HST 498 - Project Synopsis

                                                                 Confraternities: The syncretism of Catholic and  African religions, a  partnership for Black African slave survival.

With twelve Africans by his side Portuguese captain Antao Goncalves made his point. His mission was to prove to Prince Henry that he was capable of obtaining West African slaves directly from the source, without the assistance of a purchasing agent. The trade in slaves was not a new development in Iberia, African slaves had been distributed throughout the Middle East, Egypt, China and India since the first century. But this event in 1441 was the catalyst to an increase of black Africans taken to Iberia to meet the needs of industrialization and the expansion of sugar, tobacco and rice production.               

Forced to leave their individual cultures and to be surrounded by people of differing religious practices, foods, and social behavior surely would be a cause of loss of identity for these African slaves.  This would not be wise to have a slave labor suffering from such feelings of alienation and grief, how productive could this labor class be? A suffering labor class can lead to revolt and dissention as was the case with Spartacus of the Servile War against the Roman Republic. Thus it was wisdom of the Spanish Crown to permit members of the African slave class to practice a level of corporatism and create brotherhoods, and for the Crown to listen to complaints of cruelty submitted by slaves and providing them with a chance to have a hearing before the criminal court. An example of this is found in a documented court case in fifteenth century Valencia found in the Archivo del Reino, Justicia Criminal 102, Cedes M of July 14, 1452 a female slave named Joliana filed charges of mistreatment against her master Francesch Martinez. Martinez had caused a head injury to Joliana which left her extremely ill, when he was unable to sell her off in her current condition Martinez took her to a house of black Africans, whereupon Joliana was left in the care of the housemother. The reference of, “la casa dels negres”  found in the Archivo del Reino, Gobernacion 2348, M 7 fol 2r provides evidence of the position the black Africans were allowed to have within Spanish society in having a place they could go to for charitable assistance and medical attention.. This house is also evidence that the black African was allowed to forge bonds of solidarity and cooperation which led them to create a black confraternity. Founded in Valencia, members of this black confraternity collected alms and negotiated contracts of manumission on behalf of their enslaved fellow black Africans. The development of this confraternity reinstated a feeling of corporate identity once lost upon their capture, enslavement and forced migration to the Iberian Peninsula.

The previously mentioned court case involving Joliana and Francesch Martinez helped to identify members of the black confraternity, how the confraternity selected the individual beneficiaries of their charitable acts and how they assembled the funds to redeem their fellow black African slaves from enslavement. This institution impacted about forty percent of the slave community of Valencia which according to notarial records was the estimated population of black Africans who were purchased and sold in public auctions and private sales throughout the city.  Between 1445 and 1516 6,740 black African slaves arrived in the port of Valencia. All captives entering the kingdom of Valencia had to be presented before Crown officials to confirm the legitimacy of their enslavement and a 20 per cent tax assessed on their sale price. (Earle and Lowe 2005:228,229)

These numbers are indicative of the value a support network such as the black confraternity has for the African community, a slave labor class is more productive when the members of its body are in a positive frame of mind by which the support of a black brotherhood could provide and as we shall see would provide. Evidence of the existence of these confraternities was found in court documents of the Crown in 1472, when the Crown issued confirmation and ratification of statutes contained in the confraternity’s charter of foundation. The court case mentioned earlier provided transcripts which provided identification of four black men as negotiators of Johana’s redemption from slavery. Of these four one was a mattress maker, Johan Monpalau, the second was a black porter and a freeman, Johan Moliner, and the last two were slaves, Pedro and Anthoni. Their testimonies can be found in the Archivo del Reino, Gobernacion 2411, M. 22, fol. 4R, in which the notary states the alms collection box was managed by Pedro a slave belonging to the nobleman Pallars. This is impressive evidence of the capabilities of the black African community converse to statements made by such authors as Felicien Champsaur and many others who would deprive the African people of their abilities to form grand empires such as the Ashante and the Benin and as sophisticated traders and merchants, and for the purpose of this paper the recorded testimonies are evidence of the Crown’s allowance of the black African to forge a brotherhood.                                                                                                                                                                   Thus we have evidence that the black African slave had the freedom to form a support network, but by means of what foundation? The Catholic Church provided the foundation for these confraternities as they saw this as a method of salvation for the black Africans. As the black African slave was assimilated into Spanish society they created fraternal orders for themselves in association with Catholic orders who oversaw their development. This not only provided the black African a method of networking and association with their peers it also acted as a method of self governance and a means to retain their cultural heritage in the light of their forced migration. This also promoted social services such as food and medicine for the needy, and participation in funeral and religious observances. (Landers 1999:8)

