by Matthew Gaetano

TRF has addressed Christian confrontations with slavery in the past (here, here, here). Kidnapping of West Africans or other raiding expeditions during the transatlantic slave trade of 12.5 million human beings did occur (and here). It is also true that the Portuguese and others purchased human beings already in some form of bondage in West Africa. Now, putting such people in the Caribbean or South America or elsewhere profoundly changed their situation, even if it were from one reality of oppression to another. Yet I want to focus here on the fact that some of these negotiations about slavery happened between kings in Europe and West Africa. Indeed, in the case of Kongo, letters exist between two rulers who embraced the Catholic faith.

The story begins in 1491. I’m largely following Bengt Sundkler’s account in A History of the Church in Africa (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 49ff., and David Northrup’s account in Africa’s Discovery of Europe, 1450-1850, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 36ff. The ruler, Nzinga Nkuvu, was baptized in front of 25,000 people and took the name João after his royal counterpart in Portugal. There were a few reported dreams of a beautiful woman – later interpreted as the Blessed Virgin Mary – who told them that baptism would make them invincible. There was also the apparent discovery of a stone in the form of a cross that was carried to a new church (see here for more on iconography in Kongo). The queen (now Leonor) and the prince Mvemba Nzinga were also baptized, and the prince took the Portuguese name Afonso. A few years later, a reaction to all of this took place in part because of local religious customs and traditions as well as because of the Christian demand of monogamy.

Prince Afonso or Mvemba Nzinga fled to the district of Sundi, received instruction from Portuguese priests, and later defeated his half-brother after the death of his father in 1506 (with the help of his mother and allegedly of St. James, who was often invoked in the Iberian peninsula during the Reconquista). Now the sixth ruler of Kongo, Afonso set up a school for hundreds of boys and also one for girls. He replaced traditional ritual objects with Christian ones. Especially interesting is the fact that he sent his son Henrique (d. 1526) to Lisbon to study, and he became a (titular) bishop, the first Central African bishop (of course, African Christianity goes back to the early centuries of the Church). Henrique was also the last bishop from this region for 250 years. Afonso also wrote to the pope, with the help of the nuncio in Lisbon, asking for relaxation of clerical celibacy and invoking the example of the Maronites in the Near East.

According to Sundkler, when King Afonso of Kongo died in 1543, hundreds of thousands of his subjects – about half of the population – had been baptized. There was apparently a sense of genuine exchange and royal brotherhood with the Portuguese. Afonso’s father sent carved ivory and palm-cloth; the Portuguese served as auxiliaries in Afonso’s military conflicts. A Portuguese priest said in 1516 that Afonso’s “Christian life is such that he appears to me not as a man but an angel” and testified that the king studied the Hebrew prophets, the Gospels, the stories of the martyrs, and preached to his people (cf. Northrup, 38).

But there was a problem. Afonso could not pay for the craftsmen, arms specialists, and other goods that he sought for his kingdom. The cloth of the land – though “as soft as velvet [and] as beautiful as any made in Italy” (quoted in Northrup, 38) – did not find a place in the export markets. So, his kingdom ended up meeting the demand for slaves, especially for Portuguese sugar plantations on the island of São Tomé (see here for the result of this development). This was apparently an acceptable situation to those in power for a couple of decades. Yet in a 1526 letter that Northrup translates from Monumenta Missionaria Africana (1952), King Afonso expressed concern to the Portuguese king, João III, called “our brother” in a later letter:

Many of our people, out of great desire for the wares and things of your kingdoms, which are brought here by your people, and in order to satisfy their disordered appetite, seize many of our people, free and exempt men. And many times noblemen and sons of noblemen and our royal relatives are stolen, and they take them to be sold to the white men who are in our kingdoms and take them secretly or by night, so they are not recognized. (39)

In another letter of that year, Afonso makes a moving request:

We need … no more than some priests and a few people to teach in schools, and no other goods except wine and flour for the holy sacrament.

