This presentation intends to study the so-called mulekes or “Church slaves” in 18th and 19th century Kongo. In the Kikongo language, the term muleke generically designates the condition of a young person, a cadet, or a socially inferior person. Most of the Church slaves/mulekes that appear in the documentation are children or young boys and girls who served the Catholic hospices in Kongo and eventually lived with the European missionaries as domestic slaves. This type of slavery will be analyzed as a political tool of the Kongo decentralized regime in the 18th and 19th centuries. We wish to unveil muleke’s role as political agents of mediation between local power and European missionaries, learning how they managed to resist and adapt, juggling and coping with the established social relations and stakes of power. The mulekes can also reveal interesting clues to Central African forms of slavery and their intersection with colonial forms, hinting at the role of the “Church” in this complex context.
Thiago Sapede is a Brazilian historian who works as an Assistant Professor of History at the Federal University of Bahia. He received his PhD in History from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales of Paris in 2020. His field of work is West Central African History, mainly Kongo and Angola, in the 18th and 19th centuries, focusing on political and global history as well as slavery. He is a fellow at the BCDSS for the months of June and July 2023.
The workshop is open to all members of the BCDSS, including Ph.D. candidates and M.A. students.
This workshop series is organised by the Research Group "The Concept of Slavery in African History".
Mary Afolabi
Boluwatife Akinro
Ricardo Márquez García
Jutta Wimmler
Lukas Wissel