Slave “Corrections” in Luanda, Angola from 1836 to 1869
| Author | Tracy Lopes |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14624745221084117 |
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue: African Penal Histories in Global Perspective |
Slave “Corrections”
in Luanda, Angola from
1836 to 1869
Tracy Lopes
York University
Abstract
This paper uses thousands of cases of imprisonment published under the police section
of a weekly gazette entitled Boletim Oficial do Governo da Província de Angola to explore
the connections between slavery and the “birth of the prison”in Luanda, the capital
of the Portuguese colony of Angola between 1836 and 1869. It demonstrates that as
the colonial administration gradually abolished the institution of slavery in the mid-nine-
teenth century, masters and mistresses sent thousands of captives to jail for “correc-
tion,”which could include imprisonment, beatings, and forced labour. By focusing on
“correction”cases, this paper problematizes the dichotomy between pre-modern and
modern types of punishment and demonstrates that the prison in Luanda reinforced
the violence of the slaveholding class.
Keywords
Angola, Africa, confinement, emancipation, slavery, punishment, prison, violence
Introduction
On June 8, 1960, the Portuguese secret police, which was then operating in the colony of
Angola, arrested 57 people for subversive activities against the state, including Agostinho
Neto, the leader of an anti-colonial group called the People’s Movement for the
Liberation of Angola (MPLA) (The Crisis, 1962: 337). After he was imprisoned in
Luanda, the capital of Angola, Neto was deported to Lisbon, Portugal and then to the
Tarrafal concentration camp in Cape Verde, an island located off the coast of West
Corresponding author:
Tracy Lopes, Department of History, York University, 4700 Keele St, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3.
Email: lopes.tracy@gmail.com
Special Issue: African Penal Histories in Global Perspective
Punishment & Society
2022, Vol. 24(5) 771–789
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/14624745221084117
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Africa. The other suspects received prison sentences. Despite these measures, Portuguese
efforts to suppress anti-colonial activities in Angola were ultimately futile. In 1961, a
group of insurgents stormed Luanda’s São Paulo Jail demanding the release of political
prisoners and marking the beginning of Angola’s war of independence for the MPLA and
its supporters (Davidson, 1972; Marcum, 1978).
Although the history of the prison within this context remains largely unexplored,
clues about its past can be found in nationalist poetry from the twentieth century.
During his incarceration, Neto (1961) wrote about the mistreatment and torture that
African prisoners endured at the hands of the Portuguese, including beatings with the pal-
matória (wooden paddle). In Noites de Cárcere (Prison Nights) and Criar (To Raise)
respectively, Neto describes “blood that runs down nails busted from the palmatória,”
and the sounds of beatings (Bešlic, 2017: 27; Neto, 1961: 30). By invoking images of
the palmatória in his poetry, Neto points to the connection between colonial violence
and the exploitation of African labor. Before it was used on the bodies of prisoners,
masters and mistresses used the palmatória to punish enslaved people. When Neto
wrote Noites de Cárcere and Criar, slavery had been abolished in the colony.
However, it was replaced with a violent forced labor system that remained in effect
until 1961 (Luce, 1990).
Using thousands of cases of imprisonment published under the police section of a
weekly gazette entitled Boletim Oficial do Governo da Província de Angola, this paper
explores the connections between slavery and the “birth of the prison”in Luanda. It
demonstrates that as the colonial administration gradually abolished the institution of
slavery in the mid-nineteenth century, masters and mistresses sent thousands of enslaved
Africans to jail for “correction,”which could include imprisonment, beatings, and forced
labor. By focusing on “correction”cases, this paper shows that slaveholders continued to
inflict violence on the bodies of enslaved people, and that women were especially vulner-
able to private punishments because of their proximity to the slaveholding household.
During this period, the Chief of Police, Jozé Lourenço Marques, was responsible for pub-
lishing the content in the police section. Although he almost never cites the reasons for
“correction,”and provides few details about the enslaved population, these cases illus-
trate that the “birth of the prison”did not replace the violence of the master or mistress,
but instead reinforced it.
Focusing on Jozé Lourenço also highlights the blurred distinction between freedom
and unfreedom, especially within a slaveholding context where varying penal regimes
co-existed (De Vito, 2008). Jozé Lourenço arrived in the colony as a degredado
(exiled convict). Because of Angola’s reputation of being a “white man’s grave,”the
Portuguese crown struggled to attract free settlers and had to rely on convicts to fill
labor shortages and to spread Portuguese influence throughout the interior. Despite
being prisoners, having a European background could offer degredados advantages,
especially compared to the enslaved population. In the absence of white settlers from
Europe, many convicts filled positions within the colonial administration and were pro-
moted within the ranks of the military. Some even became major slave traders (Aló, 2006;
Coates, 2001; 2014; Corrado, 2007; Cunha, 2004; Marques, 2001; Pacheco, 1994-1995;
Pantoja, 1999). Jozé Lourenço, for instance, rose from a soldier to the Chief of Police—a
772 Punishment & Society 24(5)
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