By this time the Portuguese considered themselves familiar with the peoples of Africa, classifying them either as friends or enemies, Muslims or pagans, never characterizing them according to colour or to what today we would refer to as ‘race’. It was in part their specific use for labour that rendered slaves relatively less expensive than other workers. Other contributing factors were the increasing cost of labour brought on by the rise of the Ottoman Empire and the consolidation of an independent Moroccan Empire and the resulting restrictive use of these peoples, plus the opening of the maritime routes to sub-Saharan markets.
Furthermore, with the increase in the gold and ivory trade from western Africa and the growth of Portuguese economic activity in Asia, contact with the Africans became more frequent. At the same time, the Atlantic traffickers were becoming more efficient at providing labour for the Americas and transporting slaves with greater security. Slaves became cheaper as ever greater numbers were uprooted by force and taken to the colonies. Gradually, in the eyes of sixteenth-century Europeans the term ‘African’ became synonymous with ‘slave labour’. Between 8 and 11 million Africans would be enslaved during the years of the trade. Of these, 4.9 million were taken to Brazil. Furthermore, the great success of the Brazilian plantation system was to influence the slave-based agricultural regimes of other European nations, with the French, British and Spanish adopting the Portuguese model, albeit on smaller estates.
The operation began by either ambushing the prospective slaves or capturing them in war. This was followed by an often lengthy journey through the African interior. The captives were forced to cover long distances to reach the port of embarkation, with many failing to survive the journey, either because of disease or else the enormous strain of the voyage. These operations were undertaken by African kingdoms allied to the Portuguese, the latter never involving themselves directly in such internal activities. In return for this traffic, some African elites were given access to weapons and popular consumer goods such as aguardente and tobacco. In the ports, the captives were squeezed together in barracks, for days and sometimes even months, until the corresponding human cargo for the ship was complete; in those precarious, insalubrious and airless conditions, the mortality rate was high. They would then enter the tumbeiros,6 as the slave ships were called, and be sent to an unknown world. Usually, before boarding, they were branded with a hot iron on the chest or the back, as a sign to identify the trafficker to whom they belonged, for it was common practice to transport captives belonging to a number of different owners aboard the same ship.
Contrary to commonly held beliefs, it was not just a question of seizing the Africans. They had to be exchanged for cloth, tools, metal bars, gunpowder, or for spirits like cachaça or rum. In the hands of the slave traffickers these products were transformed into an important currency for barter. The African merchants were by no means ingenuous or passive partners in the trade. On the contrary, they did business with the traffickers who best suited the conditions of their local markets. Brazilian slave-owners preferred to purchase workers from a variety of ethnic and cultural groups; without their being able to communicate with one another, there was a reduced risk of uprisings. The traffickers, however, who generally determined the terms of these transactions, preferred to transport people from the same region, as a matter of logistical convenience.
Slave trafficking was a complex business. It required trading posts, ships that navigated along the coast, fortresses built on the beaches, and ports that were well located. There were various different types of African merchants: some were merely agents, while others were employees of state monopolies or similar, stable organizations belonging to kings and nobles. In some places no taxes were levied, while others were subject to the intervention of governments and other groups. Another widely held, false belief is that slaves were so cheap that wanton destruction of life was commonplace on the slave ships. Although the conditions were appalling, the traffickers wanted to avoid mortality rates that would compromise their profits. This is the reason why calculations of how many slaves a vessel would hold were made on the same basis as those used for the transportation of soldiers or prisoners. But the objective was always the same: to get ‘the cargo’ to its destination.
Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries a Portuguese caravel could transport 500 slaves, and a small brig up to 200. In the nineteenth century the journeys were made by steamships, which travelled faster and had an average capacity of 350 slaves. It is often said that the Europeans conducted a ‘triangular’ trade, taking cargoes of European goods to Africa, cargoes of slaves to America, and American sugar back to Europe. This idea is refuted by the fact that the traffickers’ ships were generally smaller and their holds were specially designed to transport a human cargo.7
Everything was done to maximize cost-effectiveness. The hold was filled to capacity, frequently obliging a reduction in food supplies. In such circumstances enslaved people, who usually ate once a day, had to survive the entire journey on corn and olive oil alone, with tiny amounts of drinking water. Outbreaks of scurvy were common as from the time of their imprisonment their diet was deficient in vitamin C; scurvy became known as ‘Luanda disease’.
Over the years the shortages of food supplies and livestock were gradually remedied, at least as far as basic necessities were concerned. As the crossings became more frequent the mortality rate began to fall. From the beginning of the eighteenth century, general standards were imposed, requiring the traders to restrict the number of slaves to one and a half per ton, maintain the same diet and observe the same basic standards as for the transport of captives. Health requirements included hygiene procedures, exercise and daily sunbaths.8 The slave traders vaccinated the crew against smallpox and, when space permitted, divided the slaves according to sex and age.9 Nevertheless the death rate remained high in all cases: an average of 10 per cent of healthy adolescents and adults perished during the thirty-five-day journey. To put this in perspective, in France at this time such a mortality rate would have been classified as epidemic.
