As If from a Free Womb”: Baptismal Manumissions in the Conceição Parish, Luanda, 1778-1807 José C

J. C. CURTO, PORTUGUESE STUDIES REVIEW 10 (1) (2002): 26-57 “As If From A Free Womb”: Baptismal Manumissions in the Conceição Parish, Luanda, 1778-1807 José C. Curto York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Abstract: This paper reconstructs and discusses the process of manumission in a slavocratic society that has so far remained outside the ambit of scholarly analysis: the Conceição Parish of Luanda, where the elites of colonial Angola resided. The sources on which it draws consist of 166 cases of slave enfranchisement at the baptismal font between 1778 and 1807, a particularly important period for both Luanda and Angola. Involving exclusively infants, this relatively small number of cases nevertheless relates to a far larger population pool, both enslaved and free, within the Conceição Parish. Thus, besides addressing the ritual incorporation of certain slaves into the Christian community, and the simultaneous freedom gained through the baptismal font, the study also provides otherwise unobtainable detailed insights into a specific slave and slave-holding society in West Central Africa. © 2002 Portuguese Studies Review. All rights reserved. anumission continues to be an important object of analysis for slave societies Mthroughout much of the Atlantic World.1 The process, although quantitatively negligible, was after all an extremely dramatic one. It involved an individual owner relinquishing property rights over one or a very small group of his/her slaves. Manumission discriminated among the enslaved to be enfranchised, since freedom was only granted to specific slaves. It was always the result of an agreement, intention, or contract between the individuals concerned, the owners and the slaves. Manumission was the only option available for the enslaved to become free persons legally. As such, it was the only method which saw slaves work within the system in order to secure their freedom and enabled them to live as free persons within the very communities where they had been previously held in bondage. Analysis of manumission can thus yield as many important insights into slave societies as do studies of the other two basic approaches used by slaves to secure their freedom: that is, flight or large-scale violent struggle. The aim of this paper is to reconstruct and discuss the process of manumission in one of these societies which, as it happens, has remained outside the ambit of scholarly analysis.2 The physical setting is Luanda, the major port and capital of the 1 As is clear, for example, from the many articles on manumission published in Slavery and Abolition. See also the papers presented at the conference From Slavery to Freedom: Manumission in the Atlantic World, October 4-7, 2000, College and University of Charleston. 2 Earlier versions of this article were presented at the conference From Slavery to Freedom: Manumission in the Atlantic World, October 4-7, 2000, College and University of Charleston, and the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association of African Studies, May 27-30, 2001. My thanks go to the 1057-1515/02-01/$—see front matter. © 2002 Portuguese Studies Review. All rights reserved. J. C. CURTO, PORTUGUESE STUDIES REVIEW 10 (1) (2002): 26-57 27 Portuguese colony of Angola. Our concern is not the whole process of slave enfranchisement but, rather, a specific type of manumission: the freeing of slaves during baptism. As such, this study involves a doubly dramatic act. Through the baptismal font, slaves not only were incorporated into a Christian community, but were also simultaneously freed from a life of bondage. The analysis is based on 166 manumissions that took place in the Sé Parish, one of two such ecclesiastic jurisdictions that made up the town well into the late nineteenth century. Covering a thirty year period from 1778 to 1807, the number of baptismal manumission cases is admittedly small. At one level, they reveal rather the broad contours of who was not manumitted in the Sé Parish. But at another level, as we shall see below, the data surrounding each of the cases is so rich that it provides many otherwise unobtainable insights into the manumission process and, equally important, into the slavocratic society of this ecclesiastic jurisdiction during a particularly important era of Luanda’s past. The essay begins by examining the socio-economic characteristics of the town. This is then followed by a discussion of the process of baptismal manumission itself. Here, we are particularly interested in deciphering not only the profiles of the manumitted, but also those of their parents and their owners. The analysis will conclude with a discussion of the motives behind the baptismal manumissions. Before proceeding, however, let us deal with the evidence that documents the process. The Sources The manumissions that took place in the Conceição Parish between the beginning of 1778 and the end of 1807 are drawn from the extant baptismal ledgers pertaining to this ecclesiastic jurisdiction,3 held in the Arquivo da Arquidiocese de Luanda.4 A typical register reads as follows: On October 17, 1781, I baptised Anna, natural daughter of Martha, black slave of Captain José Nogueira da Telha, and father unknown. She took Our Lady of Conceição for her patron saint and the Reverend Father Manuel Correa Leytão conference and annual meeting participants for their comments and suggestions, as well as to Joseph C. Miller, Paul E. Lovejoy, Renée Soulodre-LaFrance, and the anonymous referees of this journal for their constructive criticism. The usual disclaimers apply. 