Lourenco da Silva Mendonca and the Black Atlantic Abolitionist Movement in the Seventeenth Century

This groundbreaking study provides a new perspective on the Atlantic slave trade, highlighting the agency of Africans in the quest for abolition. The book reveals how the legal debate on abolition was begun by Africans, not Europeans. An essential new work for scholars and students interested in the abolition movement.

This groundbreaking study tells the story of the highly organised, international legal court case for the abolition of slavery spearheaded by Prince Lourenço da Silva Mendonça in the seventeenth century. The case, presented before the Vatican, called for the freedom of all enslaved people and other oppressed groups. This included New Christians (Jews converted to Christianity) and Indigenous Americans in the Atlantic World, and Black Christians from confraternities in Angola, Brazil, Portugal and Spain. Abolition debate is generally believed to have been dominated by white Europeans in the eighteenth century. By centring African agency, José Lingna Nafafé offers a new perspective on the abolition movement, showing, for the first time, how the legal debate was begun not by Europeans, but by Africans. In the first book of its kind, Lingna Nafafé underscores the exceptionally complex nature of the African liberation struggle, and demystifies the common knowledge and accepted wisdom surrounding African slavery.