Most of the deaths resulted from various types of gastroenteritis caused by the poor quality of the food and water. Dysentery was common, as were outbreaks of the ‘bloody flux’, an epidemic of intestinal infections that resulted in mass deaths. Infectious diseases such as smallpox, measles, yellow fever and typhus also contributed to the death rate. In addition, Africans from different regional groups were placed in close proximity aboard the ships, with the result that many died from illnesses with which they had had no previous contact. There are also records of suicides, captives who threw themselves overboard or who systematically rejected food. And let us not forget the constant overcrowding, which also led to deaths during the crossing to America.
Few accounts of the horrors of these crossings have survived. In 1649, Friar Sorrento, an Italian Capuchin who travelled on a slave ship, counted 900 captives aboard. He described the experience thus: ‘that ship […] with its intolerable stink, the lack of space, the continual cries and infinite woes of so many wretched people, appeared to be hell itself’.10 And on the topic of hell, some of the imprisoned passengers were even further traumatized, worried about the destiny of their souls, because in the religions of the Congo and Angola regions, people believed that at death they must be surrounded by ‘their living’ and their descendants. Dying at sea aboard a slave ship meant that their spirit would not be able to rejoin the people of their village; this contributed to a general atmosphere that prevailed on board the ship, oscillating between sorrow, non-conformity, melancholy and anger.
Some benefits did result from the crossing, albeit very few. Captives who travelled aboard the same ship sometimes formed bonds of friendship and referred to each other as malungos (fellow travellers). Despite the adverse conditions, ties of loyalty were created that could last a lifetime on the rare occasions when malungos were purchased by the same landowner. It was not only diseases that were exchanged on a slave ship, but also social
practices, beliefs, rituals, methods of healing, religious secrets and above all friendship.11 It was these relationships that the traffickers most feared and were responsible for the atmosphere of wariness and suspicion on board. The captives were often chained because the traffickers were afraid of revolt. In the sixteenth century the crossing from Angola to Pernambuco took an average of thirty-five days, to Bahia an average of forty days, and to Rio de Janeiro an average of fifty days. When the winds were unfavourable, the crossings took longer, with the result that food supplies became scarce and the death rate could be as high as 20 per cent of the captives.
Despite these ‘setbacks’, slave trafficking was considered a good investment. The flow of vessels across the Atlantic was determined by the needs of the plantation owners in Brazil, not by any meteorological or even geographical considerations, such as the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope. And European traffickers, with the exception of the Portuguese – who had overseers in the Congo, Angola and Mozambique – knew very little about their African captives, since their first contact only took place on board. Furthermore, captives frequently did not speak the same language or dialect, and very little was known about the groups to which they belonged.
The traffickers either did not know or did not want to know what might happen once the slaves were a few miles out to sea. The stable relationship between the captaincy of Bahia and the Bay of Benin in the sixteenth century was a flagrant exception to the rule. Nor did they have control over the proportion of males to females. These were dictated by the conditions of the African market rather than by American demand. Men generally accounted for 65 per cent of the captives, many of whom, however, were children, whereas demand from the plantations was mostly for adults. The women, who had less physical strength, were nonetheless put to work alongside the men on the sugar, coffee and cotton plantations. They were considered good ‘specialists’ for certain activities.
In Africa, however, where the economic, social and cultural organization was structured according to regional and matrilineal kinship, there was a greater demand for women, which accounted for the fact that more men than women were taken captive. In some societies women were highly valued due to the status acquired by men who ‘accumulated wives’, as well as due to the kinship rules that resulted in the formation of powerful networks within these societies. In polygamous societies, female slaves conferred greater power on the local lords. In Africa women were also in great demand as agricultural workers, especially during the planting season. With so many important roles in African society, it is no wonder that, in general, the women who disembarked in Brazil were older than the men.
Very few children were put aboard the slave ships as the price they fetched on the American markets was so low. According to the logic of the traffickers it was better not to use up space with ‘merchandise’ that produced little profit. These factors contributed to the low growth rate of the slave population in the colony, above all in the first generation. They also contributed to the intensification of the slave traffic, which gradually became a thriving business. Before 1700, 2.2 million slaves were exported from Africa, and by the eighteenth century, slaves had become the continent’s leading ‘export’.12
As previously mentioned, the slaves who arrived in America spoke different languages and captives with family and cultural ties were frequently separated and sold to different masters. African religious practices were also altered on the new continent, combining elements of Catholicism with traditional cults. Although the Catholic Church systematically prohibited the practice of these religions, the Africans displayed considerable skill in disguising their rituals under the mantle of Catholicism. The most common forms of religious expression in the Americas were candomblé, voodoo and santeria.13 Voodoo was most common on the island of St Domingo, mostly in the form that originated with the Fon people of Dahomey. However, it was candomblé nagô, brought by the Yorubas, which was to provide the basis for the many forms of these religions that were practised by the Dahomey, Angola and Congo nations, above all in Bahia.