3 The production of parish registers (baptisms, marriages, and burials), called for by the Council of Trent in 1563, was institutionalized in Portugal by the Constituições de Coimbra of 1591. Later in that same decade, this requirement was extended to the Portuguese colonies: Maria L. Marcílio, “Dos registos paroquiais à demografia histórica no Brasil,” Anais de História 2 (1971): 85-86; and M. Felix, “Les registres paroissiaux et l'état civil au Portugal,” Archivum 8 (1958): 89-94. In Angola, ecclesiastic officials thus probably began to record the first baptisms, marriages, and burials at the turn of the sixteenth century. In the case of Luanda, the earliest known and extant baptism, marriage, and burial registers date from the later 1730s. See Carlos Pacheco, José da Silva Maia Ferreira: O homen e a sua época (Luanda: União dos Escritores Angolanos, 1990), 273. 4 Much of the research underlying this contribution was made possible by a Summer 1998 Research Grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and a 1997-1998 Internal Trent University Research Grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, to which I am indebted. I am also grateful to His Eminence, Cardinal Dom Alexandre do Nascimento, for “opening the doors” to the Arquivo da Arquidiocese de Luanda (hereinafter AAL), an important and rich, but otherwise inaccessible and, consequently, under-used archive. 28 J. C. CURTO, PORTUGUESE STUDIES REVIEW 10 (1) (2002): 26-57 as her godfather. The Master of the said child Anna told me that he was today giving her perpetual liberty and that he wanted her to be free from slavery as if born of a free womb, and that I so declare in this register...5 All of the registers provide the date of baptism (or birth) and manumission, as well as the names of the individuals thereby freed. A relatively large number of ledgers also provide the date of birth of or refer to the manumitted in terms that relate to their broad age-groups: for example, criança or young child and menimo/menina or infant boy/girl. Their mothers, all of whom were themselves slaves, are almost always named. Only rarely is their phenotype not listed. In the case of the fathers, the information available is less regular, but more comprehensive. The registers periodically provide their names, social status, phenotype, and/or occupation. The names of the owners of the individuals freed are similarly recorded in all of the cases, while their occupations are often also listed. Moreover, the godparents of those manumitted during baptism are almost always named, while their social status, phenotype, and/or occupation is also regularly registered. Finally, now and then, the motives behind enfranchisement are given. The ledgers thus contain a veritable mine of information which can be manipulated to throw light on the process of baptismal manumissions in the Conceição Parish.6 However, not all of the individuals named in these sources as baptised and freed were in effect the beneficiaries of baptismal manumissions. As the Governor of Angola pointed out to Portuguese Crown early in the nineteenth century, parish priests sometimes neglected to register the baptisms they officiated in the ledgers, from which resulted a number of individuals unable to produce a certificate of baptism.7 One of these appears to have been Rita, a mulatta baptised on 1 March, 1787. Almost fifty years later, she claimed that her liberty, enjoyed since birth, was not recorded in her baptismal register and consequently petitioned the Diocese of Angola to include such a reference in the said document so as “not to prejudice her offspring.”8 Moreover, other baptised slaves were granted their freedom after 5 AAL, Conceição, Baptismos, 1770-1786, fl. 279. 6 A user-friendly program, Paradox 7, was used to produce a Baptismal Manumissions Database, Conceição Parish, Luanda, 1778-1807. For each case of baptismal manumission, the database contains over 20 fields. In the case of the individuals freed during baptism, the fields include their names, their date of birth and/or baptism, their gender, and their birth-type. In the case of their fathers, on the other hand, the fields include their names, colour, social status, and occupation, when available, and, if enslaved, the names and occupation of their owners. The fields for their slave mothers include their names and colour, as well as the names and quite often the occupation of their owners.

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