Africa Archives - Not Even Past

From Africa to Austin: Bondy Washington

Census records are invaluable historical documents, but they are frustratingly limited, especially when you try to use them to tell the stories of formerly enslaved people. One example is Bondy Washington, a woman likely trafficked from Africa into slavery who became a long-term Austin resident.

For the past three years, I have been working with Dr. Edmund T. Gordon to create demographic maps of Austin, Texas from 1880-1950. These maps were created with massive amounts of census data—over 372,000 people’s information was transcribed from thousands of scanned pages across seven decades. When we completed this large database, I calculated some other large aggregate figures, beginning with the 1880 census.

In 1880, 49.99 percent of Austin residents were born in Texas. In today’s terms, that would mean almost half a million people, but back in the late nineteenth century, this figure was less than six thousand or 5,481, to be precise. Digging deeper into the census figures, I found an intriguing data point—one. In 1880, one person in Austin was born in Africa. Her name was Bondy Washington, and she was a Black woman.

At first, I thought that this could be a transcription error. I checked the original document and saw that the person recording her information had in fact written “Africa” as her birthplace.

Bondy Washington in the 1880 Census

I also found Bondy in the 1900 Census. Again, Bondy’s birthplace is recorded as Africa.

Bondy Washington in the 1900 Census

Bondy wasn’t in my database again after 1900, but I became fascinated with her story and decided to dig deeper. The earliest record that I can confidently match to her dates from 1870. In this census, Bondy’s birthplace is recorded as “Congo R., Africa.” She is listed as living with a man named Frank, who, in other censuses, is recorded as her husband. Several city directories from 1880 to 1900 mention Frank, all associating him with the same address—821 E 11^th Street, in a neighborhood then known as Robertson’s Hill. It is safe to assume that Bondy also lived there and that her exclusion was probably related to her gender. City directories from 1903 and 1906 associate Bondy with the same address. Frank, who was left out of these documents, possibly passed away between 1900 and 1903.

Picture of original - Bondy Washington in the 1870s Census — *Bondy Washington in the 1870 Census*

I later found Travis County death certificate for a Black woman named “Bondig Washington.” Despite the error, I believe that this is likely the same person. While people provide their own information in the census and directories, someone else must record their death certificate. In this case, the (white) county clerk filled it out and recorded Bondy’s birthplace as Texas. In her death, her place of birth was erased.

Picture of original document - Bondy Washington's Death Certificate — *Bondy Washington’s Death Certificate*

Already, Bondy has a remarkable story: a Black woman born in Africa around 1850 was brought to Austin, TX and lived in the same place for more than thirty years. But what else can we know about her? Who was she before 1870, and who was she before emancipation?

Picture of original document - Bondy Washington's sale — The final record I found that mentions Bondy is a notice of sheriff’s sale in the Statesman. The house that she had lived in, at least since 1880, was being sold for $3.77. Sheriff’s Sale of Bondy Washington’s Property

It’s impossible to say what her life was like, but Bondy was likely trafficked to the United States from Congo as a child. She had enough memory of this to claim her birthplace as Africa on records she filled out personally.

Bondy’s African origins are especially puzzling when considered in the context of the legality of the slave trade. When the United States Constitution was written, its authors agreed to allow the trafficking of African slaves into the county until at least 1808. In 1807, President Thomas Jefferson signed into law a bill banning the practice starting the next year. Because Texas was not a part of the United States, and was rather a part of Mexican territory, it was not beholden to this rule. The Mexican government banned the importation of slaves into Texas in 1824. When Texas became a Republic, its constitution also banned the practice.

Image of Canoe for Transporting Slaves, Sierra Leone — *Section of Canoe for Transporting Slaves, Sierra Leone, 1840’s.*
Source: *Slave Voyages*

So, if Bondy was brought to Texas to be enslaved, she was brought illegally. Historians have written about the illegal slave trade in Texas in the republican period and thereafter. They have documented that the illegal slave trade continued through the 1850s, sometimes on ships purporting to import camels into the United States.

American politicians generated a scheme to allow for clandestine trafficking of Africans to the United States. They petitioned the United States War Department to allow the importation of camels for use in domestic combat. This gave large cargo ships travelling to West Africa a cover story—their large holds were for military camels, not slaves. The last speculated instance of this practice was in 1856.

Illegal trafficking continued during Bondy’s early years, and it is likely that this is how she came to the United States. We can’t know, though, how she was brought there—on a camel ship or otherwise. Rare is the slave ship that records the names of its passengers. Certainly, an illegal slave ship trafficking people to the United States in the 1850s didn’t leave such traces. Even if they did, who knows the name Bondy was given by her mother? Who knows if she changed it once she landed in Texas or had it changed for her?

Ship records weren’t the only ones that excluded people’s names. The 1860 slave census records the number of people an individual enslaved, but it completely omits their names. As such, it would be impossible to identify Bondy in the slave registers. However, there is one potential lead. Someone in the Austin area with the surname “Washington” enslaved, among many others, two people of the same ages that Bondy and Frank would have been in 1860. Since some people took the surnames of their enslavers upon emancipation, it is possible that these two people were Bondy and Frank.

Two images of selection of the 1860 Slave Census, showing two people of Frank and Bondy’s ages, owned by a man in Travis County named T. P. Washington. — *A selection of the 1860 Slave Census, showing two people of Frank and Bondy’s ages, owned by a man in Travis County named T. P. Washington.*

Because those collecting their information recorded them as property and not people, we don’t know the names of those two people, and we don’t know who they are.

A depiction of the house at 821 E 11th St (on the corner) in 1887 from the Augustus Koch map. — *A depiction of the house at 821 E 11^th St (on the corner) in 1887 from the Augustus Koch map.*

We do know some things. Bondy was from Africa, and she lived in Austin. Bondy and Frank probably built that house themselves, and they lived there for decades. They lived in a neighborhood that is today so utterly transformed by modernity, segregation, and gentrification.

