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‘To Satisfy My Savage Appetite’: Slavery, Belief, and Sexual Violence on the Mina (Gold) Coast, 1471–1571

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2022

Kwasi Konadu Open the ORCID record for Kwasi Konadu [Opens in a new window]
Kwasi Konadu*
Affiliation:
Colgate University, Hamilton, United States
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*Corresponding author. E-mail: kkonadu@colgate.edu
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Abstract

Scholars of women and girls in African history, focusing on gender and power within religious or colonial (slavery) contexts, have drawn our attention to sexual violence against girls and women. Despite what historians of slavery and imperial violence have noted about their vulnerability and survival strategies in ‘colonial’ and ‘postcolonial’ contexts, questions remain about sexual predation and slavery in earlier periods. In the Mina (Gold) Coast, there is little known about the lived experiences of enslaved and ‘freed’ girls and women in the sixteenth century, and this is especially true for females held captive or in proximity to Portuguese slaving and gold trading bases of operation. Although only three inquisitional trials exist, sources which provide rare African female voices in the Portuguese colonial and evangelical world, their unprecedented baseline evidence for those under Portuguese slaving and religious authority tell us much about sexual violence, slavery, and religious orthodoxy.

Keywords

GhanaPortugalWest AfricabiographyChristianitywomenslaveryreligion
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 63 , Issue 2 , July 2022 , pp. 143 - 158
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

Portuguese officials dubbed the coastal region, now consolidated into the Republic of Ghana, ‘the coast of Mina’. The records often used the shorthand ‘Mina’ (‘[the gold] mine’), hence, the ‘Mina (Gold) Coast’ moniker.

References

2 Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo (ANTT), Tribunal do Santo Ofício (TSO), Inquisição de Lisboa (IL), processo (proc.) 1604, fls. 3–4v, 6v.

3 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 1604, fls. 15v, 17v, 23, 28v, 34, 37.

4 ‘Female power’ emphasizes how African women exercised power separate from European or African men. See Achebe, N., Female Monarchs and Merchant Queens in Africa (Athens, OH, 2020)Google Scholar.

5 For the wider literature on women, gender, and colonial (slavery) contexts in African history, see: Sheldon, K., African Women: Early History to the 21st Century (Bloomington, IN, 2017)Google Scholar; Griswold, W., Writing African Women: Gender, Popular Culture and Literature in West Africa (London, 2017)Google Scholar; Hunt, N. R., ‘The affective, the intellectual, and gender history’, The Journal of African History, 55:3 (2014), 331–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Saidi, C., Women's Authority and Society in Early East-Central Africa (Rochester, NY, 2010)Google Scholar; Zeleza, T., ‘Gender biases in African historiography’, in O. Oyèwùmí (ed.), African Gender Studies: A Reader (New York, 2005)Google Scholar; Johnson-Odim, C., ‘Women and gender in the history of sub-Saharan Africa’, in B. G. Smith (ed.), Women's History in Global Perspective, vol. III (Urbana, IL, 2004), 9–67Google Scholar; Allman, J., Geiger, S., and Musisi, N. (eds.), Women in African Colonial Histories (Bloomington, IN, 2002)Google Scholar; Berger, I. and White, E. F., Women in Sub-Saharan Africa: Restoring Women to History (Bloomington, IN, 1999)Google Scholar; Coquery-Vidrovitch, C., African Women: A Modern History, B. G. Raps (trans.), (Boulder, CO, 1997)Google Scholar; Oyèwùmí, O., The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses (Minneapolis, 1997)Google Scholar; Romero, P. W. (ed.), Life Histories of African Women (London, 1988)Google Scholar; Hunt, N. R. et al. (eds.), Gendered Colonialisms in African History (Malden, 1997)Google Scholar; Robertson, C. C. and Klein, M. A. (eds.), Women and Slavery in Africa (Madison, WI, 1983)Google Scholar.

