Women and Property in West Central Africa: Teresa De Jesus and Her Quest for Land Rights, 1850–70

Colonial documents about West Central Africa reveal the existence of multiple legal systems coexisting since the early seventeenth century, with Kimbundu terms such as mucano, undamento, and so on, employed in official documents. I examine the cases of African women who settled dispute or challenged rights in colonial courts during the second half of the nineteenth century. Property disputes were common among the over 2,100 cases available at the Tribunal da Comarca de Benguela. Perhaps the most relevant case of an African woman who establish herself as a property owner was the case of Dona Teresa Jesus, who owned land and human beings in Benguela and Dombe Grande. As a result, she became the leading exporter of cotton, wax, and orchil weed from the port of Benguela in the 1860s. Teresa de Jesus initiated different legal proceedings between 1856 and 1870. In many of these cases, she was able to collect debts and claim inheritance rights, as well as register the sale of enslaved men and women, and challenge the power of local rulers. I analyze Teresa Jesus’ presence in the colonial courts to discuss the mechanisms employed by African women in Benguela and its interior to secure rights and protect their actions as commercial agents and legal intermediaries such as guarantors and executors.