A Google Streetview photo of the location of historic 821 E 11th St, Austin, Texas—just across the street from Franklin BBQ and the African American Cultural and Heritage Facility. — *A Google Streetview photo of the location of historic 821 E 11^th St, Austin, Texas—just across the street from Franklin BBQ and the African American Cultural and Heritage Facility.*

Bondy had no children, so no personal genealogical inquiries would have made her story known. Our project has the potential to find other people in Austin with unique stories. By looking at big data, we can find individuals with differences. However, there are still limitations to what we can know because of what was recorded in the past.

Amy Shreeve Bridges is a J.D. Candidate at Yale Law School and a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin. While pursuing her undergraduate degree in history, she completed digital humanities and urban geography research that focused on mapping the racial geography of historic Austin. Her research interests include historical GIS, segregation, and urban housing policies.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

References

“912 E 11^th Street,” Google Streetview, March 2024, https://www.google.com/maps/@30.2698205,-97.7309772,3a,75y,209.52h,104.14t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1syJa1RPhIgQNCmJL-o4CPKg!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DyJa1RPhIgQNCmJL-o4CPKg%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.share%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26yaw%3D209.52129397598353%26pitch%3D-14.140192174838944%26thumbfov%3D90!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205410&entry=ttu.

Austin, Texas, City Directory, pg 168. Morrison & Foumy. 1881.

Austin, Texas, City Directory, pg 239. Morrison & Foumy. 1887.

Austin, Texas, City Directory, pg 258. Morrison & Foumy. 1891.

Austin, Texas, City Directory, pg 288. Morrison & Foumy. 1893.

Austin, Texas, City Directory, pg 297. Morrison & Foumy. 1895.

Austin, Texas, City Directory, pg 273. Morrison & Foumy. 1903.

Austin, Texas, City Directory, pg 285. Morrison & Foumy. 1906.

“Sherrif’s Sale,” Austin Statesman, March 16, 1909. https://www.newspapers.com/image/366290646

Barker, Eugene C. “The African Slave Trade in Texas.” The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association 6, no. 2 (1902): 145–58. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27784929.

Koch, Augustus. Austin, State Capital of Texas. 1887. Lithograph, 28 x 41 in. Austin History Center, Austin Public Library.

“Racial Mapping Austin,” Central Texas Retold, accessed June 19, 2024, https://ctxretold.org/black-communities/mapping-the-city/.

“Report of Death,” Travis County Death Certificates via FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9Y1H-SYKH?view=index), image 1490 of 3319.

U.S. Census Bureau. The Ninth Federal Census (1870); Census Place: Austin, Travis, Texas; Roll: M593_1606; Page: 297A.

U.S. Census Bureau. The Tenth Federal Census (1880); Census Place: Austin, Travis, Texas; Roll: 1329; Page: 262d; Enumeration District: 136.

U.S. Census Bureau. The Twelfth Federal Census (1900); Census Place: Austin Ward 8, Travis, Texas; Roll: 1673; Page: 3; Enumeration District: 0096

Review of The Devil’s Cup: A History of the World According to Coffee by Stewart Lee Allen (1999)

Inspired by a never-finished ceremonial cup of coffee in Ethiopia and a Jules Michelet quote attributing the Enlightenment to the advent of coffee, author Stewart Lee Allen dives head-first into a voyage across the world to trace the path coffee took out of Africa. In The Devil’s Cup: A History of the World According to Coffee, Allen weaves the history of coffee in between his eccentric tales of travel. A self-proclaimed “addict” himself, Allen argues that the coffee bean’s integration into our daily lives has been central to the flourishing of human civilization, from intellectual innovations in the Arabic world to the political revolutions of the West.

Allen focuses on the role of coffee in culture, politics, spirituality, and trade. Coffee’s link to spirituality is explored throughout the first half of the book. The journey begins in Harrar, Ethiopia, where it is believed that the cultivation of the aromatic Coffea Arabica species began. Allen attends a traditional ritual from the Oromo tribe – an exorcism in which coffee beans are roasted, chewed, and then brewed to release the power of the priest. In what follows, Allen attempts to visit the alleged home of al-Shadhili in al-Makkha (Yemen), the Muslim idol who is rumored to have invented brewing coffee beans for drinking in 1200 C.E. Allen stresses how a group of traveling Islamic orders called Sufis incorporated coffee into their spiritual practices and contributed to its spread beyond North Africa. In Turkey, Allen traces the roots of contemporary coffee consumption habits and takes the story up to coffee’s introduction to Europe.

A depiction of a late eighteenth-century Ottoman coffeehouse in Istanbul.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Allen’s primary argument rests upon the social and historical impact of the coffee shop to prove his thesis. Previously centered around drinking in taverns, European society lacked a common space for sober socialization. A drunk mass, consuming beer as though it was water, led to a less efficient, intellectual, and healthy population. Coffeehouses became multi-functional public spaces that facilitated a multitude of historical moments. They were the original meeting spots of choice for business powerhouses like Lloyd’s of London and the East India Company. As well, these cafés served as spaces for intellectual dialogue, where scientists like Isaac Newton or philosophers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau were known to frequent. Allen even states that in being a site for political organizing, the cafés of Paris were central to the French Revolution. As he himself admits, some of Allen’s claims are bold. For example, he suggests that this stimulant pushed the Ottoman empire to success, created Great Britain’s drive for dominance, contributed to Napoleon’s fall, and even helped the Sons of Liberty attain independence from the British.

*A coffee vendor in Paris during the 18th century. Source: Wikimedia Commons.*

After Allen’s long discussion of Europe, we find the author distracted from his “history of the world according to coffee” and focusing more on storytelling. He continues his narration of Gabriel De Clieu’s fabled introduction of the coffee bean to the New World until he arrives in Brazil. The focus here is on the link between coffee and the horrors of Brazilian slavery. In wondering if the slave trade brought with it coffee’s spiritual origins in the Zar cults of eastern Africa, he finds himself participating in an Afro-Brazilian ritual where coffee beans are left as an offering to summon a spirit named Preto Velho.

The final stretch of the author’s trek takes him to the United States. Following Route 66, Allen seeks the quintessential cup of coffee, i.e., a foul but “soulful” cup of drip, ever flowing thanks to the attentiveness of a kind all-American waitress. After finding himself at the mercy of several Tennessee cops and countless stops at roadside chain restaurants and diners, he heads home to Los Angeles. The book fades out in ephedrine and caffeine-induced haze, where the author gives his final ruminations on the substance: “…Each age had used the bean according to its understanding of reality…We citizens of the brave new world, who worship efficiency and speed, are just turning it into a high, another way to go a little faster, get there a bit quicker and feel a little better. Only there’s nowhere left to go” (p. 223).