6 For recent ‘(post)colonial’ examples, see Thornberry, E., Colonizing Consent: Rape and Governance in South Africa's Eastern Cape (New York, 2019)Google Scholar; Coetzee, A. and Toit, L. du, ‘Facing the sexual demon of colonial power: decolonising sexual violence in South Africa’, European Journal of Women's Studies, 25:2 (2018), 214–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Achebe, N., The Female King of Colonial Nigeria: Ahebi Ugbabe (Bloomington, IN, 2011)Google Scholar; Scully, P., ‘Rape, race, and colonial culture: the sexual politics of identity in the nineteenth-century Cape Colony, South Africa’, The American Historical Review, 100:2 (1995), 335–59Google Scholar.

7 Indeed, studies of gender and power in Atlantic Africa and on the Mina (Gold) Coast have gone no further than the seventeenth century. On Atlantic Africa, see Johnson, J. M., Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World (Philadelphia, 2020)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Candido, M. P. and Jones, A. (eds.), African Women in the Atlantic World: Property, Vulnerability & Mobility, 1660–1880 (Suffolk, UK, 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Semley, L., Mother is Gold, Father is Glass: Power and Vulnerability in a Yoruba Town (Bloomington, IN, 2011)Google Scholar; Boyd, J., The Caliph's Sister: Nana Asma'u, 1793–1865, Teacher, Poet and Islamic Leader (London, 2000)Google Scholar; Akyeampong, E., ‘Sexuality and prostitution among the Akan of the Gold Coast, c. 1650–1950’, Past & Present, 156:1 (1997), 144–73Google Scholar.

8 Though worthy, this article makes no attempt to compare Graça and Mónica's lives to ‘castle slaves’ in periods after 1571. These women's lives also extended well beyond a fortress.

9 Those histories are Ballong-Wen-Mewuda, J. B., São Jorge da Mina, 1482–1637: A vie d'un Comptoir Portugais en Afrique Occidentale (Lisbon, 1993)Google Scholar, and Vogt, J., Portuguese Rule on the Gold Coast, 1469–1682 (Athens, GA, 1979)Google Scholar. Notwithstanding the pioneering work of John Blake, Paul Hair, António Brásio, and Avelino Teixeira da Mota, the Mina (Gold) Coast suffers from acute scholarly neglect of the Portuguese documentary period. See K. Konadu, Africa's Gold Coast through Portuguese Sources, 1469–1680 (London, forthcoming).

10 On slaving and belief in the colonial Portuguese world, especially when mediated by the Inquisition, see Marcocci, G., ‘A fundação da Inquisição em Portugal: um novo olhar’, Lusitania Sacra, 23 (2011), 17–40Google Scholar; Marcocci, G., ‘Toward a History of the Portuguese Inquisition Trends in Modern Historiography (1974–2009)’, Revue de l'Histoire des Religions, 3 (2010), 355–93Google Scholar; and F. Bethencourt, The Inquisition: A Global History 1478–1834, J. Birrell (trans.) (New York, 2009).

11 See Sweet, J. H., Domingos Álvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the Atlantic World (Chapel Hill, NC, 2011)Google Scholar.

12 Givens, B., Judging Maria de Macedo: A Female Visionary and the Inquisition in Early Modern Portugal (Baton Rouge, LA, 2011), 16–17Google Scholar.

13 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 11041, fl. 8v. The records do not reveal her status or position in Adena. Graça's frequent visits and long-standing interactions with Adena villagers suggest her status or position was fluid. On the Akan-language spoken in the region during the 15th and 16th centuries, see Hair, P. E. H., ‘A note on De La Fosse's “Mina” vocabulary of 1479–80’, Journal of West African Languages, 3 (1966), 55–7Google Scholar; Dalby, D. and Hair, P. E. H., ‘A further note on the Mina vocabulary of 1479–80’, Journal of West African Languages, 5 (1968), 129Google Scholar; and Hair, P. E. H., ‘An ethnolinguistic inventory of the Lower Guinea Coast before 1700: part II’, African Language Review, 8 (1968), 231Google Scholar, 248.