The benefit to the Spanish Crown is the efforts these slaves undertook in the level of assimilation into Spanish society. They learned the language, customs and laws of this strange land. They adopted the Catholic religion with an open mind and heart as evidenced in their efforts to prepare the symbols needed for religious ceremonies such as Corpus Cristi and adapting their own use of a pantheon of gods as the Catholics have saints. In the Iberian Peninsula the black African slave demonstrated complete conformance to a socially accepted form of confraternity which won them an important place and for some an elevated status within the community which was a wise move considering the religious environment of the time. Their Church sanctioned brotherhoods afforded them much needed protection in a time of heightened religious suspicion and persecution. In sixteenth century Seville there was an influx of migration due to the huge labor demand for this growing industrial metropolis and thus many foreigners incurred a heightened sense of xenophobia in the shadow of the Inquisition. Thus the influence towards total conversion of the Catholic religion on the part of the black African slave. (Webster 1998.34)

However this is not the same scenario we see develop when the black African slave is introduced to the New World. Their adoption of the Catholic religion does not have the same outcome. They do not adopt the Catholic religion but rather adapt the Catholic doctrines in syncretism to their own African rooted religious practices which manifests itself into the phenomenon of the creation of several new forms of religion, the three dominant religions being Candomble, Santeria and Vodun. This is a most fascinating subject and a topic for future research, however this paper will only address the resultant birth of these forms of religion as an outcome to the black African slave’s total conversion to the Catholic religion when introduced to the Iberian Peninsula.

Primary sources:

Earle, Thomas F, Kate P. Lowe. Black Africans in Renaissance Europe. New York. Cambridge University Press. 2005.

  Forbes, Jack.  Africans and Native Americas: The Language of Race and the Evolution of Red-  Black Peoples. Urbana. University of Illinois-Press. 1993.

Webster, Verdi S. Art and Ritual in Golden Age Spain: Sevillian Confraternities and the Processional Sculpture of Holy Week. Princeton. 1998.

Secondary sources:                                                                                         

Fraginals, Manuel Moreno. Africa in Latin America: Essays on History, Culture, and Socialization; translated by Leonor Blum. New York. Holmes & Meier Publishers. 1984.

Landers, Jane. Black Society in Spanish Florida. Chicago. University of Illinois Press. 1999.

Miriam, Joel. African Traditions in Latin America. Cidoc Cuaderno, No 73. Cuernavaca,      Mexico. 1972.

Ortiz, Antonio Dominguez. The Golden Age of Spain. New York. Basic Books Inc. Publishers. 1971.

HST 498 - Project Proposal

  Deborah Sanders 

    HST 498 - Project Proposal 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                Confraternities: The syncretism of Catholic and African religions, a partnership of survival for African Slaves.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Thesis:

Historically religion and its institutions have been the backbone to many a human rights violation. The Inquisition and the Crusades are prime examples. However, various religious institutions played a more positive role during the Black African slave trading during the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries. From the initial slave trading begun in the Iberian Peninsula from the fifteenth century to the Atlantic Slave Trade which brought Black Africans to the New World. In each of these methods of forced migration of the Black African slave Catholic confraternities provided a means of assimilation into Spanish society or colonial life as is the case in the New World. From the perspective of the Catholics of Spain and Portugal, slavery provided salvation for the Africans. As the African population grew there were efforts to assimilate these individuals into Spaniard society and culture. The role of religion would have an important impact on the attempts towards enculturation of the African and Afro-Hispanic American communities.                                                                                                              