Xpresso Drive Thru Cafe, Denver, Colorado.
Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, photograph by John Margolies, call number LC-MA05- 7312

Allen’s book is fast-paced, entertaining, and easy to read. But this assessment comes with significant reservations. While there is certainly truth to many of these claims, I suspect that the author has overstated the role of coffee. Some of his work seemed to shade into fiction, a problem for a book that claims to be factual. There was a minimal inclusion of dates and citations, which made it more difficult for me to take what he was saying seriously. The timeline felt fuzzy, and occasionally, facts seemed poorly researched. For example, Allen argues that coffee’s 13^th-century arrival in al-Makkha not only aided the intellectual advancements of the Islamic world but allowed their civilization to “flourish beyond all others”. Many historians consider the Islamic Golden Age to have occurred from the 8^th to the 13^th centuries.[1] Coffee reached this region during a period of decline for some of these older empires, and the flourishing of the Ottoman Empire that Allen points to was yet to come for a couple of centuries.[2]

The book often reads more like a travelogue than historical literature. Many of his side discussions felt aimless, almost like reading someone’s inner monologue. Allen’s sardonic tone was humorous at times but occasionally felt obnoxious. His characterization of some of the Middle Eastern and Indian people he met during his journey seemed to evoke Orientalist tropes. The author’s insensitivity may be attributed to the age of the book, which is now twenty-five years old, but it makes the work feel dated. Some descriptions were deeply problematic, for instance, Allen’s description of India: “Most people do not associate India with coffee. Disorganized, dirty, undereducated, lazy, muddled, poor, and run-down – not to mention superstitious – it is clearly a nation of tea drinkers” (p. 76).

book cover for "the devil's cup: a history of the world according to coffee."

Despite these criticisms, The Devil’s Cup is an interesting and accessible read for those looking to learn more about the origins of one of the world’s most beloved beverages. The sections focused on presenting historical information and analysis were well-written and drew my attention. There were a handful of lines that struck me for their beauty. Allen knows how to paint a scene, and his colorful descriptions of coffee often made me crave a cup. Here’s just one example: “It proved to be the first all-American joe we’d found – black, tarry, and powerful, rich with half-and-half, cascading in waves from the waitress’ Pyrex coffeepot and into our mugs, breaking over us, washing through our veins like rocket fuel. It was awful and terrifying beyond compare” (p. 220). While the book has flaws, Allen’s story remains a unique, light-hearted whirlwind of a read. And if you love coffee, The Devil’s Cup will likely make you cherish your morning cup even more.

Alexandra Tipps is a senior in the College of Liberal Arts, currently working toward her B.A. in History and Sociology. She hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in History with a focus on modern Latin America.

[1] Steve Tamari, 2009. “Between the ‘Golden Age’ and the Renaissance: Islamic Higher Education in Eighteenth-Century Damascus.” In Trajectories of Education in the Islamic World, edited by Osama Abi-Mershed (Routledge: 2009): 36

[2] Şahin, Kaya. Empire and Power in the Reign of Süleyman: Narrating the Sixteenth-Century Ottoman World / Kaya Şahin, Indiana University (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 7-8

Review of A Ritual Geology: Gold and Subterranean Knowledge in Savanna West Africa (2022) by Robyn d’Avignon

Using the goldfields in Kedougou in southeastern Senegal, historian and anthropologist Robyn D’Avignon, in Ritual Geology, explores the instrumentality of African indigenous knowledge systems in developing modern mining economies in French West Africa from the nineteenth century to the present. D’Avignon defines ritual geology as a set of practices, prohibitions, and cosmological engagements with the earth widely shared and cultivated across a regional geological formation in French West Africa. Her work affirms African agency in West Africa’s literature on the environment and challenges French colonial narratives about West Africa. For those familiar with the literature on mining in Anglophone West Africa, her work bridges an intellectual gap by providing the Francophone perspective on the development of mining in West Africa. Also, Ritual Geology significantly contributes to West Africa and Africa’s growing body of environmental history. It points to new avenues of research on vital themes in West African history, such as indigenous knowledge systems, religious syncretism, the historical relationship between artisanal and industrial mining, material culture, migration, and international relations, all within environmental history. D’Avignon’s work provides a conducive entry into the ecological history of French West Africa.

In Ritual Geology, D’Avignon sought to provide a narrative that gives agency to African mining culture in a relatively unbalanced field historiographically. Colonial narratives of geological exploration relegated African indigenous knowledge systems in mining economies to the base of the imperial pyramid while extolling Western knowledge systems as effective and environmentally friendly, which became a significant justification for colonization. Traditional mining was described as customary or artisanal and, thus, limited to a locale, whereas Western mining was industrial and global. This perception, d’Avignon argues, has gained popularity in the environmental histories of Africa, leading scholars to overlook the central role of African expertise in geological exploration in colonial and postcolonial periods. D’Avignon challenges common historiography by proposing to examine the region’s Ritual Geology. Regarding the role of Africans in modern geology in West Africa, d’Avignon identifies two threads: Africans as intellectual actors in the emergence of contemporary exploration geology and, second, Africans’ claim to mineral resources and trade as their natural rights.

Divided into seven chapters, d’Avignon begins by mapping Kedougou (the study area) and identifying the book’s main characters. The characters are presented as personalities (communities), corporate firms, and the political state (colonial and postcolonial). She argues that the various characters blur the line between legal and illegal artisanal and industrial extractions. However, she skillfully weaves different anthropological narratives of characters that paint a vivid picture of artisanal mining in Senegal. The study period witnessed women’s changing role in artisanal mining at Kedougou as the scale of dominance tilted to men from the colonial period to the present. Before colonial rule, women were key at both the exploitative and refinery stages of artisanal mining. However, excessive competition for geological resources during the colonial period led to the relegation of women to the base of production in artisanal mining. Another pattern of change was the emergence of Islam in the study area and how, over time, indigenous miners have been able to merge traditional religion and Islam in mining activities.

