Prof. Dr. Mariana P. Candido1, Winship Distinguished Research Professor and Director of the Institute of African Studies at Emory University, will explore the roles of women in the histories of slavery in Angola, highlighting their experiences of bondage, resistance, and violence. The event is convened by Ana Lucia Araujo2, Professor of History at Howard University and Heinz Heinen Fellow at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies.
This seminar will discuss the pre-circulated unpublished chapter "Bondage, Resistance, and Violence in Angola, 1600s-1880s: Centering Women in Histories of Slavery" by Professor Dr. Mariana P. Candido (Emory University, United States). The chapter draws from her current book project, Beyond Queens and Captives: Women in Angola, 1500-1880s that examines women's economic, political, social and religious roles in the history of West Central Africa. The chapter focuses on the women who remained enslaved in West Central Africa during the era of the transatlantic slave trade. It covers 300 years of history and brings case studies to humanize enslaved women. It is based on analysis of Inquisition proceedings, legal cases, official correspondence, travel accounts, ecclesiastical records, among other primary sources dispersed in archives and libraries in Angola, Portugal, and Brazil. The chapter examines the gendered dimension of slavery in West Central Africa. It discusses the transformation of local forms of slavery in the context of transatlantic slave trade and the expansion of slavery in the age of abolition. Through case studies, Professor Candido discusses the variety of skilled activities that enslaved women and girls fulfilled in urban and rural spaces and variation across time and space. The chapter also discusses how enslaved women sought new kinship, forging new networks of solidarity, establishing families, while also resisting slavery. Contrary to earlier scholarship on slavery in Africa, cases from Angola reveal that enslaved women were not assimilated into host societies. Enslaved women’s search for belonging did not result in absorption in host families. Slavery's stigma remains alive in Angola.
About the speaker
Mariana P. Candido is the Winship Distinguished Research Professor of History and the Director of the Institute of African Studies, at Emory University. Dr. Candido is a specialist in West Central African history during the era of the transatlantic slave trade. Her books have received awards, including the 2023 African Studies Association Best Book Award in African Studies for Wealth, Land and Property in Angola: A History of Dispossession, Slavery and Inequality (Cambridge University Press, 2022). Her previous book, An African Slaving Port and the Atlantic World: Benguela and its Hinterland (Cambridge University Press, 2013) received an honorable mention of the 2013 Herskovits Prize African Studies Association. She also published Fronteras de Esclavización: Esclavitud, Comercio e Identidad en Benguela, 1780-1850 (Colegio de Mexico Press, 2011), translated into Portuguese Fronteras da Escravização (Universidade Katyavala Bwila, 2018). Candido edited A Cultural History of Slavery and Human Trafficking in the Age of Empire (Bloomsbury, 2024). She also co-edited with Adam Jones, African Women in the Atlantic World. Property, Vulnerability and Mobility, 1680-1880 (James Currey, 2019); with Carlos Liberato, Paul Lovejoy and Renée Soulodre-La France, Laços Atlânticos: África e africanos durante a era do comércio transatlântico de escravos (Museu Nacional da Escravatura/ Ministério da Cultura, 2017); and Crossing Memories: Slavery and African Diaspora, with Ana Lucia Araujo and Paul Lovejoy (African World Press, 2011). She has also authored more than 30 articles. In 2022, Mariana Candido was elected a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, UK. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK; the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, the American Academy in Berlin, the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, and the Luso-American Foundation. Since 2016, Candido is one of the editors of the African Economic History and since 2018, she has served as one of the five associate editors of the Oxford Encyclopedia Research of Slavery, Slave Trade and Diaspora.