Lourenço da Silva Mendonça and the Black Atlantic Abolitionist Movement in the Seventeenth Century

A groundbreaking story of African agency and the abolition of slavery, providing a new perspective on the Atlantic slave trade.

José Lingna Nafafé (Author)

9781108838238, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 August 2022

377 pages
23.6 x 15.8 x 3.3 cm, 0.863 kg

'Nafafé has done us a great service by bringing Mendonça's story to readers … Nafafé has written not only a great reference but an enjoyable read that illustrates how one man's life was shaped by Atlantic entanglements and how he dealt with those entanglements.' Miguel Valerio, H-LatAm (https://networks.h-net.org)

This groundbreaking study tells the story of the highly organised, international legal court case for the abolition of slavery spearheaded by Prince Lourenço da Silva Mendonça in the seventeenth century. The case, presented before the Vatican, called for the freedom of all enslaved people and other oppressed groups. This included New Christians (Jews converted to Christianity) and Indigenous Americans in the Atlantic World, and Black Christians from confraternities in Angola, Brazil, Portugal and Spain. Abolition debate is generally believed to have been dominated by white Europeans in the eighteenth century. By centring African agency, José Lingna Nafafé offers a new perspective on the abolition movement, showing, for the first time, how the legal debate was begun not by Europeans, but by Africans. In the first book of its kind, Lingna Nafafé underscores the exceptionally complex nature of the African liberation struggle, and demystifies the common knowledge and accepted wisdom surrounding African slavery.

List of Tables
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Municipal Council of Luanda and the Politics of the Portuguese Governors in Angola
2. Ndongo's Political and Cultural Environment: Alliance, Internal Struggle, Puppeteering and Decline
3. The Journey of Mendonça: Princes of Pungo Andongo in Brazil
4. Mendonça's Journey to Portugal and Spain, and the Network of the Hebrew Nation and Native Americans
5. Mendonça's Discourse in the Vatican: Liberation as a Wider Atlantic Question
6. Mendonça's Quest for Abolition and the Tussle between Portuguese Overseas Council and the House of Ndongo
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Black & Asian studies [JFSL3], Social & cultural history [HBTB], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH]