Occupations of the Enslaved in Moçâmedes, 1854–60

Abstract

This article seeks to reconstruct part of the world of the enslaved residents of mid-nineteenth century Moçâmedes, a coastal community in southern Angola that at the time was recently established but quickly turned into a slave town. Based on a variety of documents produced largely by the Portuguese colonial administration that occupied this space, the paper takes particular advantage of data found in a rarely used 1855 register of slaves and their owners. As occurred elsewhere, captive laborers in Moçâmedes performed a myriad of tasks. But the town’s enslaved residents were principally occupied in a few select economic activities that were particular to the time and place, with gender not always a determining factor. As such, this paper adds to the literature on the labor history of enslaved people in Angola prior to the late nineteenth century.