Books by José Lingna Nafafé
“This is a recently published book. Nafafé makes a very original claim: that Lourenço da Silva Mendonça, an African noble, was an abolitionist in the 17th century. This is a very unusual interpretation of how we think about abolition. The common interpretation is that abolition is a European ideology, from the late 18th and early 19th century. It tends to give lots of attention to British missionaries and politicians. Nafafé, however, presents a different story. The book is about a royal prince, Mendonça, who decides to fight against the slave trade in the Vatican, employing religious language against the morality of the slave trade. Nafafé argues that abolition is not a European movement, but one that Africans conceived in the earlier centuries of the transatlantic slave trade. By looking at legal cases and missionary correspondence, Nafafé places Africans as legal agents who fought against the institution of slavery and the morality of the slave trade in European courts during the 17th century…This is an important book. It shakes our current scholarship about the slave trade and abolition. It pushes against scholars who have stressed the role of African elites in participating in the transatlantic slave trade. In recent decades, several books have been published stressing the alliances and cooperation between European traders and African elites. Nafafé’s book goes in a different direction, cautioning scholars to be a little more careful. He argues that earlier scholarship has downplayed the role of European profits and overemphasized the British protagonists in abolitionist debates. Nafefé shows that Mendonça made very important legal arguments using religious language, questioning and showing the inconsistency of Catholicism and the Catholic Church in embracing the slave trade.” Read more...
The best books on The History of Angola (pre-20th century)
Mariana Candido, Historian
Interviews where books by José Lingna Nafafé were recommended
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1
Njinga of Angola: Africa’s Warrior Queen
by Linda Heywood -
2
Cross-Cultural Exchange in the Atlantic World: Angola and Brazil during the Era of the Slave Trade
by Roquinaldo Ferreira -
3
Slave Trade and Abolition: Gender, Commerce, and Economic Transition in Luanda
by Vanessa Oliveira -
4
Lourenço da Silva Mendonça and the Black Atlantic Abolitionist Movement in the 17th Century
by José Lingna Nafafé -
5
A History of West Central Africa to 1850
by John Thornton
The best books on The History of Angola (pre-20th century), recommended by Mariana Candido
The best books on The History of Angola (pre-20th century), recommended by Mariana Candido
West Central Africa was involved in the transatlantic slave trade from its inception in the fifteenth century until it ended in the late nineteenth century. It’s the region that lost the largest number of enslaved people to the transatlantic slave trade, with over 5.6 million people taken away. And yet Angola, where three of the five main slaving ports were located, is little studied in English. Here, Mariana Candido, a professor at Emory University, introduces us to some of the best books (available in English) on this era of Angolan history, from the biography of one ruler, Njinga Mbandi, to a survey of the entire period.