Becoming Portuguese Subjects: The Meanings of Catholic Baptism and Marriage in Benguela, 1800–20

This paper examines how West Central Africans appropriated Catholic rites of baptism and marriage to claim their participation in the Portuguese colonial state in Benguela, Angola, in the first two decades of the nineteenth century. Exploring parish data from Angolan archives, I will examine how West Central Africans used the bureaucracy of the Catholic Church – and the documents created by it – to assert their colonial rights.  Among other things, they resisted the advance of violence in a region deeply affected by the transatlantic slave trade. 

This study analyses the Atlantic society established in Benguela, and it stresses the connections between foreign traders, local African women and their extended families.  Further, it explores how the agents perceived baptism as an opportunity to “becoming” Portuguese subjects. Benguela was a major slaving port in the South Atlantic, which led to the formation of an Atlantic community with strong commercial links to African states located inland.  Hence, the necessity to differentiate insiders from outsiders (people who were not subjected to the colonial state).            The early nineteenth century was a period of shift in the transatlantic slave trade with foreign traders relocating to ports south of the Equator where slave trade was still legitimate.  The pressure of the international market accelerated violence.  Raids, warfare and kidnappings forced Africans to find strategies to resist enslavement.  Attending the local church, creating kinship through marriage and baptism were some of the strategies available to West Central Africans – but they also meant recognition of Portuguese authority and subjugation to a new set of believes.  This study engages with recent scholarship on cross-cultural contacts and creolization in Africa.