*The Kedougou region in Senegal. Source: Wikimedia Commons*

D’Avignon explores the development of West African ritual geology from the eighth to the twentieth century. Drawing on oral tradition, she recounts how, within the context of survival strategies, gold-producing communities occupied Birimian rocks over the past millennium and identifies three elements in West Africa’s ritual geology. First, the existing literature is silent on gold-producing communities and their relationship to mineralized land. She attributes this to scarcity of sources and argues that non-centralized societies controlled gold mining during this period. Second, the emergence of Islam in West Africa began the denigrating and racializing of African miners as pagans. Lastly, the West African communities of the Savanna and Sahel regarded gold as a dangerous occult substance tied to spirits, including malevolent ones. The latter position is very prevalent in the sub-region, and there is a need for further research into other Anglophone regions in West Africa. Another area that needs further research is the recent incursion of Chinese miners into West Africa. Questions like what led to the incursion and whether these developments have impacted artisanal mining need to be interrogated.

In examining the role of African expertise and technological knowledge in colonial mining economies, d’Avignon contests colonial narratives of mining and shows how it displaced indigenous mining economics in French West African colonies of Soudan, Senegal, and Burkina Faso. Colonial mining records presented Indigenous mining as inferior in expertise and technology and gave Indigenous miners as degrading the land and engaging in fetish activities. The latter was considered among the Abrahamic religions as barbaric and unconventional. D’Avignon maintains that French colonial narratives defined African mining customs based on a vertical and horizontal rights division. The former presents African technological machinery as inferior, and the latter explains how African mining rights are geographically limited. Irrespective of the negative tag, orpaillage customary rights triumphed over time, allowing indigenous peoples to earn personal wealth. Furthermore, D’Avignon discusses the ambivalent nature of traditional rights in French West Africa; those rights prohibited Africans from mining gold, but they were seasonal and usufruct rights that territorial administrators could rescind. Also, Africans were barred from accessing more stable mineral property rights because they were consigned with customary rights.

*Gold miners at work in the Tarkwa Gold Mine, Ghana, 1957. Source: Wikimedia Commons*

D’Avignon explores subterranean rights in gold mining among the Kedougou people (Southeastern Senegal) in the mid-2000s. She does this within the context of legitimizing indigenous mining and focuses on the discursive elements of claim-making. According to D’Avignon, there were four primary modes of Africans asserting their claim to gold mines. First, the claim to discover or produce. Second, orpailleurs (local miners) claim juura (mining sites) as a subsistence right. Thirdly, orpaillage claims to mine only surface mining. Finally, orpaillage have the right to gold mines because they have been marginalized from colonial to postcolonial periods. D’Avignon, therefore, documents the language of subterranean rights innovated by Africans.

Focusing on mining during the colonial period, d’Avignon explores French articulation in West Africa and how French geologists relied on it for their mining activities in the region. The period witnessed how the French capitalized on indigenous mining systems in mapping the geology of West Africa. However, it is essential to note that little has been revealed about the role and identity of West Africans who participated in the geological exploration. Here, d’Avignon’s work inserts African agency in developing geology in West Africa by examining the role of some key personalities from different regions. D’Avignon avers that West Africa’s ritual geology witnessed rapid evolution during the colonial period as orpailleurs adopted new techniques from European geologists and moved to new Birimian fields for mining.

Valdiodio Ndiaye (Interior Minister), Mamadou Dia (Prime Minister), and Léopold Sédar Senghor (President) at a reception at the palace of the Republic of Senegal, November 1960. — Valdiodio Ndiaye (Interior Minister), Mamadou Dia (Prime Minister), and Léopold Sédar Senghor (President) at a reception at the palace of the Republic of Senegal in November 1960.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.

The politics in the aftermath of World War II played a crucial role in the development of mining in West Africa. D’Avignon brings West African mining activities into the narratives of the Cold War. She extends our knowledge of the Cold War politics of mineral resources in the Congo basin to the Birimian regions of West Africa. The Cold War period witnessed an influx of mining companies into West Africa as newly independent states began to leverage competing offers for technical assistance to meet their national goals. The period thus saw interactions between African states and the main actors of the Cold War. For example, Senegal engaged Euro-American and Soviet geologists in mining initiatives. An essential highlight during this period was the criminalization of orpaillage in some independent West African states such as Senegal. Influenced by the politics of the Cold War, African leaders saw orpaillage as antithetical to the principles of African socialism and a hindrance to newly African governments’ efforts to build modern nationalized industries. However, a series of droughts in the 1970s made most West African leaders to reconsider the criminalization of orpaillage adopted at independence.

Ritual Geology is an excellent addition to the study of the relationship between African knowledge systems within the context of indigenous mining culture and Western (colonial) science in West Africa. The latter operates under the pretext of regulating the environment of settler communities. In this vein, settler communities function as “laboratories” where colonial theories are experimented. This is evident in the works of scholars such as Richard Grove, Peder Anker, Helen Tilley, and Megan Black, who illustrate how the colonial powers of the West established research stations in Africa as centers for ecological research. D’Avignon’s work, therefore, demonstrates the resilient nature of African knowledge systems of mining in French West Africa in the face of Western science incursion from the colonial period to the present. Again, D’Avignon shows how the collaboration between African mining culture and Western science has contributed to modern mining in French West Africa, a position that gives primacy to the instrumentality of ethnoscience in Africa.

Victor Angbah is a doctoral student in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include education, agriculture, and riverine histories of Africa. He is currently researching the symbiotic relationship between the Pra River and the Akan people of Ghana, West Africa, in the 19th and 20th centuries.

