The Status of Enslaved Women in West Central Africa, 1800–1830

Abstract

Women represented the majority of the enslaved in western Africa, where they were valued for their productive and reproductive capacities. Enslaved women performed agricultural and domestic work, retail sales, and contributed to extend kinship groups bearing children fathered by their masters. In his work on the Sokoto Caliphate, Paul E. Lovejoy emphasized the sexual dimension in the enslavement of women. Lovejoy has argued that although women provided important productive labor, free men also considered physical attraction when acquiring enslaved women. Sexual abuse was an important aspect regarding women’s experience in captivity. In dialogue with Lovejoy’s scholarship, this article examines the experiences of enslaved women in Luanda and Benguela, the two major ports of Portuguese Angola, particularly their exposure to sexual violence. Drawing upon unexplored baptism records produced between 1800 and 1830, this study stresses how slave owners abused enslaved women in Luanda and Benguela, which resulted in the birth of children. Some infants were freed by their fathers while the majority lived under slavery as did their enslaved mothers.