In the last two decades, the classic debate on the relationship between capitalism and slavery has been reopened. In its classic formulation, best exemplified by the work of Eric Williams, the profits from slavery and the transatlantic slave trade had made a significant contribution to the industrial revolution in Britain (Williams, 1975Williams, E. (1975) Capitalismo e Escravidão. Rio de Janeiro: Americana.). His work was widely criticized in the following decades but recent works on the capitalism/slavery debate have widened the scope of analysis and put forward new ways of interpreting this relationship.1See Solow and Engerman, 1991; Zeuske and Conermann, 2021. For a synthesis of the British debate, see Morgan, 2000. The main focus has been on the crucial role played by the coerced labor of Africans in supplying primary products and calories (with the production of cotton, sugar, and coffee) for the industries and their workers in Northeastern Europe and the northern U.S. (Blackburn, 2003Blackburn, R. (2003) A Construção do Escravismo no Novo Mundo. Rio de Janeiro: Record.; Inikori, 2002Inikori, J. (2002) African and the Industrial Revolution in England: A study in international trade and economic development. Cambridge: CUP.; Beckert, 2015Beckert, S. (2015) Empire of Cotton, A Global History. New York: Penguin Books.; Tomich, 2013Tomich, D. (2013) Pelo prisma da escravidão. São Paulo: Edusp.). Other works have considered the global impact of the transatlantic slave trade and colonial goods on European economies. Equally important have been the growing number of microhistorical works on the specific trajectories of big capitalists, who invested not only in finances and European industries but also in slave plantations and the slave trade. Although the vast majority of these works focus on the Anglo-American world, a few studies have looked at the Iberian Atlantic as well as other parts of Europe and America (Brandon and Bosma, 2021Brandon, P., and Bosma, U. (2021) “Slavery and the Dutch economy, 1750-1800.” Slavery & Abolition, 42 (1), pp. 43-76. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/0144039x.2021.1860464 ; Fatha-Black & Rossum, 2015Fatha-Black, K., and Rossum, M. (2015) “Beyond Profitability: The Dutch Transatlantic Slave Trade and its Economic Impact.” Slavery & Abolition, 36 (1), pp. 63-83. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/0144039x.2013.873591 ; Silva, 2021Ribeiro da Silva, F. (2021) “The profits of the Portuguese-Brazilian transatlantic slave trade: challenges and possibilities.” Slavery & Abolition, 42 (1), pp. 77-104. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/0144039x.2020.1860466 ; Rodrigo y Alharilla, 2021Rodrigo y Alharilla, M. R. (2021) “From Slave Trade to Banking in Nineteenth-Century Spain.” Comparativ, 30 (5/6), pp. 600-614. ).
Research on the subject nonetheless continues to focus on the nineteenth century, when it is easier to see the connections between trade, slave production, and the development of industry and financial institutions. The relationship between capitalism and slavery, however, has deeper roots that predate the industrial revolution and the emergence of great banks, roots that can be traced back to the Iberian colonial expansion of the early modern era. One of them can be found in what Sven Beckert has called “war capitalism”: the specifically Western European capacity to project capital and power overseas and violently penetrate into markets all over the world (Beckert, 2015, p. 30Beckert, S. (2015) Empire of Cotton, A Global History. New York: Penguin Books.).2The argument is based on Marx but Braudel can also be seen as one of its sources. Braudel, 1998, vol. 2.
In the Portuguese case, the relationship between capital and power was established as part of the process of ensuring the possession of the new territories, with the maintenance of permanent bureaucracies and armies overseas. The maintenance of the general governors and paid troops that were sent to the State of Índia, the State of Brazil, and the Kingdom of Angola was based on tributes, and the collection of these was in turn rented to groups of capitalists (Puntoni, 2013Puntoni, P. (2013) O Estado do Brasil: Poder e política na Bahia colonial - 1548-1700. São Paulo: Alameda.; Bethencourt, 1998Bethencourt, F. (1998) “O Estado da Índia.” In: F. Bethencourt, and K. Chaudhuri, dirs., História da Expansão Portuguesa. Lisboa: Círculo de Leitores, vol. II, pp. 284-314.; Lenk, 2013Lenk, W. (2013) Guerra e Pacto Colonial. A Bahia contra o Brasil Holandês, 1624-1654. São Paulo: Alameda.). In West-Central Africa, the revenue of the local government came from a tax on slave exports that was auctioned in Lisbon, known as the “Angola contract.” The wages and uniforms of the troops came from this contract, which also had a central role in supplying credit for the hinterland slave trade.3We still lack a systematic study of the Angola contract. The broader interpretation of the subject is still Miller, 1988. There are a few studies on specific contracts and their owners, such as Salvador, 1973; Mauro, 1997; Menz, 2017; Fernandez Chaves, 2022.
The arrangements between state authorities and capitalists allowed for the conquest of Amerindian populations, the entrance into the Indian Ocean trade, and the opening of slave trading fairs in Africa. Thus, Iberians paved the way for European capitalist expansion. Later, Dutch and English merchants and companies used their military and maritime superiority to conquer markets that had been consolidated by the Portuguese and Spanish empires. They also slowly penetrated into the Southern European empires through regular commerce, supplying credit and goods that allowed for the opening of new frontiers for the valorization of capital (Cipolla, 1989Cipolla, C. (1989) Canhões e Velas na Primeira Fase da Expansão Europeia (trad.). Lisboa: Gradiva.; Parker, 2002Parker, G. (2002) La Revolución Militar. Madrid: Alianza.; Boyajian, 2008Boyajian, J. (2008). Portuguese trade in Asia under the Habsburgs, 1580-1640. Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press.). Either through competition or collaboration between the different European powers and merchant groups, colonization in the early modern era ensued (Davis, 1973Davis, R. (1973) The Rise of the Atlantic Economies. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.; Antunes, 2004Antunes, C. (2004) Globalisation in the Early Modern Period: The Economic Relationship Between Amsterdam and Lisbon, 1640-1705. The Hague: Aksant.; Antunes and Polonia, 2017Antunes, C., and Polonia, A. (2017) Mechanisms of Global Empire Building. Porto: Edições Afrontamento.; Cañizares-Esguerra, 2018Cañizares-Esguerra, J. (ed.) (2018) Entangled Empires: The Anglo-Iberian Atlantic, 1500-1830. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.). Before the second half of the nineteenth century, global trade and slavery expanded against the background of the peasant economies, more or less devoted to self-consumption, that dominated the wide areas of the Atlantic that had been “discovered” by Iberians (Blackburn, 2003Blackburn, R. (2003) A Construção do Escravismo no Novo Mundo. Rio de Janeiro: Record.; Mintz, 1996, p. 18Mintz, S. (1996) Dulzura y poder. El lugar del azúcar en la historia moderna. Mexico, Siglo XXI.).
The present article explores the relationship between capitalism, slavery, and the slave trade in the Portuguese empire in the early eighteenth century, a period that was marked by a gold mining boom in Brazil and a great upsurge in the transatlantic slave trade. Using government documents, notary records from Lisbon, and quantitative data on the Portuguese slave trade, I discuss the reorganization of the trade in human beings in Central Africa. The appearance of a new group in the administration of the Angola contract, with the political support from the Crown and the financial assistance of merchants connected to London, led to the expansion of the slaving frontier into regions to the south of Luanda, namely in Benguela.
