Orjuus ja Ruotsin siirtomaahistoria Karibialla

Arvosteltu teos: Orjia ja isäntiä : ruotsalais-suomalainen siirtomaaherruus Karibialla / Jouko Aaltonen & Seppo Sivonen. Helsinki : Into, 2019

Healers, Idolaters, and Good Christians: A Case Study of Creolization and Popular Religion in Mid-Eighteenth Century Angola

The case of Joao Pereira da Cunha and Catarina Juliana provides insights on over two centuries of creolization in Central Africa. The detailed proceedings describe patterns of cultural and religious life that were common and popular in Angola in the eighteenth century. People were not normally punished for this type of behavior and did not get into trouble with the Inquisition unless they occupied an important position in the social hierarchy. In Joao Pereira da Cunha's case, many people clearly had economic reasons to force him out of the slave trade in Ambaca. But as commissario Moreira wrote to the Inquisitors, religious life in Angola was characterized by syncretic practices. The Portuguese administrators and priests roundly condemned these practices in the eighteenth century. For blacks and Luso-Africans of Angola, however, syncretism in religious practice was part of their everyday life. The stories of Joao Pereira da Cunha and Catarina Juliana show, at the individual's level, how creolization had come to characterize eighteenth-century Angola. Catholic religion brought by the Europeans played a prominent role in the daily life of the population, most strongly in Luanda and to a lesser degree in the interior. New elements were introduced into African religious life, but this did not necessarily imply that ancestral traditions would have been forgotten. In Luanda, Ambaca, and throughout Central Africa, many people, although baptized and nominally Christian, continued to adore their ancestral and territorial spirits. Central African religious life was inclusive and remained open to new ideas and influences but never abandoned the old traditions. Joao Pereira da Cunha's and Catarina Juliana's life both bear testimony to this spirit of religious and cultural tolerance—a tolerance that in their case proved to be fateful

Mariana Pequena, a black Angolan jew in early eighteenth-century Rio de Janeiro

This working paper is a study of a black woman from Angola named Mariana Pequena who was exported to Rio de Janeiro in the late seventeenth century. After obtaining her freedom in Brazil, she began a relationship with a white Portuguese New Christian. In 1711, she was accused of Judaism and condemned by the Inquisition of Lisbon for her religious beliefs. Her arrest was part of a crackdown on Rio’s New Christian community in the early eighteenth century. Exploring a little known aspect of Africans’ religious experience in the Portuguese colonial world, this paper seeks to answer why and how Mariana Pequena chose to convert to Judaism. In her confession, she revealed the full extent of her personal network, which included many fellow believers. Albeit a rare case, Mariana was not the only black African to become a Jew in the early modern world. In this paper, Mariana’s case is contextualized in the wider Black Atlantic world. It shows that Africans in the Diaspora did not necessarily have to adhere to their ancestral religious traditions or to their masters’ Christian religion but could make other choices based on their personal circumstances

The Trade in Slaves in Ovamboland, ca. 1850–1910

Slave trade in southern Angola and South West Afric

A Continent of Slaves: Anti-Slave-Trade Rhetoric and the Image of Africa in Finland in the Nineteenth Century

This article shows how the image of Africa as a continent burdened by slave trade and warfare evolved in Finland during the nineteenth century

Central African identities and religiosity in colonial Minas Gerais

This study deals with the import of West Central African slaves and their religious practices to Minas Gerais in the eighteenth century. The captaincy of Minas Gerais in the interior of Brazil developed into the world’s largest gold producing region in the beginning of the eighteenth century. The large-scale mining of gold, and later diamonds, was only possible through massive imports of slaves from Africa to Brazil. The first part of this study discusses the Atlantic slave trade in the southern Atlantic world. The discovery of gold in Minas Gerais led to an increasing demand for slaves in Brazil, which was largely met by supplies from Angola. The study analyzes the formation of Central Africans’ identities both in their homelands and in Brazil. Slave identities or “nations” have often been seen as creations of the slave owners. By interpreting major Central African “nations” such as Angola, Congo, and Benguela as regional identities that were tied to the slaves’ origins in Africa, this study offers a new interpretation of what these identities meant for Central Africans in Minas Gerais. The second part of this study concentrates on the religious universe of Central Africans. Processes of cultural creolization affected West Central African societies after the Portuguese landed in the kingdom of Kongo in the late fifteenth century and led to the development of an Atlantic Creole culture. The spread of Catholicism in West Central Africa affected religious life especially in the kingdom of Kongo, in the city of Luanda, and in the Portuguese colony of Angola. Central African religious specialists were often denounced to the authorities in Angola for organizing healing and divination rituals. Diagnosis in these rituals was often made through spirit possession. Central Africans took these healing and divining methods to Minas Gerais, where numerous African religious specialists enjoyed great prominence. In the Brazilian mining region, it was commonplace that African healers served not only the African slave population, but also free whites. In the eighteenth century, Central African popular healers made a significant contribution to the therapeutic arts practiced in Minas Gerais and elsewhere in Brazil