African Catholic Decolonization and the Transformation of the Church by Elizabeth A. Foster (2019)

by David Whitehouse

(This article was originally posted on Imperial and Global Forum)

On July 1, 1888, Charles Lavigerie, founder of the White Fathers Catholic missionary order, gave a speech to a packed Saint-Sulpice Church in Paris in which he denounced the evils of slavery in Africa. The event was a public relations triumph, with African children who had been repurchased from slavery being paraded by the Fathers, clad in white burnouses with red fezzes on their heads, on the church steps. In the late nineteenth century as in the 1950s, slavery was used by the Catholic Church to galvanize public opinion and to raise funds. Lavigerie was not an isolated forerunner of post-war Catholic radicalism. He trained a generation of missionaries to enter the field as convinced anti-slavery activists, as well as supporting a series of military operations against slavery in Africa, with varying degrees of success. And yet until now Catholic missionaries have usually been relegated by historians to the status of obedient cogs in colonial state machines. Elizabeth Foster’s new book offers a major challenge by showing how missionary leaders like Lavigerie and his successors had aims that were often in clear conflict with those of the colonial state – a conflict between French Catholic missionaries and the colonial powers that resurfaced in a big way after the Second World War.

An emphasis upon political transition from colonial regimes to independent states dominates the literature on African decolonization. But decolonization, defined by Foster as the “ending or limiting of European hegemony” that involved power systems that were clearly outside of state apparatus, was a much broader process (p. 11). The book effectively uncovers the conflict between colonial state and Catholic mission in Africa in the 1950s. Foster sees the emergence of a more robust Catholic Left in France against a backdrop of colonial crisis as a key development. Catholicism in France, Foster argues, had previously been the almost exclusive property of the conservative Right. The Catholic Church hierarchy therefore struggled in an “awkward dance” in the 1950s as it sought to reconcile conservatives with radical anti-colonialists (p. 14). To make its provocative case, the book draws on a rich supply of archival sources in France, Italy, and Senegal, as well as a wide range of periodicals.

Charles Lavigerie (via Wikipedia)

Another main strength of the book lies in its illumination of the bifurcation between European and Christian identity that Catholic missionary work in Africa entailed. Catholic intellectuals such as Joseph Michel sought in the 1950s to “reclaim and reorient the church as a defender of the oppressed, colonized populations” of the French Empire (p. 100). As Foster argues, the Catholic church was considerably more successful in keeping its adherents in post-colonial Africa than in Europe. World War Two looms large as a turning point here, complementing other recent scholarship. According to Darcie Fontaine, for example, the war is similarly seen as the turning point in the development of French Catholic thinking about the colonies, as Christian theology was used in France as a basis for resistance to Nazism.[1]This can, however, lead to obscuring the continuity of missionary agendas and practice.

In Foster’s account, racial hierarchy keeps its orthodox place as a guiding paradigm of missionary thinking.[2] Foster argues that racist disdain for évolué Africans was common among missionaries and that blatant Catholic racism only became institutionally unacceptable in the 1950s. The new generation of post-war missionaries had more enlightened attitudes than the old guard they replaced. Missionary longevity in the field, the assumption appears to be, solidified racism. This begs the question of why Catholic missionaries would want to work among “unredeemable” and “inferior” peoples for so long.[3] For Lavigerie, setting Africans free from slavery and building the kingdom of Christ in Africa were intended as achievements that would fully match or surpass the establishment of Christianity in Europe. Why would these goals have resonated with peoples who were considered as inherently inferior? Foster’s book begins to provide answers.

Foster’s focus is on the period of decolonization, and the chronological gap between her discussion of Lavigerie and the 1950s paves the way for a new field of research. So, too, would the addition of Protestant missionary sources. After all, Foster makes quite clear the French hostility to American Protestant missionaries. Protestants usually answered back, and denominational rivalry was itself a potential driver of more polarised political stances taken by missionaries on the ground in Africa. Foster’s work thus raises big questions about how Catholic missionaries’ anti-slavery agenda shaped developments and denominational conflict in the first half of the twentieth century across the vast swathes of sub-Saharan Africa in which Christian missions operated. This important book starts the process of giving radical missionary currents their due place in models of colonialism and decolonization.

David Whitehouse is a freelance editor at the Africa Report published by Jeune Afrique in Paris and a PhD candidate at Exeter researching the impact of missionaries in Rwanda and Burundi 1900-1972.

[1] Darcie Fontaine, Decolonizing Christianity: Religion and the End of Empire in France and Algeria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

[2] For example, Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).

[3] Adas has even argued that that Europeans in the early centuries of expansion into Africa and Asia rarely used race to explain what they saw as their superiority, but rather Christianity and, much later, technological accomplishment. See Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology and Ideologies of Western Dominance (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 2014).

Cross-Cultural Exchange in the Atlantic World; Angola and Brazil during the Era of the Slave Trade by Roquinaldo Ferreira (2012)

Luanda and Benguela became the busiest, most profitable slaving ports in the transatlantic slave trade in the seventeenth century precisely because these two ports set up tribunals to hear tens of thousands of enslaved petitioners demand freedom. Paperwork in local tribunals set hundreds of thousands free, even at the risk of bankrupting powerful merchants. As petitioners litigated their freedom, the colonial state grew in legitimacy and bottom up support. Through petitioning and litigation, the peoples of Luanda and Benguela became active “Portuguese” vassals with rights. Those under the protection of the sovereign state became more than mere commodities while those outside became increasingly more vulnerable. Pervasively and paradoxically, the very consolidation of state legitimacy contributed to the expansion of the slave trade. After years of working in ecclesiastical, municipal, and state archives in Luanda, Rio, and Lisbon, Ferreria offers a major reconceptualization of colonialism and slavery itself. A better title for his book would have been: Petitioning Slaves and the Creation of the South Atlantic Slave Trade.

Angola was no more than these two relatively small ports of few thousand dwellers (moradores), each with strange connections to their hinterlands. Luanda and Benguela were overwhelmingly black and mulatto cities that engaged in formal ceremonies of protection and “transfer” of sovereignty with neighboring natural lords, sobas. The sobas offered labor, porters, and military aid to urban merchants (pumbeiros and sertanejos) and sheriffs (captães mores), the representatives of the Portuguese state, in exchange for a monopoly on the local redistribution of foreign commodities and support against their rivals. Sobas provisioned the trading caravans to the interior (sertões) with porters. The sobas also offered military aid to the cities when neighboring and distant sovereigns, including the Dutch, French, and British, threatened the ports.