14 I. C. Henriques, ‘Ser escravos em S. Tomé no séculos XVI: uma outra leitura de um mesmo quotidiano’, Revista Internacional de Estudos Africanos, 6–7 (1987), 182; A. C. de C. M. Saunders, A Social History of Black Slaves and Freedmen in Portugal, 1441–1555 (New York, 1982), 145.

15 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 11041, fl. 3r.

16 I am extending Vincent Brown's notion of slavery as a state of war to the period under discussion. See Brown, V., Tacky's Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War (Cambridge, MA, 2020)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On race and religion in the early Portuguese colonial world, and its diffusion among competing European nations, see Sweet, J. H., ‘The Iberian roots of American racist thought’, The William and Mary Quarterly, 54:1 (1997), 143–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar, but also the critique in Marcocci, G., ‘Blackness and heathenism. color, theology, and race in the Portuguese world, c. 1450–1600’, Anuario Colombiano de Historia Social y de la Cultura, 43:2 (2016), 33–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 See K. Konadu, Transatlantic Africa, 2nd edition (New York, 2018); Pigafetta, F., Relatione del Reame di Congo et delle Contrade, Tratta dalla Scritti & Ragionamenti di Odoardo Lopez Portoghese per Filippo Pigafetta (Rome, 1591)Google Scholar.

18 G. Marcocci, ‘Saltwater conversion: trans-oceanic sailing and religious transformation in the Iberian world’, in G. Marcocci, A. Maldavsky, W. de Boer, and I. Pavan (eds.), Space and Conversion in Global Perspective (Leiden, 2014), 251–2.

19 Marcocci, ‘Blackness and heathenism’, 33–57; G. Marcocci, ‘Saltwater conversion’.

20 Saunders, A Social History, 161.

21 Biblioteca da Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa, Reservado A-55, fol. 69–69v; cf. A. Brásio (ed.), Monumenta Missionaria Africana 2 (Lisbon, 1952–88), 64–64 (henceforth, MMA); Birmingham, D., ‘The regimento da Mina’, Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana, 11 (1970), 2–3Google Scholar.

22 Saunders, A Social History, 160.

23 On literacy rates in Europe, see Buringh, E. and Zanden, J. L. Van, ‘Charting the “Rise of the West”: manuscripts and printed books in Europe, a long-term perspective from the sixth through eighteenth centuries’, The Journal of Economic History, 69:2 (2009), 409–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 11041, fl. 3r.

25 Graça's female godparent — and namesake — was Graça de Leão, who also returned to Portugal. See ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 11041, fls. 2-3r; M. L. O. Esteves (ed.), Portugaliae Monumenta Africana 2 (Lisbon, 1993), 438–72 (henceforth, PMA); Ballong-Wen-Mewuda, São Jorge da Mina, vol. II, 507.

26 Brásio, MMA 3, 90–1.

27 Vogt, Portuguese Rule on the Gold Coast, 46; Vogt, J., ‘The early São Tomé-Principe slave trade with Mina, 1500–1540’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 11:3 (1973), 454Google Scholar; Vogt, J., ‘Portuguese gold trade: an account ledger from Elmina, 1529–1531’, Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana, 14:1 (1973), 96Google Scholar; and Birmingham, ‘The regimento da Mina’, 2.

28 ANTT, Corpo Cronológico (CC), parte 2, mç. 85, no. 75, fols. 13v–14.

29 The earliest evidence for maize on the Mina (Gold) Coast dates to 1510. See ANTT, CC 1-9-60; Esteves, PMA 5, 706–8.

30 On ‘mass baptisms’ for enslaved Africans departing their homelands, see Sweet, J. H., Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Religion in the African-Portuguese World, 1441–1770 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2004), 198Google Scholar.

31 Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa, Fundo Geral, Ms 8457, ff. 100v–110; Brásio, MMA 3, 89–113; da Mota, A. T. and Hair, P. E. H., East of Mina: Afro-European Relations on the Gold Coast in the 1550s and 1560s (Madison, WI, 1988), 76, 80–1Google Scholar.

