Understanding African women’s access to landed property in nineteenth-century Benguela

ABSTRACT

This study examines the mechanisms that African women employed to accumulate wealth and property during the nineteenth century. After the ban on slave exports in 1836, West Central Africans looked for new economic activities and shifted their focus and energy to the trade in commodities as legitimate commerce expanded in Benguela. In the process, African women achieved new social and economic positions in the colonial setting, accumulating dependents and goods. The concentration of dependents, including enslaved ones, clustered wealth in fewer hands and altered notions of land access and rights. Primary sources reveal consumption patterns that suggest that property was accumulated in different ways, and that such accumulation spread far into the interior. This article emphasizes African women’s role as active agents of change on the coast and in the interior of Benguela during this time of economic transformation, making extensive use of kinship, affinity and economic networks that already existed.

RÉSUMÉ

Cette étude examine les mécanismes employés par les femmes en Afrique pour accumuler des richesses et des biens au cours du dix-neuvième siècle. Après l’interdiction d’exporter des esclaves de 1836, les Africains du Centre-Ouest ont cherché de nouvelles activités économiques et se sont tournés vers le commerce des produits de base, alors que le commerce légitime se développait au Benguela. Au cours de ce processus, les femmes africaines ont obtenu de nouvelles positions sociales et économiques dans l’environnement colonial, en acquérant des personnes à charge et des biens. La concentration de personnes à charge, y compris certaines avec un statut d’esclave, a concentré la richesse entre les mains d’un nombre limité de personnes et modifié les notions d’accès à la terre et au droit foncier. Des sources primaires révèlent des modèles de consommation suggérant que la propriété a été accumulée de différentes manières, et que cette accumulation s’est étendue loin à l’intérieur du Benguela. Cet article met l’accent sur le rôle des femmes en tant qu’agents actifs du changement sur la côte et dans l’intérieur du Benguela pendant cette ère de transformation économique, faisant largement appel à la parenté, aux affinités et aux réseaux économiques qui existaient déjà.

KEYWORDS:

• Women
• property
• Angola
• legitimate trade
• nineteenth century

MOTS-CLÉS:

• Femmes
• propriété
• Angola
• commerce légitime
• dix-neuvième siècle

Acknowledgments

Fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and grants from the Kellogg Institute, at the University of Notre Dame, supported the research presented in this article. I am very grateful for the suggestions and comments made by Adam Jones, Lorelle Semley, Toby Green, Silke Strickrodt, Natalie Everts, Vanessa Oliveira, Suzanne Schwarz, Zack Kagan-Guthrie, Kathleen Sheldon, and Cyndy Brown. I presented earlier versions of this paper at the NYU Atlantic Workshop; the Institute of African Studies’ seminar series/Emory University; the “ Land Ownership and Conflict in a Global Context”/ Max Planck Institute for European Legal History, and the Kellogg Institute at the University of Notre Dame. I benefited from the feedback of the workshop participants, in particular from Jennifer Morgan, Kristin Mann, Pamela Scully, Adriana Chira, Clifton Crais, and Ana Catarina Teixeira; Carmeal Alveal and Mariana Dias Paes; Jaime Bleck, Paul Ocobock, Natália Bueno, and Lauren Honig. Eugénia Rodrigues, Vanessa Oliveira, Maria Bastião, Esteban Alfaros Salas, and Cândido Domingues also provided valuable suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Inventories are available at the Tribunal da Província de Benguela (Benguela Court House), with some also available at the Arquivo Nacional de Angola (Angolan National Archive).

2. Almanak Statistico da Provincia de Angola e suas dependencias para o ano de 1852 (Luanda: Imprensa do Governo, 1851), 9. The 1850 population census identified seven white women residents in Benguela.

3. For more on this see Almanak statistico da provinicia de Angola e suas dependencias para o ano de 1852, 9.

4. For the case of heirs challenging the matrilineal system in Portuguese courts, see Arquivo Nacional de Angola (ANA), Cod. 471, E – 7 – 5, “Registro de ofícios expedidos 13 de junho de 1857 a 22 de janeiro de 1859,” fl. 189, 2 December 1858, Governador de Benguela to governador geral da província.

5. Bispado de Luanda (BL), Óbitos de Benguela, 1797–1831, fl. 145V, 9 August 1820. Pardo is usually translated as a synonym of mulato, or mixed-race person. See Antonio Vieyra, Dictionary of the Portuguese and English Languages in Two Parts (London, Printed for F. Wingrave, 1813). According to Hebe Mattos’s assessment of Rio de Janeiro in the nineteenth century, pardo can also mean a freeborn black person with no association with slavery. It is not clear if this new meaning traveled back to Angola, but it may be possible considering the strong presence of Brazilian-born officials. Hebe Mattos, Das cores do Silêncio: os significados da liberdade no sudeste escravista: Brasil século XIX (Rio de Janeiro: Arquivo Nacional, 1995), 33–35.

