Christian Missionaries, Slavery, and the Slave Trade

Abstract

The Portuguese colony of Angola was a major eighteenth-century slaving hub with an intense history of European-African interactions. These relationships were deeply influenced by a longstanding presence of religious orders that had begun proselytization in the region in the sixteenth century. Historiography focusing on missionary activity in Angola, and Africa in general, has the tendency to regard missionaries primarily as agents of the Church and the colonial state, who helped consolidate colonial dominion through proselytization. Researchers sometimes overlook the active participation of religious institutions in slavery and the slave trade. In this historiographical context, eighteenth-century Luanda and its hinterlands can offer a new and unique perspective. By exploring the regular clergy’s involvement in slavery and the slave trade in Luanda and along the rivers Bengo, Dande, and Kwanza, this article examines the ecclesiastics’ role as enslavers and landowners, as well as the complex interplay between West-Central Africans and European missionaries.