This system of Portuguese sovereignty however was rather limited. To the north and south of Luanda and Benguela lay independent polities that for nearly three hundred years remained impervious to all threats of violence and negotiations. The degree of coastal isolation of these two ports was striking. Given the nature of maritime currents, Benguela and Luanda communicated much more easily with merchants in Rio (Brazil) than with one another. For nearly three centuries there were no roads connecting Luanda and Benguela. Like in the north and south, the eastern, interior frontiers of both cities ended where the independent Imbangala kingdoms began. The frontier was dotted with “forts,” or presidios, that were primarily trading centers: Indian cottons, Brazilian cachaça, and gunpowder for slaves. Within these narrow horizontal coastal-eastern corridors, the ports held loose control over the local natural lords, sobas, sworn to vassalage.

Ferreira describes how the expansion of trade within Luanda and Benguela’s subject territories led to the enslaving of vassals. As commodities arrived and credit expanded, so too did pawnship. Debtors would offer family members and subordinates as slaves to merchants. Sobas would also punish civil and criminal cases, particularly witchcraft, with slavery. This system benefitted merchants who did not have to rely on interior trading fairs to obtain chattel from independent kingdoms. Yet, at the same time, the Portuguese crown empowered local judges to set up tribunals to secure the rights of all vassals. Ferreria describes the workings and evolution of the Tribunal de mucanos in detail, offering a mind bending account of bottom up participation through paperwork.

Recently arrived slaves in Brazil, circa 1830 (via Wikipedia)

Mucanos were petitioners who orally pleaded in front of sobas and capitães mores for freedom when wronged. Slowly, oral petitions became written, local custom codified, local decentralized decisions centralized, and corrupted local judges overseen by outside referees. Ferreria describes how the tribunal de mucanos, originally under the control of mercantile interests and self-interested local lords, evolved into a tribunal controlled by bishops (junta das missões). The juntas would have priests as translators-cum-official legal intermediaries (inquiridor das libertades), scribes (escrivão), registries (livro branco), and archives. Priests would become accountants, collecting the royal quinto (20% tax) after having properly ascertained who was rightfully enslaved. In practice, the job of the junta became one of distinguishing between outsiders from the sertòes, who could be enslaved, from the internal vassals who could not. More importantly, after baptizing the properly enslaved, priests would use the body of slaves to document the act of royal authorization and baptism by fire branding chattel. Slaves leaving Angola would carry two other fire marks as notarial documents: the originating and the receiving merchants’. Ferreria also shows that local decisions taken by the local rural tribunals would evolve into a hierarchical system of urban appellate courts, moving petitions from magistrates (ouvidor) to the governor (ouvidor geral) to Lisbon. There were slaves who sent petitions to Lisbon to appeal. Some even appeared in Lisbon in person.

Ferreria shows that in the second half of the eighteenth century the debate over the right to enslave vassals evolved, particularly as the governor Miguel Antonio Mello argued that the same rules to judge the wrongful enslavement of soba vassals should also apply to processes within the sovereign kingdoms of the sertões. All slaves, regardless of their origin, should have the right to appeal. Mello’s good intentions were not to last beyond his time in office. Mello, nevertheless, waived all fees to mucanos in judicial procedures.

In Luanda and Benguela, race was meaningless except as marker of social status, which was signified through clothing. Many petty merchants were slaves-for-hire, retailers (quissongos), moving cachaça, guns, and Indian cottons into the trading fairs (feiras) in the interior sertões while bringing back caravans of slaves. Many settlers (moradores) of the ports were ladinos, that is urban slaves who enjoyed extraordinary freedoms, including often the right to move to Brazil as servants, petitioners, and traders. Merchants and captains were largely exiles and criminals, degredados, from Brazil. Black settlers and ladinos were considered “white,” but so too were the vassals of allied sobas who through trade acquired European shoes: Negros calçados would petition to be exempted from tribute as porters and be treated as “white.” Female slaves who amassed considerable fortunes as market women (quitanderas) also became free “white” settlers. This was a world of both strict social hierarchies and dizzying social mobility.

One of Ferrerira’s most intriguing contributions is to demonstrate the peculiar relation of Brazil and Angola, one that almost entirely excluded the Portuguese. If Angola was a colony, it was Rio’s and Minas Gerais’s. Beginning in the late seventeenth century, the expansion of gold mining in Minas led to the growth of Brazilian involvement in Luanda and Benguela. Merchant-pombeiros and sheriffs-capitães mores were often exile-degredados from Brazil. Luanda and Benguela settlers sent their kids to be educated in Rio. Many acquired trades in Brazil and came back as carpenters and tailors. When Brazil declared independence in 1822, the Portuguese remained fearful for several decades of repeated conspiracies to unite Angola to the new Brazilian empire. The case of Angola demonstrates that early modern monarchies were indeed polycentric. The center of gravity often lay in America, not Europe.

This extraordinary, eye-opening book not only illuminates the distinct nature of South Atlantic systems of slavery, connecting Rio to Luanda and Benguela, a system that accounted for at least one third of all the slaves brought to the Americas. It also throws light on the role of slave petitioning in securing legitimacy and political resilience There were extraordinary parallels between the Tribunal de mucanos in Angola and the Republica de indios in Spanish America. In both cases, the state invested heavily in protecting nonwhite vassals from mercantile predation. In doing so, the system grew in legitimacy and longevity. The true paradox of modernity might not be that white freedom was possible because there was black slavery, as Edmund Morgan argued in American Slavery, American Freedom. The true paradox might well be that slavery grew and multiplied precisely because there were tens of thousands of slaves who petitioned and obtained their freedom.

From There to Here: Toyin Falola

By Toyin Falola

Map of Nigeria (via Wikimedia)

(UT History faculty come from all over the world. Here are their stories.)