A number of works have noted the growing centrality of Benguela because of developments within the Portuguese empire or the local African context. Different causes have been emphasized to explain this shift: the competition between Angolan governors and independent merchants, climate conditions, the Portuguese military expansion, and the activities of slave traders based in Brazil (Miller, 1988, pp. 261-262Miller, J. (1988) Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730-1830. Wisconsin: The Universisty of Wisconsin Press. ; Curto, 2002, pp. 274-275Curto, J. (2002) Álcool e Escravos. O comércio luso-brasileiro do álcool em Mpinda, Luanda e Benguela durante o tráfico atlântico de escravos (c. 1480-1830) e o seu impacto nas sociedades da África Central e Ocidental (trad.). Lisboa: Vulgata.; Candido, 2013a, pp. 89-97Candido, M. (2013a) An African Slaving Port and the Atlantic World. Cambridge: CUP. ; 2013bCandido, M. (2013b) “Negociantes Baianos no porto de Benguela: redes comerciais unindo o Atlântico setecentista.” In: R. Guedes (org.), África: Brasileiros e Portugueses. Rio de Janeiro: Mauad X, pp. 67-94. ; 2015, p. 147Candido, M. (2015) “Trade Networks in Benguela, 1700-1850.” In: D. Richardson and F. Ribeiro da Silva, Networks and Trans-Cultural Exchange. Leiden: Brill, pp. 143-164.; Thompson, 2011Thompson, E. (2011) “Negreiros in the South Atlantic: The Community of ‘Brazilian’ Slave Traders in Late Eighteenth Century Benguela.” African Economic History, 39 (1), pp. 73-128.; Ferreira, 2003Ferreira, R. (2003) Transforming Atlantic Slaving: Trade, Warfare and territorial control in Angola, 1650-1800. PHD thesis, University of California. and 2010Ferreira, R. (2010) “’A Arte de Furtar’: redes de comércio ilegal no comércio ultramarino português (c. 1690-1750).” In: J. Fragoso, and M. Gouvea, orgs., Na Trama das Redes: política e negócio no império português, séculos XVI-XVIII. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, pp. 203-242.).4Ferreira (2003, pp. 82-102; 2010, p. 207) does look at the international context but does not consider the central role played by Lisbon merchants and foreign capital in this process. One of my main arguments here, however, is that this transformation was strongly influenced by the international conjuncture of capitalism. The growing competition over slave markets in the Gulf of Guinea and Loango led to changes in the Angola contract and stimulated this shift to the South. And it was the entrance of the international capital associated with the Lisbon-London connections that made this possible. The wide flows of credit coming from international networks and the actions of the contractors to stimulate trade in Benguela were central to the great waves of slaving violence that opened a new frontier for supplying captives to the Brazilian goldfields.
The article has three sections: in the first one, I explore the international conjuncture of the slave trade and the efforts of the Portuguese crown to create a company that would compete over the control of the slave trade in the Gulf of Guinea. The second part discusses the reorganization of the Angola contract and the official opening of the slaving business south of Luanda. In conclusion, I briefly discuss the effects of the entrance of European credit and the growth of slaving violence in the Benguela interior.
COMPETITION IN THE GULF OF GUINEA AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CORISCO COMPANY
⌅In 1719, Daniel Defoe published in England a book that would later be known as the prototype of the colonial novel: The Life and the Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. The story of the castaway who survives the destruction of a ship on a desert island is almost universally known but few people pay enough attention to the first part of his story. Robinson Crusoe, the son of Germans who had settled in England, left on a voyage to Africa, where he was captured by Barbary corsairs. Managing to escape on a Portuguese ship to Bahia shortly after that, he eventually became a sugar mill owner in Brazil. It was only later, after participating in a slave voyage that left Brazil, that he ended up on a lost island in the Caribbean.
Since its first publication, the book has been a huge success, with an immense cultural impact. At the time, the story was received as a true account (McInelly, 2003, p. 1McInelly, B. (2003) “Expanding empires, expanding selves: Colonialism, the novel, and Robinson Crusoe.” Studies in the Novel, 35, pp. 1-21.; Watt, 1951Watt, I. (1951) “Robinson Crusoe as a Myth.” Essays in Criticism, I (2), pp. 95-119.) and there were good reasons for this. Although the novel was set in the 1650s, the story addressed an audience interested in the wealth of Portuguese America and the remarkable profits that could be made in the slave trade there. In 1713, the Board of Trade, an institution linked to the English monarchy that dealt with colonial policy, came to discuss ways of supplying slaves to Brazil; eight years later the Royal African Company drew up a plan in the same vein (Thomas, 1999, p. 238Thomas, H. (1999) The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440 - 1870. New York: Simons Schuster. ; Marques, 2020Marques, L. (2020) “O ouro brasileiro e o comércio anglo-português de escravos.” In: H. Ré, L. Saes, and G. Velloso, orgs., História e historiografia do trabalho escravo no Brasil: novas perspectivas. São Paulo: Publicações BBM.).
Since 1699, Dutch gazettes had reported on the inflows of Brazil’s gold, stimulating the imagination of northern European investors (Morineau, 1985, p. 123Morineau, M. (1985) Incroyables gazettes et fabuleux métaux ; les retours des trésors américains d’après les gazettes hollandaises, 16e-18e siècles. Paris: MSH.). News of gold production in Brazil mingled with debates on public debt, mercantile companies, elections, and the politics of the slave trade. Portuguese America appeared as one of the investment frontiers available to the readers of Daniel de Defoe and London capitalists. Between 1711 and 1720, 31,314 million réis of gold arrived in Portugal from Brazil, tripling the money supply in Portugal (Sousa, 2006, pp. 105, 222Sousa (2006) Moeda e metais preciosos no Portugal setecentista (1688-1797). Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional.). Europe as a whole was favored by these massive imports of precious metals (Braudel and Spooner, 1967, pp. 442-446Braudel, F. and Spooner, F. (1967) “Prices in Europe from 1450 to 1750.” In: E. E. Rich, The Cambridge Economic History of Europe. Cambridge: CUP, Vol. 4, pp. 374-486.; Marichal, 2006Marichal, C. (2006) “The Spanish-American Silver Peso.” In: S. Topik, C. Marichal, and Z. Frank, From Silver to Cocaine: Latin American Commodity Chains and the Building of the World Economy, 1500-2000. Durham/London: Duke University Press, pp. 25-52.; Palma, 2016Palma, N. (2016) Reconstruction of annual money supply over the long run: The case of England, 1279-1870. EHES Working Papers in Economic History, 94, European Historical Economics Society (EHES).; Pinto, 1979Pinto, V. (1979) O Ouro Brasileiro e o Comércio Anglo-português. São Paulo: Cia. Ed. Nacional.; Shaw, 1998, pp. 36-37Shaw L. (1998) The Anglo-Portuguese Alliance and the English Merchants in Portugal 1654-1810. Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate.; Marques and Marquese, 2020Marques, L. and Marquese, R. (2020) “Ouro, café e escravos: o Brasil e a ‘assim chamada’ acumulação primitiva.” In: R. Marquese, org., Os tempos plurais da escravidão no Brasil: ensaios de história e historiografia. São Paulo: Intermeios, pp. 105-132. ).
At the end of the War of the Spanish Succession (17011714), the two main powers competing for European hegemony, England and France, had accumulated large debts while liquidity increased among the general public as a result of the large arrivals of gold from Brazil (Jones, 1998Jones, D. (1988) War and Economy in the Age of William III and Marlborough. Oxford/Basil: Blackwell.; Dickson and Sperling, 1970, p. 303Dickson, P., and Sperling, J. (1970). “War finance, 1689-1714.” In: J. Bromley, ed., The New Cambridge Modern History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 284-315.). In both England and France, the way in which authorities sought to solve the problem of short-term debt was through the establishment of companies that transformed debts into capital. Creditors were supposed to exchange their bonds with the state for shares in companies-usually associated with overseas exploration-that promised large returns in the future. The effort of authorities to link the companies to the colonial economies was no mere coincidence. The growth of European overseas trade, especially the slave trade since at least the 1670s, and the belief that this activity would expand, were the real basis of the fictitious capital of companies.5About the Law System and the South Sea Bubble, see Dickson, 1993; Paul, 2011; Wee, 1977; Neal, 1993, pp. 62-117; Wennerlind, 2011, pp. 197-234; Gleeson, 2005, pp. 104-217. It was in America, with free lands and the lack of seigneurial rights, that European capital could find the best investment opportunities. That was essentially Robinson Crusoe’s main message. Daniel Defoe, not by chance, used his talents to advertise the establishment of the South Sea Company (Thomas, 1999, p. 236Thomas, H. (1999) The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440 - 1870. New York: Simons Schuster. ; Wennerlind, 2011, p. 201Wennerlind, C. (2011) Casualties of Credit the English Financial Revolution, 1620-1720. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.; Watt, 1951, p. 116Watt, I. (1951) “Robinson Crusoe as a Myth.” Essays in Criticism, I (2), pp. 95-119.).