Enslaved and free Africans were able to create public social spaces for themselves as residents of Spain. This manifested itself by means of the development of ethnic enclaves. The ethnic enclaves thereby grew into the establishment of religious confraternities which contributed to the social networking of people of African descent. This is unique in that, traditionally, national leaders would determine it a threat to national security to allow enslaved groups to bond and organize together. Yet the Spanish Crown did not discourage the development of these Black African confraternities. This raises the following questions, what was the resultant benefit to the
Spanish Crown? What benefits if any did this provide the Black African slaves? Did this provide total conversion to Catholicism? What features of syncretism of the Black African culture and religious practices and Catholicism were created and do we find examples of this in modern times?                                             

I intend to address these questions by means of my chosen sources and associate a link between the Black African confraternities established in medieval Iberia and the level of syncretism allowed by the Catholic order present in the New World. The allowance under Spanish law to permit the Black African slave to retain a semblance of human rights promoted a productive response to their condition of slavery while residing on the Iberian Peninsula. The added benefit to Spanish society is proven by how instrumental Africans were in administering aid in the Hospital of Our Lady of the Angels which was an extension of a local cofradia in Seville that provided medical care for its members.

The African slave not only served his master’s needs but also served the needs of the community and the members of the fraternal organization that he or she might have been associated with. This practice of syncretism also resulted in the phenomenon of the creation of three new religions based in the New World, Candoble, Santeria and Vodun.

Bibliography  

Earle, Thomas F, Kate P. Lowe. Black Africans in Renaissance Europe. New York. Cambridge University Press. 2005.

Fisher, Andrew B, Matthew D. O’Hara. Imperial Subjects: Race and Identity in Colonial Latin America. Durham and London. Duke University Press. 2009.

Fraginals, Manuel Moreno. Africa in Latin America: Essays on History, Culture, and Socialization; translated by Leonor Blum. New York. Holmes & Meier Publishers. 1984.

Forbes, Jack.  Africans and Native Americas: The Language of Race and the Evolution of Red-Black Peoples. Urbana. University of Illinois-Press. 1993.

Landers, Jane. Black Society in Spanish Florida. Chicago. University of Illinois Press. 1999.

McNight,Kathryn Joy and Garofalo, Leo J. Afro-Latino Voices. Indianapolis/Cambridge. Hackett Puclishing Company, Inc. 2009

Miriam, Joel. African Traditions in Latin America. Cidoc Cuaderno, No 73. Cuernavaca,      Mexico. 1972.

Ortiz, Antonio Dominguez. The Golden Age of Spain. New York. Basic Books Inc. Publishers. 1971.

Webster, Verdi S. Art and Ritual in Golden Age Spain: Sevillian Confraternities and the Processional Sculpture of Holy Week. Princeton. 1998.

                                                                                                                                

  

Short Essay # 3

                                                Summer 2011 HST 498 Short Essay # 3

The European perspective of the African transitioned from a viewpoint of their right of mastery over them during the period of the slave trade to developing mastery over them due to their technological and scientific advances and inventions. The European perspective was founded on  racial bias, formerly this racial bias was based on the biblical right of enslavement and religious assumption that due to God’s allowance for slaves as mentioned in the bible married with the biological differences between white Europeans and black Africans that this made the African the logical subject for enslavement and that enslavement was a means of exposure to Christianity and if converted would save their souls. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the European perspective still maintained superiority over the inferior black African and more so in the light of the thrust in technology that dominated the European commercial world and caused a new set of values by which to judge the black African. These values were key to the ideology of the civilizing mission.

