Date/Time: Wednesday 2nd May 2018, 4-5pm

Venue: Armstrong Building 1.05, Newcastle University

This seminar is organised by the School of History, Classics and Archeology and is open for everyone to attnend. Dr. José Lingna Nafafé, Lecturer in Portuguese and Lusophone Studies at the University of Bristol will be joining us to give a talk titled Lusophone Black Atlantic Abolition: Mendonça’s Freedom Discourse, Brazil, Africa and Europe, XVII Century

This paper explores the abolition of slavery debate from the Kongo’s Kings in the seventeenth century to the rise of Ndongo prince, Dom Lourenço da Silva Mendonça in 1684 and the aftermath of abolitionist discourse beyond the 1700s. The paper looks at how Mendonça became the first free Black African in Europe to officially challenge slavery, and the treatment of enslaved Africans in Brazil, Portugal and Africa. He presented a case in the Vatican for their freedom, and integration into Portuguese and Brazilian societies; and he did so by drawing on the network he had formed with the New Christians (Jews) in Lisbon and Rome, and with native American indigenous in Madrid.

The paper moves to examine the Ndongo royal critique of slavery, drawing on Mendonça’s critique against slavery, the notion of difference, and his battle against the Portuguese Overseas Council on the question of abolishing slavery in Brazil, Portugal and Africa. The paper examines how Mendonca saw the enslavement of the African people in Brazil and the Americas as an Atlantic issue that needed to be tackled collectively, alongside the theme of the inquisition of the New Christians in Portugal and Brazil, and the enslavement of the native Indians. The contention of the paper is that Mendonça’s abolition discourse was in many ways an anticipation of later discourses of universal human rights and humanitarianism.