ‘this question of the enslavement of Black people, which has been brought up at other times and has regularly been addressed in this Sacred Court’ (La questione presente su la schiavitù de Negri agitate altre volte in questo Sacro Tribunale, se fú sempre), and they maintained ongoing correspondence with the Vatican, often referred to as the ‘Supreme Court’ (Supremo Tribunale del S. Officio). Until the nineteenth century, the verdict was consistently reaffirmed – in 1711, 1739, 1743, 1794 and 1826 – owing to the ongoing issues concerning the unlawful enslavement of Africans. This might answer the question raised by Beinart in his review:
The nature of power and wealth in the seventeenth century seems to have kept Mendonça’s arguments, in part accepted by the Vatican court … it would be valuable to know whether these seventeenth-century ideas fed directly into later eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century abolitionist movements … Did Equiano, or Wilberforce, know about Mendonça, or at least have a diffuse sense of this legacy?
In 1794, the Vatican’s verdict on his case was discussed in the context of the abolitionist discourse that was prevalent in Europe at the time, particularly in Denmark and Britain. The contention was that Danish abolitionism had influenced British abolitionism, which was spearheaded by William Wilberforce and his generation of abolitionists. For them, and for the Vatican, abolition’s ‘day had already passed’ (serffatto termine é giá spirato), referring to Mendonça’s case, which was made law on 20 March 1686. They also raised concerns about the effectiveness of British abolitionism during that time and the potential harm it could cause to enslaved Africans in the Atlantic, compared to Mendonça’s approach. Although Britain was engaged in the abolition process, it continued to enslave Africans in excessive numbers – 150,000, in a short period of four years after Wilberforce won the majority vote in the Commons.
Mendonça’s connection with various groups across the Atlantic and with different empires (British, Dutch, French, Hispanic, Portuguese) demonstrates that broader engagement is essential for understanding the centuries-long process of African enslavement. Ongoing research is essential to achieve this goal, making funding necessary. Concerning the book being ‘extended through accessible versions and, ideally, a film’, there is a plan under way to make a feature film or documentary that highlights Mendonça’s remarkable achievement. However, securing funding for this initiative is quite challenging. This is also a conversation regarding an accessible version of the book.
Green states: ‘Some will wonder how far the examples from Angola – the only real site of a proto-colonial occupation in Africa before the late eighteenth century – are translatable to other parts of the continent. Others may dispute some of Nafafé’s representations of the historiography.’ To answer this question, we must first acknowledge that the transatlantic slave trade was not a Portuguese project alone; rather, it was a European project. As a European project, most of the practices in dealing with Africans on the continent were common. If it were not a European project, Atlantic slavery would not have lasted for these centuries. As Blackburn claims, ‘the slave-holders of the main Atlantic states – Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, England, France, and the United States’Footnote 1 – emulated each other in their practices. Furthermore, we need to examine the political, religious (cultural) and economic aspects of the Portuguese practices throughout the duration of their empire. To run the empire, the Portuguese established captaincies in Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Minas (present-day Ghana), São Tomé, Sierra Lonne, Benin, Sofala (present-day Mozambique), Mombasa (modern-day Kenya), Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, Pernambuco, Goa and Timor, among other places. These captaincies were run under the same rules, or at least with shared practices, for conquering the region in which they were established, including the enslavement of the local inhabitants. Rules for setting up governance for each captaincy and policies for taxation were similarly deployed across the continents of Africa, Brazil and Asia. War cabinets were created with rules for each captaincy relating to the intention of capturing and enslaving Africans, Brazilians, Indigenous Americans and Asians; these were the same on all three continents where the Portuguese were stationed. Bulls passed by a succession of popes to capture infidels were applied across Africa, Brazil and Asia. Fajardo, the judge from Madrid sent to Angola, reminded the Luso-Iberian crown in 1623 to apply uniformly the rules and policies that governed the empire.
The Portuguese were in what is today Ghana before the Dutch took over, and after the introduction of baculamento in Angola – or at least when it came to light. They were in Benin, Sierra Leone, Mombasa, Ghana, Goa and China before the English took over these territories and were well established to implement the policies that they had introduced in Angola. Taxation was part of the Iberian conquest before the Atlantic slave trade. Baculamento, the Angolan taxation system that was absorbed by the Portuguese, was a small element in the grand scheme of conquest. Its emergence in Fernão de Sousa’s edict of 1623 as an eternal tax system for Africans must not mislead us into thinking that it was a new practice. Rather, it was an old practice that had accompanied Portuguese conquest since the mid-fifteenth century. The code for runaway enslaved people was introduced uniformly across the three continents.
Following this mode of good practice throughout the Portuguese Empire, Portuguese governors were appointed to each captaincy, and after their tenures in Africa or Brazil ended, they were sent to other parts of the world, such as India, to implement or maintain the continuity of operations that had been carried out elsewhere. Take, for example, Salvador Correia de Sá e Benavides, who served as a governor of Angola from 1648 to 1651 and was previously governor of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 1637 to 1642, as well as from 1648 to 1659 and from 1660 to 1661.Footnote 2 Francisco de Távora served as a governor in Angola from 1669 to 1676, during which time Mendonça was exiled to Brazil, and in India from 1681 to 1686.
Black Christian confraternities that were created in Portugal with their respective constitutions were similar across Asia, Africa, Brazil and Europe. Lourenço da Silva Mendonça was appointed as the attorney general for Black Christians in Africa, Asia, Brazil and Europe.
Methods of punishment of enslaved people were applied across European empires against those who dared to challenge them. These empires enslaved, conquered and punished people, using similar methods against those who did not accept their norms. When the Dutch took over Angola, São Tomé and Príncipe, Bahia and Pernambuco, they did not change the Portuguese practices in those regions.
Ball suggests: ‘The inclusion of court documents from the Vatican, specifically from the Office of Propaganda Fide, either in an appendix or digitally, would enrich the book. I hope to see a companion publication with an annotated and translated court case and supporting documents.’ The ‘inclusion of court documents’ is currently being done systematically. This project is expected to be completed within the next couple of years.