Candomblé is a religion derived from African animism, of totemic and family origin, in which the deities – known as orishas – are worshipped. As a means of disguise and protection the captives linked the orishas to the Catholic saints. As far as is known, in Africa each nation worshipped only one orisha, thus the joining together of different cults was a specific characteristic of religions brought to the colony by the enslaved. Generally a ‘custodian of the Saints’ was appointed (known as ‘babalorisha’ when a man and ‘ialorisha’ when a woman), who was responsible for conducting the rites. Some of these were African priests who were among the captives and who brought their orishas, rituals and regional languages to Brazil. It was from this rich combination of cultures that a new form of candomblé emerged in the Americas, a religion that is still widely disseminated and influential in Brazil today.14
Through the transference and adaptation of African cults, with their traditional chants, music, drum-beating, food and vestments, a process of hybridization occurred in the New World. This was especially the case in Brazil where, from the beginning of forced immigration, the Africans recreated their traditions and cults under the adverse conditions of slavery; something that was neither intended nor expected by the Portuguese, whose plan for them was simply to work en masse on the sugar plantations of the northeast. In the prosperous captaincies of Pernambuco and Bahia alone, between 1580 and 1590, 6,000 Africans were imported to the former and a further 4,000 to the latter. Although the figures may be approximate, it is estimated that in 1584 the total population of Brazil was made up of 25,000 whites, 18,000 domesticated Indians and 14,000 African slaves.15 The country was thus living a sort of new black Rome, a forced exodus of heretofore unknown proportions.
Thus, after a long and traumatic crossing, the Africans arrived at the Brazilian ports. Initially Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, Recife, Fortaleza, Belém and São Luís were the main importers and distributors. During the seventeenth century, Salvador and Recife also became major ports from which slaves were distributed to the northern captaincies of Maranhão, Pará and the Amazon. With the discovery of the gold mines in the eighteenth century, Rio de Janeiro became the busiest port, from where the captives were re-exported to Minas Gerais, Mato Grosso and the Colônia do Sacramento16 (in present-day Uruguay).
As soon as they arrived the slaves were classified by the local authorities according to sex and age. The number of children who had been brought along with their mothers was also verified. After the registration of their ‘merchandise’ the traffickers paid the taxes due on all slaves over three years old. The new arrivals were then taken to be auctioned. If there were clients present, they were auctioned off right there in front of the customs house; if not they were taken to warehouses near the port. After the journey the captives were thin and debilitated and covered in sores. Drawings of the period always show the children with swollen stomachs, the result of worms and malnutrition. Many were suffering from scurvy and conjunctivitis, an ailment that commonly spread during the journey due to the lack of hygiene and sun.
With the goal of making the slaves more valuable, prior to exposing them at auction, great efforts were made to improve their appearance. The captives were cleaned and bathed; the men’s beards and heads were shaved and oil was rubbed into their skins to conceal the sores. They were also given larger quantities of food to make them look healthier; and to avoid the downcast aspect that the traders called ‘banzo’ – also known by the Brazilian traffickers as ‘saudade sickness’, a kind of longing – they were given stimulants such as ginger and tobacco.
After advertisements had been placed in the newspapers, the Africans were put on display, arranged according to sex, age and nationality. Slave-owners and traffickers bargained aloud over conditions and prices – men were more expensive. There were also rules: if within a fortnight of purchase the slave contracted an illness, was discovered to have a physical disability, or displayed a ‘l
ack of morality’, he or she could be returned. Those who were not sold immediately were negotiated by trading companies or by small-scale local traffickers, muleteers and hawkers who travelled throughout the colony. This was how the long journey from the African savannas ended: on the sugarcane plantations, the farms, or in the houses of the few towns that existed.
Thus, various points on the map were connected to strengthen and increase a trade that led to the banishment and exile of millions of people. The efficacy of the system was exploited by the traffickers in what was to become one of the greatest holocausts known to humanity. This most oppressive of all migration models provided the workforce for the growing sugarcane industry and, in the following century, for the excavation of gold and diamonds. The slave trade, at least in Brazil, was to continue until 1850 (when trafficking, but not the ownership of slaves, was outlawed), and even beyond, such were its economic advantages. Most of the slaves who entered the colony in the sixteenth century came from the region of Senegambia on the west coast of Africa. They belonged to different groups, including the Balantas, Manjacos, Bijagós, Mandingas and Jalofos. The trade that had traditionally been controlled by the Muslims in Mauritania, Senegambia and the Ivory Coast now shifted to the Portuguese-controlled trading posts located strategically along the coast. Further south, the Congolese now entered the trade. The arrival of the Portuguese dramatically altered the nature of the slave trade, partly because of the expanse of their operations, but also because of the great mixture of cultures and non-Christian beliefs they encountered.
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