Building Colonialism: Slavery, Racial Ideology, and Ethnography in Angola, 1830s-1880s

FAIN: FA-56870-12

Roquinaldo Amaral Ferreira
University of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA 22903-4833)

The purpose of this proposal is to obtain funding to write a book on the foundations of Portuguese colonialism in Angola from the 1830s to the 1880s. My book is provisionally entitled Building Colonialism: Slavery, Racial Ideology, and Ethnography in Angola, ca. 1830s-ca 1880s. Based on uniquely detailed and eclectic records collected in seventeen archives and libraries across the Atlantic (Angola, Brazil, England, France, Portugal, and the United States), my book tackles fundamental issues related to African history and Atlantic history, such as the spread of ideas about race in the south Atlantic, the relationship between racial ideologies and colonialism, the scope of unfree labor in Angola after the transatlantic slave trade, and the production of ethnographic knowledge by metropolitan actors seeking to bolster colonial presence in Angola.

Associated Products

“Biografia como História Social: o Clã Ferreira Gomes e os Mundos da Escravização no Atlântico Sul” (Article)
Title: “Biografia como História Social: o Clã Ferreira Gomes e os Mundos da Escravização no Atlântico Sul”
Author: Roquinaldo Ferreira
Abstract: This article deals with the social and economic ties that underpinned the slave trade from Angola to Brazil as well as the rise of Portuguese abolitionism in the first half of the nineteenth century. To that end, the article investigates the personal trajectory of José Ferreira Gomes, a black man born in Benguela whose mother, Florinda Josefa Gaspar, was the daughter of an African chief in Catumbela and the father, Francisco Ferreira Gomes, was a black man born in Brazil and one of the most active slave dealers in Benguela. By focusing on Gomes junior's career, the article sheds light on the social and cultural connections that Angolan slave dealers built with Brazil and African populations, the transition from the slave trade to legitimate commerce in Angola, and shifts in Portuguese policies towards shipments of slaves in Angola that took place in the 1840s. To further understand the rise of Portuguese colonialism in Angola, the article examines accusations that members of the Ferreira Gomes family led racial and anti-colonial sedition against the Portuguese.
Year: 2013
Primary URL: http:// http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_abstract&pid=S0104-87752013000300003&lng=pt&nrm=iso&tlng=en
Format: Journal
Publisher: Varia Historia

“Agricultural Enterprise and Unfree Labor in Nineteenth-Century Angola” (Book Section)
Title: “Agricultural Enterprise and Unfree Labor in Nineteenth-Century Angola”
Author: Roquinaldo Ferreira
Editor: Robin Law, Suzanne Schwartz and Silke Strickrod
Abstract: This article discusses Angolan's transition from the slave trade to Portuguese colonialism in the nineteenth century. It deals with the persistence of slavery in the Portuguese colony as well as forced labor. It devotes significant attention to Portuguese attempts to remodel Angolan's economy after the end of the slave trade and the loss of Brazil.
Year: 2013
Publisher: James Currey
Book Title: Commercial Agriculture, the Slave Trade & Slavery in Africa
ISBN: 184701075X

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