Following the general trend of European trade and the prices of slaves in the mining areas of Brazil, foreign merchants residing in Lisbon devoted part of their capital to the slave trade. However, there were great embarrassments to the subjects of other nations who wished to participate in the Portuguese colonial trade. At least since 1591, Portuguese law prohibited foreigners from sending ships or going themselves to Portuguese colonial domains in America, Africa, and Asia. Yet, in the Bill of February 8, 1711, it was specified that the restriction should only be applied to vessels that did not travel as part of the fleet, in respect of the treaties that guaranteed privileges to merchants from a few friendly nations. Officially, therefore, it was not forbidden for these foreigners to send ships to Portuguese domains, as long as they adhered to the navigation regime established by metropolitan authorities.6Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino (AHU), COLEÇÃO de leis e ordens que proíbem os navios estrangeiros de guerra e mercantes, nos portos do Brasil, Cód. 1193. See also Ricupero, 2016, 2017. However, it was not easy for subjects from other nations to obtain licenses to send ships from Portugal to colonial domains. The Overseas Council was responsible for providing passports to all vessels that planned to go to colonial ports: of the 205 authorized voyages from Lisbon to Angola between 1756 and 1807, there were only five registered shipowners with non-Portuguese names.7AHU_CU_PASSAPORTES DE NAVIOS, cód. 774 to 787. Furthermore, although many people from other countries had settled in the Portuguese colonies in the early eighteenth century, it was not uncommon for authorities to make their mercantile activities more difficult. Nor was there any legal impediment for traders from other countries to ship goods to colonial ports.8 Costa, Rocha, Sousa, 2013, p. 133. They could also provide goods to commission agents who traveled to Brazil and later to Africa, sell ships to captains who controlled the slave routes from Portugal and Brazil, and supply the sails and essential equipment for the outfitting (armação) of the tumbeiros (slave ship) leaving Portuguese America. There is good evidence that the direct foreign investment in the Portuguese slave trade increased during the 1720s.
Madeira Island was a key place in this. Between 1719 and 1750, the Funchal Customs books documented the presence of dozens of ships with the Portuguese flag (58) planning to sail to African ports. A reliable quantitative analysis of these records is impossible because of the large gaps in these sources over the years. However, these documents do capture the process of turning foreign ships into Portuguese in order to cover the investment of capitalists from other countries. Ships with English names and captains entered the port of Funchal and a few days later left for Angola with new captains and Portuguese names.9Arquivo Nacional Torre do Tombo (ANTT), Alfândega do Funchal, liv. 147, f. 76. It is impossible to date the exact beginning of the slave voyages from Cape Verde but I believe it coincided with the growth of investment in the slave trade in Lisbon (1715-1724). See, ANTT, Alfândega do Funchal, livros 285, 103, 104, 105, 106, 146, 469, 147, 148. See also Oliveira, 1999.
The other avenue for foreign investments in the slave trade was through Portugal itself. This, however, depended on the relationship of the expatriate capitalists with Lisbon merchants and authorities.10A French chronicler in the 1760s mentioned that foreign merchants from Lisbon participated in the trade of Brazil and the African coast and had ships engaged in these routes through national traders, see Fisher, 1988, p. 723. This is exactly what happened in the early 1720s, when pressure from other European powers in Loango and Costa da Mina led the Portuguese Crown to favor a series of changes in the slave trade, culminating with the creation of the Companhia do Corisco in December 23, 1723. The company’s founding partners were mostly foreigners residing in Lisbon: João Dansaint, Manoel Domingues do Paço, Francisco Nunes da Cruz, Noé Houssaye, Lourenço Pereira, and Bartolomeu Miguel Viana. João Dansaint-who would be named director of a fortress to be built on the island of Corisco-was French and smuggled slaves to Brazil in the 1710s.11The first reference found in the documentation of the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarinno to Dansaint is from 1711 when he tried to lease the islands of São Nicolau and Boa Vista, see AHU_ CU_CABO VERDE, Caixa (Cx.) 9, Documento (D.) 835, July 22, 1711. According to Pijning, Dansaint was in Lisbon during the 1720s, looking to recover a seized ship, when he received a proposal to create a company. The offer would have come from the Secretary of State himself, Diogo de Mendonça Corte Real, suggesting that the matter was being considered in the Court (Pijning, 2001, p. 70Pijning, E (2001) “Le commerce brésilien et la transnationalité. Le cas de la compagnie Corsico (1715-1730).” Dixhuitième Siècle, 33 (1), pp. 63-80. doi: https://doi.org/10.3406/dhs.2001.2399 ). Yet everything indicates that the investments were from Lisbon merchants of cosmopolitan origin and from London traders. Bartolomeu Miguel Viana, despite the Portuguese name, was linked to the Dutch-named merchants, João Baptista van Zeller and Adriano van Zeller.12 https://aquila4.iseg.ulisboa.pt/aquila/investigacao/ghes/investigacao/base-de-dados Noah Houssaye was a member of the community of Huguenots residing in England (D’Cruze, 2010, p. 385D’Cruze, S. (2010) Colchester People, vol. 1: “The estate of John Bensusan Butt.” lulu.com.). In addition to these directors, the English Tempest Milner, John Lokhard, and Lourenço Reison joined the company. Milner was a well-known participant in the English factory, while Reison, a French merchant, traded for the Mendes da Costa family, a famous family of New Christian origins residing in London.13It was possible to know the names of the other investors thanks to a deed of the notaries of Lisbon in which the directors of the Company signed as guarantors of a sea loan, see ANTT, 7º CNL, Ofício A, livro (L) 395, Caixa (Cx.) 70, f. 79-80, February 19, 1725.
Still, it is almost certain that among the founders of the company were the Lamberts, a Franco-English banking family of Huguenot origin. Through a notarial deed, we know that Diogo (James) Lambert-son of Sir John Lambert, first baronet of Lambert, and former director of the South Sea Company-provided a venture capital of 2,000,000 réis on behalf of his brother, resident in London and heir to the title, to outfit a company slave ship.14The deed shows that the money was from “Mr. João Lambert Barone,” a messy Portuguese version of Sir John Lambert Baronet, as baronets used to carry Sir before and the title Baronet at the end of their names. The investor’s identity is confirmed by the Lambert Baronets genealogy which shows that the first of them, the aforementioned director of the South Sea Company, had a son named John and another named James, see ANTT, 7º CNL, Ofício A, L 395, Cx. 70, f. 79-80, 19/02/1725. The first and second Baronets of Lambert were heavily involved in the slave trade, see Thomas, 1999, p. 238 and Hancock, 1997, pp. 209-211. Felipe Sousa Melo showed me this document in the national archives of Portugal (Torre do Tombo) and Elisa Dourado called my attention to the possible relationship between the Lamberts and the South Sea Company. According to Shaw, in 1720 the Portuguese ambassador consulted with the first Baronet of Lambert about setting up a South Sea-inspired scheme to deal with the Portuguese public debt (Shaw, 1998, p. 119Shaw L. (1998) The Anglo-Portuguese Alliance and the English Merchants in Portugal 1654-1810. Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate.).15According to Shaw (1998, p. 70), several merchant families linked to the Portuguese trade were also associated with the South Sea Company. The original idea was aborted and the Corisco company must have been a far less ambitious version of the 1720 project.
In any case, the venture had political objectives. With the foundation of a fortress, on the opposite side of the Elmina Castle, the Portuguese intended to stop the unceasing vexations that the Dutch had imposed on the slave trade in the Gulf of Guinea. The WIC (the Dutch West India Company) had enforced a 10 percent duty on tobacco loads in ships coming from Brazil and ordinarily seized Portuguese tumbeiros, especially those from Lisbon. However, the objectives of the Corisco Company were extremely ambitious. Its charter established the exclusivity of its operation between the Cameroon River (Wuori), to the north, and Cape Lopes, theoretically covering the entire Bight of Biafra. It was an area relatively distant from Dutch influence but heavily visited by slave traders from Liverpool (Lovejoy and Richardson, 2007, p. 47Lovejoy, P. and Richardson, D. (2007) “African Agency and the Liverpool Slave Trade.” In: D. Richardson, S. Schwarz, and A. Tibbles, eds., Liverpool and Transatlantic Slavery. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, pp. 43-65.).