6. BL, Batismo Caconda, 1771–1832, fl. 80–80v, 24 August 1819. Gomes José Coelho de Sousa came from a family of colonial officers. His father had served as a captain in Angola.

7. Tribunal da Província de Benguela (TPB), Inventários, maço 12, processo n. 28, 1854 “Autos cívis do Inventário de Florência José do Cadaval.”

8. AHU, 2 sessão, pasta 38, “Relatório do Governo de Benguela referente a 1864-68,” fl. 17, 21 December 1868.

9. For other cases of residents of Benguela and its interior who invested in real estate, see TPB, “Inventário de Joana Rodrigues da Costa,” 13 May 1850; TPB, “Autos cívis do inventário vindo de Novo Redondo de José Fonseca Teixeira,” 1864; TPB, n. 230, “Autos cívis do inventário de Francisco Pacheco de Sousa e Silva,” 7 August 1865.

10. TPB, Processos, maço 3, ordem 70, 16 February 1861.

11. TPB, Processos, maço 3, ordem 70, 16 February 1861. For currency conversion see W. G. Clarence-Smith, The Third Portuguese Empire, 1825–1975: A Study in Economic Imperialism (Manchester University Press, 1985), 277, and the British National Archives currency converter tool at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency-converter/. I am very thankful to Eugénia Rodrigues, Maria Bastião, Cândido Domingues and Suzanne Schwarz who helped me figure out currency values and their worth.

12. TPB, Inventários, maço 12, processo n. 28, 1854 “Autos cívis do inventário de Florência José do Cadaval,” fl. 7–14v.

13. For dona Florencia José do Cadaval as godmother see BL, Batismo Caconda 1771–1836, fl. 101v–102, 27 February 1828; fl. 116V, 16 January 1836; fl. 122V, 4 January 1838; fl. 127–127v, 8 January 1839; fl. 153, 6 January 1836; Batismo de Caconda, 1853–54; fl. 16, 8 December 1853; fl. 48, 6 January 1854.

14. ANA, Cod. 7182, fl. 19V, n. 598, 23 September 1826.

15. Biblioteca da Província de Benguela (BPB), Termo de Terrenos 1843–1894.

16. BPB, “Termo de Terrenos,” fl. 5 v, 22 October 1845; and fl. 21–21v, 30 June 1851.

17. For Francisca Maria Pacheco’s petition see BPB, “Termo de Terrenos,” fl. 53V, 4 January 1855; for Joana Mendes de Morais, see fl. 54, 28 March 1855; and for the sisters Francisca dos Santos see fl. 59V and 60, 24 October 1857.

18. TPB, Processos, maço 4, processo n. 55, 1863, “Inventário de João Batista da Silva,” fls. 1–14.

19. TPB, Inventários, maço 12, processo n. 28, 1854, “Autos Civis do Inventário de Florência José do Cadaval,” fl. 7–14v.

20. TPB, Processos, maço 4, processo n. 62, 1864, fl. 4–6.

21. BPB, Termo de Terreno, fl. 45V, 18 August 1853; and fl. 54, 28 March 1855.

22. BL, Benguela, Óbito 1858–1868, 30v, 7 June 1861.

23. For Mendes de Moraes’s will, see TPB, Processos, maço 3, processo n. 42, “Autos Civies de Joana Mendes de Moraes,” 11 June 1861.

24. TPB, Processos, maço 3, processo n. 42, “Autos Civis de Joana Mendes de Moraes”, 11 June 1861, fl. 23–25.

25. TPB, Processos, maço 3, processo n. 42, “Autos Civis de Joana Mendes de Moraes,” 11 June 1861.

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Mariana P. Candido

Mariana P. Candido is acting associate professor, Emory University. Her research deals with the economic, social and cultural history of Angola in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Her publications include An African Slaving Port and the Atlantic World: Benguela and Its Hinterland (Cambridge University Press, 2013); Fronteras de Esclavización: Esclavitud, Comercio e Identidad en Benguela, 1780–1850 (Colegio de Mexico Press, 2011); African Women in the Atlantic World: Property, Vulnerability and Mobility, 1680–1880 (co-edited with Adam Jones; James Currey, 2019); Laços Atlânticos: África e africanos durante a era do comércio transatlântico de escravos (co-edited with Carlos Liberato, Paul Lovejoy and Renée Soulodre-La France; Museu Nacional da Escravatura/Ministério da Cultura, 2017); and Crossing Memories: Slavery and African Diaspora (co-edited with Ana Lucia Araujo and Paul Lovejoy; African World Press, 2011). Her articles have been published in Slavery and Abolition, History in Africa, Social Sciences and Missions, Tempo, Portuguese Studies Review, Journal of Eighteenth-Century Studies, Afro-Ásia, African Economic History, Cahier des anneaux de la mémoire, Luso-Brazilian Review, Saeculum, Brésil (s), Sciences humaines et sociales and edited volumes.