This Spotlight, this City

In my space and time of growth,
The long metallic snake of screeching hisses
And novel magical magnetic movement
Became a muse of songs and fantasies
Making the urge for voyage ineluctable

And from a tender age I fell for it
Paying with prizes of stigmatization as some alien
But as phoenix from fire and a reversing ram
The urge arose, heightened and strengthened
When I beheld the world reduced to print

History came as another huge impetus
Revealing creeds and tastes beyond imaginations
And so I saw this spotlight of glory and merit

I saw the promise of greater fulfillments
In this city reposing upon a hill
As Winthrop saw the promise of first freedom

Thus I set out to this spotlight, this city
Sailing across the Atlantic, but this time
Up in the sky, in a new model of the Arbella

Also in this series:
Julie Hardwick
Tatjana Lichtenstein

Also by Toyin Falola:
Toyin Falola on Africa and the United States

IHS Talk: Beyond “Crisis” and Headlines: The History of Humanity as a History of Migration

On Monday, September 18, 2017, José C. Moya of Barnard College delivered a talk considering migration not as a current concern or “crisis” but as an intrinsic element of the human condition. Moya discusses migration as the very origin of our species, of its “racial” and cultural diversity, its global dispersion, and an engine of opportunity, innovation, and socioeconomic growth but also a source of disparities, inequalities, and conflict at global and local scales.

José C. Moya is professor of history at Director of the Forum on Migration at Barnard College, Director of the Institute of Latin American Studies at Columbia University, and Professor Emeritus at UCLA, where he taught for seventeen years and directed an equal number of doctoral dissertations. He has been a visiting professor at the universities of Paris, San Andres (Argentina), and Santiago de Compostela (Spain) and invited speaker or research fellow at the universities of Berlin, Vienna, Krakow, Oxford, Leiden, Louvain, Fudan in Shanghai, Tel Aviv, Sao Paulo, the London School of Economics, and the Colegio de Mexico, among others.

Professor Moya has authored more than fifty publications, including Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850-1930, a book that received five awards, World Migration in the Long Twentieth Century, co-authored with Adam McKeown, and The Oxford Handbook of Latin American History, an edited volume on Latin American historiography. He is currently working on a book about anarchism in Buenos Aires and the Atlantic World during the belle époque and editing a book titled “Atlantic Crossroads: Webs of Migration, Culture and Politics between Europe, Africa, and the Americas, 1800-2010.”

The talk was sponsored by the Institute for Historical Studies, LLILAS Benson, and International Relations and Global Studies.

My Alternative PhD in History

By Ben Weiss

A recent piece in The Economist claims that, “One thing many PhD students have in common is dissatisfaction. Seven-day weeks, ten-hour days, low pay and uncertain prospects are widespread. You know you are a graduate student, goes one quip, when your office is better decorated than your home and you have a favourite flavour of instant noodle.”

(via Pexels)

When I was considering enrolling in the University of Texas History PhD program, I heard similar sentiments from peers and discovered many analogous articles. Despite the deluge of criticism I found myself wading through during application season, stubbornness and ambition persevered, and I entered the program in August of 2013. I decided to get a PhD in History as training for pursuing a career in government policy making. Many people making policy decisions lack significant contextual knowledge about their fields, which has a negative impact on overall policy effectiveness. Nearly three and a half years later and having experienced many of the drawbacks associated with grad school, I am still content with my decision.

During my undergraduate years at UT, I took a course with the highly regarded historian Tony Hopkins. Though I often find myself remembering his stirring lectures and exceptional oration skills, one moment in the course especially resonated with my ambitions. One day, he mournfully stated that the last of the generation of economists who were well versed in history recently retired or passed away. His words deeply echoed my feelings about the profound lack of historical and cultural understanding among the vast majority of contemporary policymakers.

The distinguished economic historian A.G. “Tony” Hopkins taught at UT from 2002-2013 (via Wikimedia Commons).

I work on the history of sexual health politics during the colonial period in southern Africa with the goal of doing policy work for American HIV/AIDS relief efforts in the same areas. Historically, western medicine frequently has produced traumatic and violent experiences in African societies, where perspectives on sexual health and sexual education norms differ from western views and health relief campaigns have a history of becoming politicized within neo-colonial and nationalist power struggles, making American foreign health policy and its reception in Africa problematic. Many policymakers lack the historical background necessary to develop effective policy. For all the discourse on indigenous partnership that occurs as a part of American relief efforts in my focus regions, partnership occurs within the cultural and ideological framework of American public policy. For example, policymakers do not legitimately account for indigenous healing practices within their policy frameworks – either in discourse or practice – because the vast majority of policymakers fail to recognize just how much sociocultural value local medical practices hold while simultaneously overlooking the ways in which Western medicine possesses its own country specific cultural values. Americans have contributed to the tremendous progress made in fighting HIV/AIDS, but we could be doing better by integrating real historical training.

I have made this argument multiple times to potential employers as I look beyond my dissertation defense toward a career in policy making. My contentions have not fallen on deaf ears. Think tanks and other policy research institutes have indicated that my historical training really does bring valuable expertise to the table that few other candidates with other types of degrees possess.

030926-F-2828D-307 Washington, D.C. (Sept. 26, 2003) -- Aerial view of the Washington Monument with the Capitol in the background. DoD photo by Tech. Sgt. Andy Dunaway. (RELEASED)

Historical knowledge and training can inform policy from the local to the federal levels (via Wikimedia Commons).

When considering whether a PhD – and specifically one in History – is worth it, I would consider asking what such a degree can add both to one’s personal goals and to making one competitive on the professional job market. When I was thinking about graduate school, I reflected on Tony Hopkins’ words and realized that I could not, in good conscience, work in HIV/AIDS relief (something I have been passionate about for close to a decade) without acquiring the knowledge that was lacking in the field. I also believed that a PhD would enhance my employment prospects if I articulated the validity of my trajectory in the right way.

There is a tangible void in public policy and I firmly believe that history PhDs could have a critical role to play in filling that void in the coming years. To those who are skeptical of the decision to put so much time, money, and energy into a PhD education, I contend that the versatile PhD holds more weight now than at any other time in recent memory.

More by Ben Weiss on Not Even Past:

Slavoj Žižek and Violence.
The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective, by Robert C. Allen (2009).

The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, by Frederick John Dealtry Lugard (1965)

by Ogechukwu Ezekwem

Born to an English family in India in 1858, Frederick Lugard rose to become the colonial Governor of Nigeria, Britain’s most valued African possession. His The Dual Mandate, first published in 1922, became a handbook for all British administrators in tropical Africa, and influenced British colonial policies across the continent. It offered a comprehensive evaluation of the nature and challenges of British rule in Africa.