Control by force was an element that pervaded the legal document creating the company.16Charter of December 23, 1723, published in Lara, 2000, p. 265. Dansaint did not take long to enforce its charter, capturing two Dutch vessels. Yet, a coalition of interests was quickly formed against the newly founded company. First, supported by the governor of Brazil, slave traders from Bahia protested against the company’s competition. The “Bahian lobby” influenced the Overseas Council, which wrote a critique of Dansaint, in disagreement with the opinions of the Crown and Treasury prosecutor. The WIC did not take long to react, and in 1725 a warship attacked and sank one of the Portuguese company’s ships at Ouidah. Complaints from the English Court against Dansaint’s sailboats helped dismantle the project (Pijning, 2001, p. 75Pijning, E (2001) “Le commerce brésilien et la transnationalité. Le cas de la compagnie Corsico (1715-1730).” Dixhuitième Siècle, 33 (1), pp. 63-80. doi: https://doi.org/10.3406/dhs.2001.2399 ).17AHU_CU_BAHIA, Cx. 23, D. 2059, Vasco Fernandes César de Menezes, July 9, 1725. See Documentos Históricos da Biblioteca Nacional (DHBN), Vol. XC, 1950, pp. 100-110, February 15, 1726.
However, the company was only part of the wave of foreign investment in the Portuguese slave trade during the 1720s. In fact, company partners organized a few slave voyages during the first thirty years of the eighteenth century, such as Tempest Milner (1), Lourenço Reison (2), and Francisco Nunes da Cruz (3).18See Nader, H. (2022) “Administração fazendária na capitania da Bahia: a arrecadação do direito dos filhos da folha das Ilhas de São Tomé e Príncipe, 1699-1764.” Unpublished paper
Overall, it is true that these numbers are not impressive, yet it should be noted that it is quite difficult to identify shipowners and investors in slave voyages, especially if they were foreigners. The holders who appeared in the documents as owners of the vessels were not always the owners of the money.19See Nader (2022) in note 18. Moreover, the number of identified shipowners in the Portuguese slave trade is extremely small in the TSTD for the first half of the eighteenth century.
In addition to relying on foreign investments, the Corisco Company also had the participation of some Lisbon merchants who were rooted in the Brazilian trade and who had strong links with slave traders in Angola. This is confirmed through the databases organized by Hyllo Nader (2021)Nader, H. (2021), Banco de dados das remessas de ouro, Salvador. and by Costa, Rocha, and Sousa (2013)Costa, L. Rocha, M. and Sousa, R. (2013). Banco de dados investigação. https://aquila4.iseg.ulisboa.pt/aquila/investigacao/ghes/investigacao/base-de-dados which were based on the records of gold shipments from Brazil to Lisbon between 1720 and 1721 (Fig. 1).20 Nader, 2021; Costa, Rocha, and Sousa, 2013, Both databases were drawn on records from the Arquivo da Casa da Moeda, Lisbon.
In this regard, three of the main investors in the Corisco Company stand out: Lourenço Reison, Francisco Nunes da Cruz, and Manoel Domingues do Paço. The trio received several shipments from Antônio Domingues do Paço and João Domingues do Paço, who were well-established merchants in Salvador. In turn, the Paço family, similar to Reison, is also mentioned in shipments of gold to the Mendes da Costa from London. Finally, both Nunes da Cruz and Paço were associated with the brothers Manuel Velho da Costa and Francisco Velho da Costa. The brothers were involved in the supply of salt to Brazil, a monopoly business known as the “salt contract.”21Francisco Velho da Costa was a slave trader and lived in Luanda at the end of the 17th century. They were also very active in the slave trade since almost onethird of all the gold sent by residents of Angola to Portugal were destined for Velho da Costa.22That is, of the 14,330,400 réis sent by people from Angola, 5,032,800 réis mentioned one of the Velho da Costa brothers in 1721. Sources: the same as in Figure 1.
The links graphically illustrated here consist of many separate negotiations involving different agents and multiple credit and payment transactions. Yet, the connection between London and Lisbon and between Angola and the salt contract is the most important: they are key to understanding the changes in the organization of the Angola contract that took place in 1724.
The wave of investments in the Lisbon slave trade of the 1720s was driven by the high demand for captives from the Costa da Mina,23While slave traders from northern Europe referred to the areas near the Elmina castle as the Mina Coast, the Portuguese used the expression Costa da Mina to refer to the entire region of the Gulf of Guinea. In the present article, I use this broader meaning. which accompanied the great rise in the slave prices in Brazil. The peak seems to have been between 1723 and 1725, precisely the years in which the Companhia do Corisco was established. However, the company was Lisbon’s last major undertaking in this field, and after its failure, voyages to Costa da Mina leaving Portugal dropped dramatically. The reasons for this sudden decrease are indirectly related to the failure of the company. Its economic and diplomatic fiasco, together with the recurring problems of navigation on the Costa da Mina, led authorities to propose several changes in the legislation on the slave trade.24See DHBN, Vol. XC, 1950, pp. 100-110, February 15, 1726. Verger, 1987, p. 89. AHU_CU_SÃO TOMÉ E PRÍNCIPE, Cx. 5, D. 535. On the one hand, it was recognized that it was impossible to prevent the slave trade-and to completely prevent smuggling-that vessels from Brazil carried out on the Costa da Mina and merely new procedures were created to avoid embezzlement. On the other hand, the WIC’s pressure on Portuguese-flagged vessels continued, especially on ships that came from Lisbon and brought goods that competed with the Dutch. The protection costs to outfit vessels in Lisbon must have been an important factor in the decision of Portuguese traders to abandon that route. Bahia and, secondarily, Pernambuco, reinforced their role as slave trading centers. Part of the venture capital that financed the voyages from Lisbon may have migrated to those colonial ports. Capitalists on the London-Lisbon connection could order their agents in Bahia to use their credits to provide venture capital to outfit ships in Portuguese America. Furthermore, as slave ships from the metropolis went to Rio de Janeiro, and that port remained legally excluded from the Gulf of Guinea, another part of the capital migrated to the Angolan trade. Graph 1 displays a significant reduction in voyages initiated in Lisbon and a gradual replacement of the Costa da Mina by the ports of Senegambia and the Congo-Angolan area. At the same time, it is likely that trade between Rio de Janeiro and Luanda increased. Investments in Senegambia were short-lived and it was not until the 1750s that Portugal resumed trade in the region again. Still, the reorganization towards Angola had a long-term impact on the organization of the slave trade.25 Lopes, 2008, p. 47; Verger, 1987, p. 161.
THE REORGANIZATION OF THE ANGOLA CONTRACT AND THE EXPANSION OF THE SLAVE TRADE IN WEST CENTRAL AFRICA
⌅The contract of the Kingdom of Angola, Congo, and Loango, or simply, the Angola contract, was the lease of taxes on the export of slaves from the West Central African region signed between the Portuguese Crown and groups of capitalists during the Old Regime. This business occupied a central position in the entire financial organization of the Portuguese slave trade. Contractors traded thousands of slaves, paid soldiers, and operated the Portuguese military machine in the African hinterland, and often financed the activity of private slave traders. However, between 1648 and 1710, the leasing of the tax was controlled by merchants with little capital, linked to Luanda’s mercantile elite.
In 1711, the Angola contract was leased by a merchant who had lived in Bahia for many years, Manoel Dias Filgueira.26In Luanda, the contract administrators were Pedro Machado and Manoel Pinto da Costa, see AHU_CU_ANGOLA, Cx. 21, D. 2149, December 17, 1716. The new contractor was supported by some Lisbon investors who had already partnered with him on the salt contract. Filgueira had problems with an uprising that took place in Bahia in 1711 and accumulated heavy debts with the Royal Treasury.27ANTT, Alfândega de Lisboa, Casa da Índia, livro 1874, f. 135. AHU_CU_ANGOLA, Cx. 20, D. 2052, November 15, 1709, and AHU_CU_BAHIA, Cx. 78, D. 6452, request From Manuel Gomes Lisboa, 1743. His businesses did not survive his death and in 1723 his assets were confiscated.
Filgueira was succeeded by Francisco Gomes Lisboa, a resident of Lisbon, who managed the contract between 1718 and 1723. It is quite likely that the new contractor used Dutch capital since he was João (Jacob) Vanzeller’s attorney and negotiated the rent of a ship to send troops to Angola for his client.28AHU_CU_ANGOLA, Cx. 21, D. 2129, August 25, 1716. Capitals from Bahia played a part in this lease because Francisco was the brother of Manuel Gomes Lisboa, a partner and administrator of Filgueira’s contract in Salvador. Francisco Garcia de Lima, a resident of Lisbon, was the bondsman.29AHU_CU_ASSENTO E FIANÇAS DOS CONTRATOS REAIS, contract won by Francisco Gomes Lisboa, cód. 296, fls.210-219 (transcribed by Guilherme Conigiero). See also Paiva, 2012. The latter was one of the main financiers of the contract between 1712 and 1729. Not only was he the bondsman in the three auctions that took place but he also owned several “shares” in the lease.30ANTT, 1º CNLB, Cx 41, L. 525, 7v-8v, April 2, 1724.
