Here is a description of the book, titled Lourenço da Silva Mendonça and the Black Atlantic Abolitionist Movement in the Seventeenth Century:
“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.”
The book was just released in August, but what has been the academic reaction so far? If true, why has this topic been overlooked until now?
There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of research on Mendonça that I've been able to find since I saw this book referenced on Twitter this past week. There are two articles that predate the book that I'm hoping to read, but are behind paywalls:
The Papacy and the Atlantic Slave Trade: Lourenco da Silva, the Capuchins and the Decisions of the Holy See
Richard Gray. Past & Present, Volume 115, Issue 1, May 1987, Pages 52–68, https://doi.org/10.1093/past/115.1.52
Gray, Richard. (1997) "The Kongo Kingdom and the Papacy". History Today. 47: 44.
While not a peer reviewed source, this al Jazeera article provide a bit more context on Mendonça: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2021/3/10/how-portugal-silenced-centuries-of-violence-and-trauma
** snip from the article **
"José Lingna Nafafé, an anthropologist and historian at the University of Bristol in the UK. Nafafé has been tracing the history of a 17th Century Angolan abolitionist who went by the Portuguese name of Lourenço da Silva Mendonça. A prince of the Kongo Kingdom of Ndongo (in modern-day Angola), Lourenço was exiled from Ndongo for declaring war on the Portuguese invaders and sent to Brazil in 1671.
As a political exile of the Portuguese crown, Mendonça lived a relatively privileged life in Bahia, the northeastern state of Brazil where the Portuguese had introduced sugar-cane plantations and brought huge numbers of enslaved Africans to work in them. . . “The authorities were afraid that Mendonça would run away and join Palmares,” says Nafafé, an animated storyteller – even over Zoom – his walls covered with pictures from his upcoming book on Mendonça. “So, they sent him and his family away again, this time to Portugal in 1673.”
If the move was intended to subdue Mendonça’s anti-Portuguese activities, it failed. It was in Europe that Mendonça was to make his mark as an abolitionist – a trajectory that Nafafé has painstakingly pieced together from documents found in dusty archives across the continent.
After several years of study at a monastery in Portugal, Mendoça was appointed as an advocate of the Black Brotherhoods. This, according to Nafafé, is when records show that he had begun to work on a petition against slavery. Using his position, he enlisted the support of Black Brotherhoods across the Iberian peninsula, who lobbied the Vatican by writing letters that urged Pope Innocent XI to abolish slavery across the Atlantic. Pope Innocent XI, who held the title from 1676 to 1689, did, indeed, condemn the slave trade. With power in Europe divided at the time between the Crown and the Church, the Vatican had enormous power and influence over the fate of the enslaved."
** end snip **
As an avid lover of history, but not an actual historian, I'm left with a few questions, which I'm curious to hear other people's thoughts on.
1- What is the likelihood of Mendonça having already known Portuguese and/or Latin before having been exiled to Brazil and then Europe? Were the schools that had been set up by Alfonso I in the 1500s still around - and what language(s) were being taught to the Kongo children who attended?
2- Is there an online searchable source for papal records that would relate to Mendonça's case on March 6, 1684?
Want to jump back to this thread briefly. Yesterday, I attended, by way of zoom, a book launch event for Dr. Nafafe's book on Mendonça. The event was hosted by the Centre for Black Humanities at Bristol University in the UK, where Dr. Nafafe works. From what was shared, this book was supported by grant funding and its findings have been presented at international conferences. Dr. Nafafe did touch upon why Mendonça has not been more widely researched until now and it seems to come down to two issues. One, Portugal seems to be understudied, in general, when it comes to the Atlantic Slave trade, in part because not as many academics speak the language, which makes it more difficult to read through sources. Second, sources relating to Mendonça appear to be scattered throughout countries ranging from Brazil to Italy, making this project a truly collaborative effort that required a bit of serendipity to make it come together. (My words, not Dr. Nafafe's.)