Lugard asserted that the direct cause of Africa’s partition was France’s search for rehabilitation in north and west Africa, following its defeat in the Franco-Prussian war. This ambition resulted in a scramble between France and Germany for African spheres of influence, to which Britain was “unwillingly” compelled to participate. To shield British spheres of influence from external intrusion, the British Foreign Office declared them as Protectorates. Territories acquired through conquest, cession, settlement, or annexation were designated as Crown Colonies. Apart from east and southern Africa, where the terrain and temperate weather offered convenient habitation to European settlers, the African tropics held few incentives for white settlers. However, the region provided abundant sources of raw materials and markets for manufactured goods.

1897 print depicting a battle between British forces and Mahdist fighters in the Sudan (Library of Congress)

According to Lugard, Britain held a dual responsibility in Africa: administration and economic benefits for the metropole, as well as the “native’s” uplifting. His recommendations for Africa’s governance revolved around three principles – decentralization, continuity, and cooperation. Decentralization at all levels of government, with a strong coordinating authority in the center, allowed for greater efficiency. Continuity was vital because Africans trusted foreigners reluctantly. Therefore, effective British officers should retain their posts without undue interruptions. He also proposed that, during Governors’ annual leaves, they should be represented by a Lieutenant Governor, selected from the Provincial Administrative Staff, rather than the Colonial Secretary. Decentralization and continuity could only be achieved if cooperation existed within the administrative chains, especially between the provincial staff and local rulers. The success of Lugard’s Indirect Rule policy — administration through local chiefs, under the close supervision of British colonial officers — a system that he tested comprehensively in Nigeria, depended on cooperation. He also encouraged local heirs’ education in order to prevent the emergence of a separate educated class that might challenge the authority of accepted rulers. As a way of harnessing the empire’s economic benefits for Britain’s post-World War 1 recovery, Lugard recommended the construction of strategic railways across British Africa. He concluded that British governance offered happiness and welfare to “primitive” peoples. “If unrest and desire for independence exists,” he asserted, “it is because the natives have been taught the value of freedom and independence, which for centuries they had not known.”

Early 20th-century European poses with African Pigmies (Wikimedia)

Lugard writes in a clear style. His book is a masterpiece of literature and policymaking, though contemporary readers will find his defense of British colonialism in Africa racist and paternalistic. Firstly, he reiterated the supposed unwilling nature of Britain’s involvement in Africa. He blamed Africa’s partition on French and German rivalry, while ignoring that Britain’s economic interests and national prestige hung in the balance too. Secondly, he argued that Britain practiced a beneficent regime that taught Africans the value of freedom and liberty, hence their desire for independence. He ignored colonialism’s oppressive nature and the shortcomings of British rule, which caused protests against the government. He overlooked the “freedom and liberty” existing in indigenous structures, hence the sustained resistance by Africans against European domination. Lugard’s administrative template rules out an independent Africa, free from British control, at least for the indefinite future. Nonetheless, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa is illuminating for readers seeking to understand the foundations of British colonial policies in Africa.

You may also like Ogechukwu Ezekwem’s review of The Making of Man-Midwifery: Childbirth in England 1660-1770

Visitors of the Nile: The New Archive (No. 13)

By Charley S. Binkow

For centuries Egypt has inspired awe in the West. From Napoleon to Anderson Cooper, westerners have found an intrinsic fascination with Egypt’s rich culture, history, art, and politics. Since they first arrived, Egypt’s visitors have tried to capture its incredible landscape and document its complex beauty. The Travelers in the Middle East Archive gives us a comprehensive collection of what these visitors saw and what they chose to record one hundred years ago.

Postcard entitled, “Egypt – Native Women” (Lehnert & Landrock Egypt – Native Women (81) (n.d.).
From Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA). http://hdl.handle.net/1911/5521)

Between the late 19^th and early 20^th century, explorers took photos, stenciled pictures, and documented all they could see in the Nile Valley. And while these travelers captured grandiose or exceptional images for their catalogues, they were also fascinated with the real, day-to-day life of Egyptians. In this collection, we can see what these explorers saw as noteworthy, what they wanted the world to see, and how they portrayed Egyptian life. This archive is just as much, if not more, about those who documented Egypt as it is about the Egyptians themselves.

Postcard entitled, "Entrance to an Old Native House," 1906 (Lekegian, G. Entrance to an Old Native House (1906). From Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA). http://hdl.handle.net/1911/20913)

Postcard entitled, “Entrance to an Old Native House,” 1906 (Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA). http://hdl.handle.net/1911/20913)

The archive has assembled these primary sources and divided its massive collection into thematic subjects. One can peruse Art & Artifacts, History & Politics, and a lot more with exceptional ease. There are beautiful pictures, high quality photographs, and vivid paintings that bring the land to life. I especially like the photographs of the Egyptians doing daily routines, such as women carrying pots or boys and girls on the street. And while there are some stunning portraits of foreign dignitaries, like the British general Sir Reginald Wingate, the best images are of the people whose individual lives often don’t make it into the history books. This collection shows the workers, the poor, and people in mourning. Historians can access photos portraying how ordinary people lived—what they wore, how they walked, who they associated with. But they can also better understand the Westerners who visited. Was the land more than a spectacle to them? What do the drawings say about their creators?

Photograph of Egyptian boys and girls walking down a road, 1911 (Sladen, Douglas Egyptian Boys And Girls. (1911). From Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA). http://hdl.handle.net/1911/21592)

Photograph of Egyptian boys and girls walking down a road, 1911 (Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA). http://hdl.handle.net/1911/21592)

In addition to the pictures, the archive has digitized certain key writings. My favorite is E.W. Lane’s An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians from 1836. Just skimming through the pages brings a whole new world to life. You can read about the Egyptian process of child naming, their various beliefs, and their relationships between religion and law. The preface is a worthy read by itself—especially Lane’s account of the serpent eaters!

This archive is incredibly rich and rewarding, filled with a gold mine of primary documents. Click around and discover Egypt for yourself. The more you traverse the website, the more you’ll want to.

The latest from The New Archive:

A database that preserves the sounds of 1920s New York City

And the American Civil War, as drawn by Harper’s Weekly

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