Francisco Garcia de Lima was an experienced tax farmer. At least since 1694, he was involved in the salt monopoly. Furthermore, he got involved in the tobacco contract with D. Pedro Gomez. With the latter, he was also the contractor for the supply of troops, along with Domingos Dantas da Cruz, during the War of Spanish Succession. He possibly had business with Brazil since the late seventeenth century but his career as a financier was apparently built mainly in Portugal.31ANTT, Tribunatl do Santo Ofício, Inquisição de Lisboa, proc. 1647, Diogo José Ramos. ANTT, Ministério do Reino, mç. 951, proc. 17, 1789. In the 1720s, already an old man, he and his various companions lent money, managed comendas, and were tax farmers for the Lisbon Customs.32ANTT, 1º CNLB, Cx. 41, L. 527, December 14, 1724. ff.78v-79, 1º CNLB, Cx. 42, L. 530, May 4, 1725, f. 14v-15v; 1º CNLB, Cx. 43, L. 535. March 22, 1726, 16v-17v, 1º CNLB, cx. 47, livro 556, March 11, 1730. Therefore, a fair amount of his fortune was built on his connections with the interior of Portugal.
Likewise, the holder of the Angola contract between 1724 and 1729 and one of Francisco Garcia de Lima’s main partners, Vasco Lourenço Veloso, took his first steps as a merchant and tax farmer in the Portuguese hinterland. In 1711, he lived with his brother, João Lourenço Veloso, in Vila de Monção, where they were probably retail merchants. Later, he settled in Viana, a secondary port in northern Portugal but a gateway to accessing English capital. In that village he began his participation in tax farming: he took part in the contract of the bula da cruzada and the assento de pão das tropas da província. He also began to work at the customs, evidence that he was already active in the export and import trade.33ANTT, Tribunal do Santo Ofício, Conselho Geral, Habilitações, João, mç. 48, doc. 951ª, Nader, 2014, pp. 76-89.
At the beginning of the 1720s, Vasco Lourenço was in Lisbon, projecting his investments towards the Empire. However, it is noteworthy that Vasco and Francisco Garcia de Lima hardly acted as consignees of gold remittances in 1720 and 1721, according to the databases of Nader (2021)Nader, H. (2021), Banco de dados das remessas de ouro, Salvador. and de Costa, Rocha, and Sousa (2013)Costa, L. Rocha, M. and Sousa, R. (2013). Banco de dados investigação. https://aquila4.iseg.ulisboa.pt/aquila/investigacao/ghes/investigacao/base-de-dados .34Vasco Lourenço Veloso appears in only one shipment in 1721. Weak connections with Brazil would be detrimental to the success of contracts such as salt and Angola. However, two notarial deeds from 1727 and 1728 show that Vasco was linked to the aforementioned Velho da Costa brothers, two great important merchants in Lisbon, with strong ties to the Angolan slave trade. With Manuel Velho da Costa and Francisco Luís Sayão, Vasco Lourenço Veloso signed the contract for Pau Brasil and the contract for the consulate of Casa da India (one of the customs offices in Lisbon).35ANTT, 1º CNLB, Cx. 44, L. 540, e 1º CNLB, Cx. 46, L. 549, November 7, 1728, ff. 53-54. Velho da Costa succeeded Filgueira as cashier of the salt contract. After that, and until at least 1730, the monopoly was managed by people who were somehow connected to Vasco’s group: a slave trader named Manuel Bernardes, who also traded with the Companhia do Corisco; a merchant named Francisco Mendes, who used a ship owned by Vasco in the salt trade; and Bento da Cunha Lima, very close to the Angolan contractor at the time, who in the power of attorney instructed his agent in Bahia to follow “the orders and warnings of Vasco Lourenço Veloso about the aforementioned deal.”36ANNT, 1º CNLB Cx. 48, L 561, 26, 1731, f-67v-68v. The attorney was Vasco’s brother, João Lourenço Veloso. All this indicates that the Velho da Costa brothers, along with Francisco Garcia de Lima, were among the capitalists who supported Vasco.37AHU_CU_BAHIA, Cx. 29, D. 2638, Request of Francisco Mendes of 1727, ANTT, 1º CNLB, Cx. 47, L. 556, power of Attorney of March 11, 1730. AHU_CU_BAHIA, Cx. 26, D. 2333, Caetano de Brito, March 10, 1727. ANTT, 7.CNL, ofício A, Cx. 70, L-395, f. 60v, February 19, 1725, f. 79-80. However, the first overseas contracts that Vasco Lourenço Veloso leased were the Angola contract and the right to collect the tithe from Salvador customs. It is interesting to note that the 1723 auction was atypical: no one bid on it. As a result, the Portuguese Crown negotiated directly with Vasco. Lisbon’s notary offices record the signatures of the King’s secretary, Diogo de Mendonça Corte Real, a man trusted by King D. João V, in choosing Vasco as a contractor.38Vasco Lourenço Veloso was an attorney for Diogo Mendonça Corte Real to manage or lease the income from fishing activities in São João da Foz and Matosinhos “which His Majesty has granted me.” ANTT, 1º CNLB, Cx.40, L 522, September 18, 1723, ff. 28v-29. Therefore, this suggests that the appointment of Angola’s contractors was a political decision, as was the creation of the Companhia do Corisco.
Vasco Lourenço started to manage the contract of royal rights (direitos reais) and the so-called new rights (novos direitos) that until then had been the responsibility of a Portuguese taxes division (provedoria) in the African domain. In the same vein, there was no auction for the contract for the tithe of the customs of Bahia that had been contested in the 1711 uprising. This contract was also managed by Vasco.39I owe Hyllo Nader the information that Salvador’s tithe was not auctioned.
The two contracts were transferred to Vasco Lourenço with an interval of just two months. It is striking that a relatively inexperienced merchant was handpicked by the Court authorities to manage two of the most important contracts in the Empire at that time. Documentation for the period is scarce but there is incomplete evidence that suggests that the chosen one, in addition to having the financial backing of some old investors in Lisbon, had the support of English capital, some of which also subscribed to the Companhia do Corisco.40Diogo de Mendonça Corte Real was close to the family of the English consul, Thomas Burnett, see SHAW, 1998, p. 57.
One of Vasco Lourenço Veloso’s main English connections was Tempest Milner.41ANTT, 1º CNLB, Cx. 48, L. 559, August 7, 1730, 29v-30. In London, Vasco had the services of Medina & Co., probably a firm of New Christians of Iberian origin, and Henrique Samuel Eyre.42ANTT, 1º CNLB, Cx, 41, L. 531, September 3, 1725, ff. 28-28v, ANTT, 1º CNLB, Cx. 43, L. 538, October 30, 1726, 69-69v. Another notarial deed shows that the relationship between the Angolan contractor and the English capitalists in Lisbon went beyond the appointment of attorneys. In August 1725, a ship’s captain, Manoel de Almeida Soares, took 2 million réis, in venture capital (sea loan), from the aforementioned Diogo (James) Lambert & Co. The money was to be used in outfitting the vessel Nossa Senhora da Conceição e São José, which was leaving for Rio de Janeiro; Manoel Almeida Soares owned ¼ of the vessel. The transaction took place at the house of Vasco Lourenço, who was Soares’ partner on the ship and his bondsman; Milner was the witness.43ANTT, 1º CNLB, Cx. 41, L. 531, August 15, 1725, ff. 78-79. It is possible to confirm that the vessel also belonged to Vasco by means of another deed in which Manoel Almeida Soares appointed him attorney-in-fact to collect the freights of that vessel, see ANTT, 1º CNLB, cx.44, L. 539, February 11, 1727, ff. 32v-33v.
