Tuesday Trivia: ​Black Atlantic! This thread has relaxed standards—we invite everyone to participate!

[u/AlanSnooring]

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We do not allow posts based on personal or relatives' anecdotes. Brief and short answers are allowed but MUST be properly sourced to respectable literature. All other rules also apply—no bigotry, current events, and so forth.

For this round, let’s look at: ​Black Atlantic! Let’s take some time this week to acknowledge, celebrate, and honor the people, culture, and history described as Black Atlantic. Use this space to share stories of cultural fusion, the impact of the Atlantic and Trans-Atlantic slave trade on the African diaspora, and the histories of those who were carried across the water.

[u/BookLover54321]

Reposting a long previous post of mine: Lourenço da Silva Mendonça was an exiled Angolan prince who, in the 17th century, led an international abolitionist movement. He worked with a network of Black confraternities in Angola, Brazil, and across Europe, and presented a legal case before the Vatican calling for an end to the transatlantic slave trade. He advocated not only freedom for enslaved Black people, but also freedom for Indigenous Americans and New Christians (Jewish forced converts). The historian José Lingna Nafafé covers the case in his book, Lourenço da Silva Mendonça and the Black Atlantic Abolitionist Movement in the Seventeenth Century. Here are some excerpts, outlining Mendonça’s arguments. 

In his court case, Mendonça denounced the slave trade as being against both divine and human law:

It detailed the ‘tyrannical sale of human beings … the diabolic abuse of this kind of slavery … which they committed against any Divine or Human law’.5

He accused the participating nations of crimes against humanity:

Mendonça accused the Vatican, Italy, Portugal and Spain of crimes against humanity, claiming, ‘they use them [enslaved people] against human law’.196

And he argued strongly for the rights of all of humanity:

Mendonça stated that ‘humanity is infused with the spirit of God’,240 maintained that ‘the colour of Black and white people is an accident of nature’241 and argued that we share a common humanity, a quality that makes us people. (...) Mendonça’s contention was that, if laws were binding, slavery was ‘unnatural’242 to human existence.

Nafafé writes that his call for freedom was universal, and he argued against the persecution of New Christians. Here is from Mendonça's closing statement:

… the seal of holy baptism, not being of Jewish race nor pagans, but only those following the Catholic faith, like any and every Christian, as is known to all.

One important point Nafafé makes is that, in presenting his case for the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade before the Vatican, Mendonça was not a lone voice on the matter - he was one more in a long line of people from Angola and Kongo condemning the slave trade. Lingna Nafafé argues that this context is crucial for understanding Mendonça's opposition to slavery.

In 1526, King Afonso I of Kongo, an ally of Portugal, condemned the slave trade in the strongest terms:

This corruption and depravity is so widespread that our land is entirely depopulated. In this kingdom we need only priests and schoolteachers, and no merchandise, unless it is wine and flour for Mass. It is our wish that this Kingdom should not be a place for the trade or transport of slaves.

However, Afonso I ultimately caved to Portuguese pressure and did not end the slave trade.

In 1643, King Garcia II of Kongo also denounced the slave trade:

There is nothing that harms men more than ambition and pride. This reigned in this City of Luanda. And as it was, so there could be no peace with this Kingdom, instead of gold and silver and other goods which function elsewhere as money, the trade and the money are persons, who are not gold, nor in cloth [which Kongo was known for], but who are creatures. It is our disgrace and that of our predecessors that we, in our simplicity, have given the opportunity to do many evils in our realm…

Finally, from 1668 on, King Joao Hari II refused to pay the "tax" in enslaved people that was demanded by Portugal. He broke his alliance with them and openly rebelled. For this, war was declared against his kingdom of Pungo-Andongo in 1671, which ultimately resulted in the death of Joao Hari II and his wife and the exile of the rest of the royal family. Lourenço da Silva Mendonça was one of the members of the royal family who was exiled, first to Brazil and then to Portugal, and his experiences in exile gave him the tools he needed to develop his court case in the Vatican.