PORTUGUESE SLAVERY IN AFRICA

PORTUGUESE SLAVERY IN AFRICA



The Congo-Angola region was established as the main
Route supplier of slaves to Rio de Janeiro
during the eighteenth century. However, historian
Charles Boxer said that at least since the second
half of the sixteenth century, that area has been highlighted
as the main supplier of slaves for
Pernambuco, Bahia and Rio de Janeiro. The relationship established
by the Portuguese in the kingdom of Bantu
Congo date of 1482, when it attempted a strategy
domain of African territory, through Christianization.

Frustrated, this initiative soon became
the holding of the slave trade. Legislation
Portuguese-based "rescue" of slaves, source
gains tax effective for the crown, encouraged
this kind of business with the Bantu kingdom of Congo,
incursions by promoting so-called territories,
later, Angola.
Initially, slaves were shipped through the port
of Mpinda (Cabinda), but the ever-
more blacks would pave the way for clandestine departures
other ports in the West African coast.

In an attempt to organize this trade, the Crown
signed contracts with the traffickers, usually by
a period of six years, granting them the right
making the "rescue" the kingdoms of Congo, Angola,
Loango and Benguela. The "right of redemption" granted
to Prince Henry in 1448 on the black
Guinea, was incorporated in a charter of April 7, 1753,
in which D. Jose I sent to the Overseas Council to
legitimation of that tax for every slave coming from those
regions.

source:

(SANTOS, Nívia P. Cirne. O arquivo nacional e a história luso-brasileira. Disponível em :
http://www.historiacolonial.arquivonacional.gov.br/cgi/cgilua.exe/sys/start.htm?infoid=
37&sid=6&tpl=printerview. Acessado em 24/09/07.)