32 On maize, see: McCann, J. C., Maize and Grace: A History of Africa's Encounter with a New World Crop (Cambridge, MA, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fleur, J. D. La, Fusion Foodways of Africa's Gold Coast in the Atlantic Era (Leiden, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; da Mota, A. T. and Carreira, A., ‘“Milho zaburro” and “milho maçaroca” in Guinea and in the islands of Cabo Verde’, Africa, 36:1 (1966), 73–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Alpern, S. B., ‘The European introduction of crops into West Africa in precolonial times’, History in Africa, 19 (1992), 14–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 24–5. See also Newson, L. A. and Minchin, S., From Capture to Sale: The Portuguese Slave Trade to Spanish South America in the Early Seventeenth Century (Leiden, 2007), 300–1Google Scholar.

33 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 11041, fl. 16v.

34 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 11041, fl. 14v.

35 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 11041, fl. 15r.

36 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 11041, fl. 17r. Emphasis in original.

37 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 11041, fls. 19r–23r; CC, parte 2, mç. 237, no. 139; Brásio, MMA 15, 139.

38 da Rosa Pereira, I., Documentos para a história da Inquisição em Portugal (Lisbon, 1984), 79Google Scholar.

39 Biblioteca da Ajuda, 51-VIII-39, f. 153v; Abreu, L., The Political and Social Dynamics of Poverty, Poor Relief and Health Care in Early-Modern Portugal (New York, 2016), 220CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Mateus, S. B., ‘The citadel of the lost souls: spaces of orthodoxy and penance in sixteenth-century Lisbon’, in Marcocci, G., Maldavsky, A., de Boer, W., and Pavan, I. (eds.), Space and Conversion in Global Perspective (Leiden, 2014), 127–53Google Scholar.

41 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 11041, fl. 8v.

42 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 11041, fl. 26v. It remains unclear why Graça was dispatched to this monastery nor what happened to her once delivered to the institution.

43 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 11041, fl. 26r; ANTT, CC, parte 1, mç. 71, no. 37.

44 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 12431, fls. 2r–3r.

45 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 12431, fl. 5r.

46 For the only scholarly treatment involving Mónica's case, see Reis, M. V., ‘Circulação de crenças e saberes mágico-religiosos no mundo luso-africano do século XVI: os processos inquisitoriais de Catarina de Faria e Mônica Fernandes’, Revista Trilhas da História, 8:15 (2018), 6–29Google Scholar

47 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 12431, fl. 11r.

48 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 12431, fl. 8r.

49 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 12431, fl. 8v.

50 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 12431, fl. 9r.

51 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 12431, fl. 9v. Emphasis added.

52 Mónica's alleged use of feitiços was confirmed, through hearsay, by Maria, Clara, and Catarina. See ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 12431, fls. 2r–3.

53 The English word ‘fetish’ derives from feitiço.

54 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 12431, fl. 9v. Emphasis added.

55 The Portuguese ‘Achem’ or ‘Axem’ (English: Axim) is likely the Akan/Twi Akyem. The Portuguese [x] has a [sh] sound.

56 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 12431, fl. 3v.

57 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 12431, fl. 6r.

58 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 12431, fl. 6r.

59 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 12431, fl. 6v. There is no further information about her niece, who probably lived in the fortress or surrounding area.

60 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 12431, fl. 1v.

61 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 12431, fl. 10r.

62 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 12431, fl. 10v–11r.

63 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 12431, fl. 11r; ANTT, CC, parte II, mç. 85, no. 75, fl. 13v.

64 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 12431, fl. 11r.

65 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 12431, fl. 11v.

66 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 12431, fl. 12r.

67 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 12431, fl. 12r. Emphasis added.

68 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 12431, fl. 12v.

69 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 12431, fl. 15.

70 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 12431, fl. 14r.

71 ANTT, TSO, IL, proc. 12431, fl. 14r.

72 Rucker, W. C., Gold Coast Diasporas: Identity, Culture, and Power (Bloomington, IN, 2015), 74Google Scholar.