This African king wanted to stop or at least limit the slave trade in his kingdom. He sought to maintain relations with Portugal to allow the Holy Eucharist to be received by his subjects. Afonso’s attempt to prevent the enslavement of his people can be found in a number of places online. Less well-known is the king of Portugal’s 1529 reply, published in The Portuguese in West Africa, 1415-1670: A Documentary History, ed. Malyn Newitt (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 151-53:

…You say in your letters that you do not want there to be any slave trade in your kingdom because it is depopulating your land. I can believe that you only say this as a result of the suffering that the Portuguese cause you, because I am told of the great size of Kongo and how it is so populated that it appears that not a single slave has left it. They also tell me that you send to buy them [slaves] outside [the country] and that you marry them and make them Christian, by which means the country is well populated. All this seems good to me and so now, with this order that the people carry and which you intend to send to the fairs, it appears there will be many slaves.

As for those who are sold in this city, in order to know if they are natives or come from outside, there ought to be at the fair a designated place where they are sold and where there will be two of your servants who will know if the said slaves are sold in the houses [in secret], and they shall not be sold without the said two men being present. It may be difficult to find men you wish to nominate, since they serve you in other matters of greater importance, and these two men will on one day buy for the priests, on another for the officials and on another for the schoolmasters, who will pay the price according to custom and in this way all will have a good outcome.

If I say now that I desire, as you request, that there shall not be any trade in slaves in your kingdom, I will still want to provide wheat and wine for use at Mass, and for this only one caravel a year will be necessary. If this seems good to you, it shall be so. However, it does not seem to me to be to the honour of you or your kingdom because it would be more praiseworthy to draw each year from the Kongo 10,000 slaves and 10,000 manilhas [brass bracelets] and as many tusks of ivory. If there is now to be no trade in the Kongo at all, and only one ship a year is to come there, this and more shall be as you desire.

You also sent to ask me for a ship, which astonishes me since all my ships are yours; and you ought to remember the ships which João de Melo lent you, who is still today owed 2,000 reis for the costs he incurred, and in addition to this the suffering you which experienced in this. Nor do you take into account the [cost of the] boats, ships and [other] expenditure which my predecessors and I incurred on the sea, not to gain or acquire riches but only to secure the navigation and the route for sailors who make their living this way. It is these who profit by it, not the king, and this you have experienced yourself in your kingdom.

Remember the armada which the king my father sent at your request when Gonçalo Roiz came and which was lost here, and also the armada which brought Simão da Silva [ambassador of Dom Manuel sent to Kongo in 1512], who died there; all these things were done for honour and not for profit. You should note that these ships, which came here to profit by the sale of people, frequently did no succeed in this. So, as for what you desire, you have my ships as if they were your own.

If you do not want anyone to bring merchandise to Kongo, this would be against the custom of every country, because [merchandise] comes to Portugal from all parts of the world to be bought and sold. In this way the land is supplied with everything, and from Portugal, goods are sent to all parts; and if a fidalgo [gentlemen or member of the lesser nobility] of your rebels against you and receives merchandise from Portugal, where will be your power and greatness because I well understand what constitutes your military strength and the fear that all have of you.

King João III of Portugal was diplomatic, but the letter is quite clearly filled with warnings and even threats. There are appeals to honor, power, and the dependence of commercial networks on Portugal. Trade continued, and Afonso set up “secure markets” where the slave trade did occur but without the abuses that he complained about to the Portuguese king (here, p. 5). According to Northrup, Kongo had quite a bit of political autonomy in the following decades. But when Afonso’s successors in Kongo needed help against enemies from the east, they appealed to Portugal who brought men armed with firearms that helped to drive the “Jaga” or Imgangala forces away. As a result, in Northrup’s words, “Kongo became increasingly dependent on its European ties” (40). And within a few decades, the supply of weapons from Portugal was exchanged mainly for “an ever-increasing supply of slaves for export to Brazil that left Kongo in a weakened state.”

Were human beings kidnapped in this story? Yes, indeed. Did West African polities participate in the slave trade? This is also true. But the diplomatic exchanges between two Christian rulers over these matters do not always feature in our accounts. And our historical memory should be marked, I think, by King Afonso’s suggestion – at least at one moment in 1526: perhaps all he needed from the Portuguese for his newly Christian kingdom might be priests and wine and flour for the Eucharist.