This type of transaction was quite common: a well-established wholesaler would associate with a ship’s captain, usually earlier in his career, for one or more voyages. Ownership of the vessel was divided between the two main partners and a few more passive investors who only contributed capital but did not manage the operations. In addition to having the ownership of the vessel and the rights over freight income, passive investors could supply goods for trading or lend capital in different modalities to other investors.44 Menz, 2019; Melo, 2021; Davis, 1962. The high value of the sea loan and the people mentioned in the deed indicate that this was the case of the vessel Nossa Senhora da Conceição e São José. Vasco Lourenço and Manoel Almeida Soares were the partners responsible for the voyage, while Lambert probably owned part of the ship and lent a portion of the capital to start the endeavor (Fig. 2).
However, the deeds of the Lisbon notary office capture an even more interesting and relevant case from the point of view of the organization of the slave trade: the story of the outfitting of two vessels that were pioneers in the Benguela trade. Through a complex negotiation that included the participation of the Angola contractor, English capitalists in Lisbon invested in the slave trade in the Portuguese Empire. However, to address this it is necessary to revisit the story of a slave dealer that is well known in the literature: José de Torres.
exclusively in Benguela, a coastal village south of Luanda. Benguela, until then, was a port of little importance in the slave trade. It supplied a significant number of slaves to Luanda since the 1680s but very few ships involved in the transatlantic trade came from there. In fact, shipping directly to America was prohibited in the southern port.50
What led José de Torres to partake in such an unusual enslaving journey at this point? In fact, the famous slave trader was raising capital for his South Atlantic adventures among the English mercantile community of Lisbon. One of his investors was João Sherman (John Sherman), who was among the main English capitalists in Lisbon.51 There are very strong indications that he was José de Torres-and not José dos Santos Torres, as Roquinaldo Ferreira wrote-was a ship captain who traded slaves on the Costa da Mina, at least since the last years of the seventeenth century.45Roquinaldo Ferreira mistook José de Torres for another slave trader, José dos Santos Torres, who operated in Luanda after the 1750s, dying in 1774. José de Torres never signed as “José dos Santos Torres.” Furthermore, according to an investigation in which he was a witness, José dos Santos Torres was 35 years old in 1755 and could not have participated in events that took place in the early 1720s, see AHU_CU_ANGOLA, Cx. 43, D 4028, Investigation attached to the letter of João Baptista Baena of February 29, 1756. See Ferreira 2006; 2010, p. 208. The TSTD (Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade DatabaseEltis, D., ed. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Data (TSTD), https://www.slavevoyages.org/ ) records five voyages organized by him but surely there were many more.46 https://www.slavevoyages.org/voyages/4jANyFux, accessed on March 26, 2021. Around 1721 Torres recorded that he had been sailing along the Costa da Mina for over 24 years, see Lopes, 2008, p. 56, note 133. However, one of the voyages attributed to him (48287) in 1762 is certainly a mistake. It is unlikely that in 1762 he was still sailing, as by then he must have been over 70 years old. Furthermore, I have the passport record of the vessel that was assigned to him in 1762 (Santa Margarida e Almas) and the captain is Custódio Viana, see AHU_CU_PASSAPORTES DE NAVIOS, code 774. During the first three decades of the eighteenth century, he worked between several ports of the Empire but in the 1710s he concentrated his activities on the port of Salvador, like most Portuguese slave traders.47In 1716, José de Torres exported slaves in Luanda, as can be seen in an investigation that was carried out at the request of the Angolan contractor, see AHU_CU_ANGOLA, Cx. 21, D. 2135, September 28, 1716. He was also in Rio de Janeiro during the French invasions, as shown by his service certificate at a notary in Lisbon, see ANTT, 1º CNLB, cx. 40, livro 520, ff. 29v30. Since he was an influential merchant on both sides of the Atlantic, he obtained authorization to build a fortress from the king of Ajudá (Whydah or Ouidah), which was to serve as a trading entrepôt for Portuguese ships. In addition, Torres became known for his smuggling, both with the British and the Dutch at the Costa da Mina (Lopes, 2008, pp. 55-57Lopes, G. (2008) Negócio da Costa da Mina: Ouro e Açúcar, Tabaco e Tráfico de Escravos: Capitania de Pernambuco (1654-1760). Phd. Thesis (History), São Paulo: FFLCH/USP.; Verger, 1987, pp. 86-87 and 163Verger, P. (1987) Fluxo e Refluxo do Tráfico de Escravos entre o Golfo de Benin e a Bahia de Todos os Santos: dos séculos XVII a XIX. Salvador: Corrupio.).
Shortly after having built the fortress, he was imprisoned in Lisbon for all his illicit acts. From the Limoeiro jail, he sought to prove his many valuable services to the monarchy, including his help to the Companhia do Corisco against the Dutch.48AHU_CU_SÃO TOMÉ E PRÍNCIPE, Cx. 6, D. 638, 1732. He did not spend much time behind bars. Managing to persuade important figures in the Portuguese Court, he obtained a letter from the king preventing him from being arrested on account of his debts in 1723.49ANTT, 1º CNLB, Cx.40, L 522, September 18, 1723, ff. 28v-29. In 1725 he was back in action, undertaking a negotiation that had not been attempted before sailing directly from the Portuguese capital to buy slaves exclusively in Benguela, a coastal village south of Luanda. Benguela, until then, was a port of little importance in the slave trade. It supplied a significant number of slaves to Luanda since the 1680s but very few ships involved in the transatlantic trade came from there. In fact, shipping directly to America was prohibited in the southern port.50There is some debate on when direct voyages from Benguela without going through Luanda actually started. Historians have also discussed the significance of slave exports from the region before the 1720s. Ferreira (2003, pp. 105-112) and Candido (2015, p. 147) mention a few slave voyages before the operation conducted by José de Torres while the TSTD refers to three ships leaving the area between 1699 and 1709. It is most likely, however, that these documented voyages refer to connections made at the port instead of direct voyages, as indicated by the original source for at least one of the voyages (voyageid: 49311) (see Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro, lata 72, pasta 8, Carta de Luis César de Menezes a Ignacio Correa, 02/10/1700). The fiscal control over trade in Benguela was based on Luanda until at least the 1750s, and only with a license from the contractors could voyages be organized directly from the southern port. This obviously does not eliminate the existence of some contraband.
What led José de Torres to partake in such an unusual enslaving journey at this point? In fact, the famous slave trader was raising capital for his South Atlantic adventures among the English mercantile community of Lisbon. One of his investors was João Sherman (John Sherman), who was among the main English capitalists in Lisbon.51Donovan mistook João Charem, who lived in Rio de Janeiro in the first three decades of the 18th century, with João Sherman; or the two were homonyms. The first was still living in Brazil in 1727 when he had to pay a debt owed to Rafael Gluston. He was married to a “Brazilian” named Barbara de Sá Souto Maior, see AHU_CU_RIO DE JANEIRO, Cx. 18, D. 2013, 18/08/1727. Donovan, 1990, pp. 267-268. See also Guimarães, 2020, p. 194. João Sherman, as his activity in Lisbon notary offices shows, was in Lisbon all this time and was married to Maria Sherman, although this marriage may have been his second one, see AHU_CU_MARANHÃO, Cx. 27, D. 2844, Requerimento de Maria Sherman, 1744. There are very strong indications that he was one of the owners of the ship Nossa Senhora Montserrat e Piedade that José de Torres employed on his trips to Ajudá, and which resulted in the construction of the Portuguese trading post.52 https://www.slavevoyages.org/voyages/4jANyFux, accessed on March 26, 2021. A deed of 1728 records the payment of a sea loan of 3,000,185 réis. This money was lent by Sherman to João da Cruz Morais, referring to a voyage made by the ship Nossa Senhora Montserrat e Piedade between Lisbon and Bahia. The same João da Cruz Morais immediately took another 3,600,000 réis, again through a sea loan, from João Sherman to pay for outfitting the ship to go to Rio de Janeiro. As I have already mentioned, ship owners used to lend money to captains to invest in cargo and pay their share of the vessel’s outfitting, see ANTT, 1º CNLB, Cx. 87, L. 411, February 4, 1728, ff. 92-92v and ff.92v-93v. João da Cruz Morais headed at least six trips to Costa da Mina on other vessels. https://www.slavevoyages.org/voyages/o8zMQHeW, accessed on April 02, 2021.