Michael Adas addresses this ideology in his article, “Contested Hegemony: The Great War and the Afro-Asian Assault on the Civilizing Mission Ideology”, he defines the formulation of this ideology coming from colonial administrators and advocates of colonial expansion. They proposed that the civilizing mission would promote good government, economic improvement and Christian proselytization. Adas states that the former gauges of superiority and inferiority such as differences in physical appearance and religious beliefs which dominated the European world view remained instilled in European society. However by the middle of the nineteenth century European thinkers whether they were racists or antiracists, expansionists or anti-imperialists shared the conviction that through their scientific discoveries and inventions Westerners had gained an understanding of the physical world and the ability to tap its resources in a manner which was vastly superior to anything achieved by other peoples, past or present.(pg 32) During the late Victorian era the champions of the civilizing mission saw the colonized people  and cultures as given to fatalistic, passive and excessive emotional behaviors. They regarded Africans and Asians as superstitious, indolent, reactionary, out of control and oblivious to time. These traits exhibited by the colonized people were the foundation by which Western theorists and colonial administrators determined the  inferiority of the colonized people. This value system was overwhelmingly based on bourgeois sentiments. The bourgeoisie esteemed rationality, empiricism, progressivism, systematic inquiry, industriousness and adaptability. Key civilizing mission attributes such as discipline, curiosity, punctuality, honest dealing and taking control were gauges by which the colonized people were judged. To further distort the judgment placed on the Africans, European observers assumed that due to the Africans response of astonishment, awe and mystified reactions of seeing the inventions of the Western world such as motor cars, bicycles, gramophones, telegraphy and the telephone that Africans were racially incapable of rational thought, discipline, scientific investigation and technological innovation.(pg. 39) This misinterpretation was a cause for few opportunities before World War I for colonized Africans to pursue serious training in the sciences, medicine, or engineering, instead they were relegated to the operation and maintenance of the most elementary machines.

In Hallett’s article, “Changing European Attitudes to Africa”, he points out that due to the lack of literacy within Africa, the published works of the exploits of outsiders are richly embellished and is a cause of bias which tends to overstress the importance of external influences which has to be constantly combated with publishing of the achievements of African societies in developing their own varied and elaborate cultures. These European writings which contributed to the European perspective of the African continent may have overemphasized the impact European techniques and institutions had on Africa, especially in comparison to the revolutionary innovations Africa adopted from its contact with Asia over millennia. (pg. 458,459) Hallett states that between 1790 and 1875 a change in European attitudes towards Africa developed in response to a steady expansion of European activities and the growing assurance of European power. In medieval times the technologies and political structures between these two cultures were not so different, however that changed with the rise of advancements in European technology. The European technological revolution caused a gap between the European and African continents which caused Europeans to adopt new attitudes towards people of alien culture whose way of life seemed increasingly different from their own. Two factors now contributed to a change in the European perspective towards Africa, 1) Europeans now contemplated their own societies with a heightened sense of pride, confidence and arrogance when comparing themselves to other parts of the world, and 2) a great increase in the number of Europeans with a stake in Africa and the steady expansion of European activity in the frontiers of the African continent. Each nationality of European involved in some operation in Africa, be it an English missionary, a French army officer, a Greek trader all had a sense of cultural superiority over the indigenous people of Africa. This sense of superiority was perceived by means of judgment using the value system of the European age. Hallett attributes this to the written material provided to the reader at that time which would reflect the way the author felt in response to the success of an agenda, for example a European missionary is likely to show little sympathy for those who reject or revile his teaching. Thus the European theorist found himself free to select those facts that accorded best with his own preconceptions, and by the late eighteenth century there was enough material available on the subject of those African peoples whom Europeans had been in fairly regular contact to allow Europeans with an interest in the issues of race and culture to develop a number of different theories. (pg 473,474)

The African response to European imperialism is documented in the Mackenzie article regarding the partitioning of Africa and as each European nation attempted to stake a claim to Africa’s resources, either a battle ensued between the tribal group of which their territory was in danger, or a treaty or agreement was made between a competing tribe with the European administration who would encroach on another tribes territory. Mackenzie provides a historically detailed account of each area of Africa and the European nation attempting to acquire a partition of this continent, their strategy and affected African state or tribal group’s response to protect their homeland.

The Adi article, Pan-Africanism and West African Nationalism in Britain, is an account of another response to European imperialism with the development of various organizations whose purpose was to promote solidarity, a sense of identity and nationalism among those in the diaspora and in Africa. According to Adi during the entire period of slavery and colonial rule West Africans have been compelled to leave their homeland either from forced migration of slavery, looking for employment or educational opportunities and arriving in Britain. The Africans had to endure the effects of racism in Britain and thus moved Africans in Britain and in the diaspora to create organizations such as the West African Student’s Union, the West African National Secretariat, the African Association and the Ethiopian Association to name a few. 

Thus the European perspective did change due to a response to their own commercial successes from the technological and scientific advancements which increased the expansion of imperialism. The European now looked at the colonized people with an ethnocentric world view motivated by the pride and power of imperialism as opposed to the religiously based racial ideologies of former centuries.