Sherman had several investments in the Iberian trade, both between Portugal and the rest of Europe, as well as between Lisbon and the marketplaces of the Portuguese Empire. Among his undertakings, supplying credit to Lisbon merchants stood out, either through contracts of obligation or sea loans. In order to get a better view of the amounts transacted by him, it is enough to point out that, together with one of his partners, Guilherme Viollette, he was responsible for lending 12.2% of the credit registered at the 2nd Lisbon notary office between 1715 and 1800. This is all the more impressive considering that Sherman worked for just over one-third of this period since he died in the 1740s (Costa, Rocha, and Brito, 2018, p. 31Costa, L., Rocha, M., and Brito, P. (2018) “Os impactos do terramoto de 1755 no mercado de crédito de Lisboa.” Ler História, 72, pp. 77-102. doi: https://doi.org/10.4000/lerhistoria.3388 ).
Sherman was also responsible for wide transactions with bills of exchange involving Lisbon, London, Madrid, Barcelona, Amsterdam, and Genoa.53ANTT, 2 CNLB Cx. 82, L. 391, November 10, 1723, ff. 77-77v, ANTT, 2 CNLB, cx. 85, livro 404. Power of Attorney of August 29, 1726, ff. 55-55v and power of Attorney of September 4, 1726. ANTT, 2 CNLB, Cx. 86, L 407, March 12, 1727, ff. 16-16v, 2 CNLB, Cx. 85, L. 405, November 9, 1726, ff. 26-27v. Bills of exchange were a very common way to send money from one place to another and, eventually, could cover foreign investments. For example, someone in England could “buy” a bill of exchange in pounds from a trader who had balances in réis, from a third party, in Lisbon and discount the corresponding amount in Portuguese currency in the latter city.54See Boyajian, 1983, p. 63. Since Sherman was also a money dealer, it is not unlikely that, when loaning to Portuguese ship captains and traders, he was also managing the portfolios of investors elsewhere in Europe. Another activity associated with bills of exchange was the contract for the supply of bread to the English troops of Gibraltar that Sherman administered during the War of the Spanish Succession. His participation in military finance went even further. During this period, Portugal imported mainly textiles and grains from England, which made up the bulk of Great Britain’s positive trade balances over the kingdom of Bragança. A portion of the cereals fed the English and Portuguese troops that acted in the Peninsula, while the mentioned balances were used to pay the soldiers. The Royal Exchequer drew in Lisbon on the exporters from England; these were creditors of the British residing in the Portuguese capital who, in turn, provided the cash-obtained in colonial trade-to be paid to the military. According to Jones, the London business was primarily operated by Henry Furnese, a banker of Huguenot origin, and James Milner.55There is evidence that James Milner was Tempest Miler’s brother. In the biographical information of John Milner, member of the English parliament and English consul in Lisbon until 1712, it is stated that John was the son of a Tempest Milner, brother of James Milner and that his younger brothers “were prominent members of the English factory in Lisbon.” Everything indicates that our Tempest Milner had the same name as his father, see https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1660-1690/ member/milner-john-1657-1712 [accessed on May 20, 2021]. See also Shaw, 1998, p. 98. In Lisbon, it was Thomas Morrice, the deputy paymaster, who managed payments and sent money to Catalonia, with the collaboration of several local financiers, among them João Sherman (Graham, 2014, p. 93Graham, A. (2014) “4. Public Service and Private Profit.” In: J. Fynn-Paul, War, Entrepreneurs, and the State in Europe and the Mediterranean, 1300-1800. Leiden: Brill, 87-110. ; Jones, 1988, p. 87Jones, D. (1988) War and Economy in the Age of William III and Marlborough. Oxford/Basil: Blackwell.).56One of the bills of exchange refers to the payment of troops in Barcelona, see ANTT, 2 CNLB, Cx. 85, L. 404, September 4, 1726.
The English merchant also invested in the slave trade. In addition to the connection he had with Torres, probably since the journey to create the fortress of Ajudá, Sherman sponsored Captain Bento Ferreira’s 1721 enslaving voyage to Costa da Mina with “several sea loans.”57ANTT, 2 CNLB, cx. 81, livro 389, April 6, 1723, ff. 5v-8. This deal resembles the trip from Torres to Benguela sponsored by Sherman. See ahead. His interests in the slave trade led him to sign a proposal to create a new company to trade with Costa da Mina in the early 1730s (Lopes, 2008, anexo IVLopes, G. (2008) Negócio da Costa da Mina: Ouro e Açúcar, Tabaco e Tráfico de Escravos: Capitania de Pernambuco (1654-1760). Phd. Thesis (History), São Paulo: FFLCH/USP.).
A notary record details the negotiation between Sherman and Torres. The Englishman, together with another Portuguese partner, Manoel José Telles, a New Christian, set up two vessels for Benguela: “the corveta named São Pedro e São Paulo and the galera named after Santo Antonio de Pádua.” The capital of the two voyages, comprising the hull and equipment of the vessel, plus the goods, was, respectively, 14,897,800 réis and 13,715,544 réis. These amounts were divided into eight parts: 1/8 belonged to Sherman and 1/8 belonged to Telles, while the other 6/8 were loaned by the Englishman to Torres, with an interest of 50%. Sherman then owned 7/8 of the initial capital but only 1/8 of his investment was direct, the rest was provided as “sea loan” to the well-known slaver.58ANTT, 2 CNLB, Cx. 84, L. 400, December 6, 1725, ff. 73-76v. Therefore, most of the English capital comprised the “risk of fire, sea and corsairs.” In case of the loss of the ship, the investor lost everything. If the trip was successful, the total debt was paid, and the creditor made a profit of 50%. The deal had two advantages for its main investor: it guaranteed a certain return, regardless of market conditions in Benguela, and it allowed foreigners to participate in the Portuguese overseas trade.59The practice was usual and ancient in the Iberian Peninsula, as described by Antônio Miguel Bernal: the Genoese used to provide credit, through sea loans, to captains of vessels destined for the West Indies, representing an “irregular type of company,” see Miguel Bernal, 1992.
The negotiation also had the participation of Vasco Lourenço Veloso, who was already managing the Angola contract. One of the ships used by José de Torres, the Santo Antônio de Pádua, was purchased by him from Raymundo Field shortly before the first negotiations between Sherman and Torres. The sales document clearly states that the vessel was “to travel to the port of Benguela to get slaves.”60“... para fazer viagem para o porto de Benguela a resgatar escravos” see, ANTT, 1º CNLB, Cx. 41, L 531, August 27, 1725, ff. 96-97. Vasco Lourenço Veloso bought another ship from an English merchant, Guilherme Mawman, to do business in Angola, see ANTT, 1º CNLB, Cx. 40, L. 521, July 22, 1723, ff. 55-57.
Apparently, Sherman, Violette, Garry, and also Milner, and Lambert were among the financiers of the slave trade operations of the Angola contract. However, the enterprise responsible for collecting the tax could be completely separate from the various companies outfitting ships for the slave trade. As far as it was possible to know, there is no reference to foreign partners in the contracts I analyzed, suggesting that the capital involved in the Angola contract was exclusively Portuguese. In contrast, everything indicates that Vasco Lourenço Veloso, like other tax farmers before and after him, created parallel companies with merchants from other nations or from Brazil to outfit ships for the slave trade.61The power of attorney that Vasco Lourenço Veloso drew up for his brother, João Lourenço Veloso, gave him wide powers to use his ships and to manage the contract in Bahia, see ANTT, 1º CNLB, Cx, 43, L. 535, April 1, 1726, 37v-38. This seems to be the case for Vasco Lourenço, Sherman, and other traders who shared the property of the Santo Antônio de Pádua vessel.
The analysis of mercantile connections, drawn on the deeds of the Lisbon notary offices, reinforces this interpretation. While Vasco Lourenço Veloso had many more connections with other capitalists and agents from his tax farming activities, Sherman focused his negotiations on bills of exchange and sea loans (Fig. 3).
Yet, another hypothesis, not completely opposite to the previous one, suggests a slightly different and even more complex explanation. As I have already mentioned, Sherman’s partner in the Benguela adventure and in other businesses in Africa was a New Christian named Manoel José Telles, who also went by the name of Manoel José da Costa and also by Manoel Rodrigues Nogueira. This man of many names was the nephew and heir of Álvaro Nicolau Nogueira, an important Lisbon capitalist involved in the slave trade.62ANTT, Tribunal do Santo Ofício, Inquisição de Lisboa, Maço 5, nr. 5, Manoel José Teles lawsuit. ANTT, 2 CNLB, cx.84, livro 401. February 24, 1726, ff. 66v-67v. According to Carla Vieira, it was common for crypto-Jews on the London-Lisbon route to use the services of English merchant houses in Lisbon to continue trading within the Empire (Vieira, 2015Vieira, C. (2015) “Mercadores ingleses em Lisboa e Judeus portugueses em Londres: agentes, redes e trocas mercantis na primeira metade do século XVIII.” Ammentu - Bollettino Storico e Archivistico del Mediterraneo e delle Americhe (114-132), nr. 7.). Sherman’s sea loans on the slave trade could be covering Inquisition refugee investments. The Englishman also had business with Medina & Co., Vasco Lourenço Veloso’s attorneys in London.
In any case, Vasco Lourenço Veloso was elevated to the status of the Crown tax farmer because of his connections with English capitalists and other more experienced contractors who worked mainly in the development of monopolies in the Iberian Peninsula. This coalition, which led to Vasco Lourenço’s ascension, was consolidated during the War of the Spanish Succession. The British provided the necessary flour for the armies and the manufactures to be exported to Brazil. They also operated commercial balances, credit between London and Lisbon, and bills of exchange between the two marketplaces. The Portuguese brought the gold from the Empire, redistributed food among the armies, and outfitted the ships, relying on their networks in the Atlantic and in the interior of Portugal.
The Crown’s favoring of this conglomerate of Portuguese-English merchants was one of several interventions by influential authorities in slave policy. They sought to meet several goals with this. In the case of Angola, the aim was to promote the slave trade in the region, which, ultimately, should guarantee dominion over West-Central Africa, threatened by the Loango issue, and reduce Brazil’s dependence on the Costa da Mina.
CONCLUSION: SLAVING VIOLENCE IN THE INTERIOR OF BENGUELA
⌅The Portuguese had been organizing various military campaigns in Benguela’s interior since the 1680s in order to most likely open the slave markets that were controlled by African authorities, who were independent of the Portuguese. Waves of refugees produced by wars and droughts periodically produced a great number of people in conditions to be enslaved and sold on the coast; those slaves were sent to Luanda from where they would later be shipped. It was only in the 1720s, however, that trade in the region seems to have taken off.
The export of enslaved Africans from Benguela significantly increased after 1725 (Graph 2). Slave exports from Angola also seem to have been affected by the expansion of the slaving frontier to the South since a great number of enslaved individuals from Benguela continued to be sent to the African capital.64Ver AHU_CU_ANGOLA, Cx. 27, D. 2669, 20/12/1729, Paulo Caetano Albuquerque, AHU_CU_ANGOLA, Cx. 25, D. 2555, Paulo Caetano de Albuquerque, 17/04/1727 e AHU_CU_ANGOLA, Cx. 28, D. 2767, Paulo Caetano Albuquerque, anexa a consulta do Conselho Ultramarino, 03/01/1732, In any case, dozens of requests for licenses to sail south of Luanda were arriving at the Overseas Council, in a strong wave of slave investments in that port. Until the 1750s, requests came mainly from ship owners operating in Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro. The growth of the slave trade in Benguela corresponded to the virtual extinction of Lisbon slave voyages to Costa da Mina. It was a successful transition in the sources of forced labor for mining in Brazil: from Costa da Mina to West-Central Africa, a process that was consolidated in the 1750s (Bergad, 2004, pp. 229-230Bergad, W. (2004) Escravidão e história econômica: demografia de Minas Gerais, 1720-1888. Bauru: Editora da Universidade do Sagrado Coração; see also Curto, 2015Curto, J. (2015) “Another Look at the Slave Trade from Benguela: What We Know and What We Do Not Know.” Portuguese Studies Review (23), pp 9-26.).
The abundance of credit and goods reinforced the power of local captains over allied populations. Shortly after the visit of José de Torres and other Lisbon ships that came after him, an expedition against the sobas of Bembe, Luceque, and Caluquembe in Caconda’s interior was organized (1728-1730). According to the accusations of a magistrate, the soldiers that had originally marched against the Quiambela soba “followed a different direction (...), went to war in the provinces of Bembe and Luceque because they believed that in those districts they would find more captives.”65AHU_CU_ANGOLA, Cx. 26, D. 2614, Francisco Pereira da Costa, 12/07/1728. The leader of the expedition, colonel Álvaro de Barros da Silva, had raised at least 3,500,000 réis in risk money in Lisbon in 1725, most of which he borrowed from the contractor Vasco Lourenço Veloso.66ANTT, 1º CNLB, Cx, 41, L. 531, ff. 54v55v, ANTT, 1º CNLB, Cx. 42, L. 532, November 15, 1725, ff. 89-90 ANTT, 2CNLB Cx. 84, L., 399, ff. 38-38v. Veloso as we have seen was involved in the organization of Torres’ voyage and shortly after sent a vessel to Benguela that could carry 800 people.67AHU_CU_ANGOLA, Cx. 27, D. 2669, 20/12/1729, Paulo Caetano Albuquerque 1953.
European authorities understood very well the relationship between war, credit, the slave trade, and the new political and economic conjuncture of the traffic. As we have seen the secretary of state Diogo de Mendonça Corte Real had an important role in the arrangements that led to the development of direct trade between Lisbon and Angola. Moreover, the Crown supported violent policies since this was seen as a necessary step to compensate for foreign competition in the Gulf of Guinea. A provision of May 19, 1729, established the war could be waged against “a powerful soba [african chief] that lives between our presídios [garrisons] of Ambaca and Caconda (...) so that we can supply the lack [of slaves] from the Costa da Mina.”68AHU_CU_CARTAS DE ANGOLA, códice 546, f.36v. Maybe because he understood the necessity of war during that period for the production of enslaved individuals in Benguela, José de Torres ran for the role of capitão-mor (captain) of the presídio in 1732. Individuals who occupied that position, like their superiors in Luanda, were a fundamental part of the Atlantic trade networks and the slaving violence in the interior.69AHU_CU_CONSULTAS MISTAS, códice 23, fl. 116-116v, 25/08/1732. See too AHU_CU_ANGOLA, Cx. 30, D. 2916, Requerimento José Gonçalves Lamas.
Portuguese military operations in the highlands of Benguela persisted but the conflicts around the presídios decreased over the 1740s. There is some evidence that a pax lusitana was slowly being established in some parts of the plateau, leading to an expansion of the slaving frontier to the east and the emergence of friendlier authorities in the interior. Old sobados (polities) were destroyed and entire populations migrated, paving the way for the establishment of new settlements based on the women and children that were captured in the incursions. Villages led by chiefs who were willing to collaborate with the colonial power were created around the Portuguese garrisons. In more distant zones the old authorities could be replaced by lords who were connected to the expansion of Portuguese trade and enslavement.70This argument is based mainly on Miller, 1988, passim, pp. 130131. See too Candido, 2013A, pp. 239-2490. By the end of the eighteenth century the chronicler Elias Alexandre da Silva Corrêa referred to the province of Quilengues, in Benguela, as an “extension of the Conquest fed by trade.”71 Corrêa, 1937/1790, p. 26. Mining in Brazil attracted the interest and investments of capitalists from northern Europe to the Portuguese empire. It seems that many of those great merchants were well established in Lisbon, financing military operations during the War of Spanish Succession. The transatlantic slave trade was one of the activities in which British adventurers invested money, supporting traders from Lisbon and Brazil in their actions on the Costa da Mina. The growing competition in the Gulf of Guinea, however, and the efforts of the WIC to capture Bahia slave ships and exclude Lisbon ones led the Portuguese Crown to react in two different ways. First, based on the support of the English factors in Lisbon, it financed the creation of the Corisco Company to militarily respond to Dutch competition. Secondly, it gave the Angola contract to an ascending Portuguese financier, Vasco Lourenço Veloso, who had the support of a well-established group of king associates and foreign merchants. It seems that Diogo de Mendonça Corte Real was the great figure behind these two strategies. Once the first one failed, the Portuguese crown focused on the Angolan trade.
It was based on English capital and the participation of the contractor and official support that the first legal slave trading voyage directly from Benguela took place, captained by the well-known José de Torres. The southern port until then only supplied slaves to Luanda, from where they were shipped to America. The number of slaves coming from the southern frontier was not large before 1725. It was European credit, in the conjuncture of the Brazilian mining boom and growing competition in the transatlantic slave trade, that paved the way for the expansion of the slaving frontier. In this way, a new wave of slaving violence was established south of Luanda.