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Written Sources and African History: A Plea for the Primary Source. The Angola Manuscript Collection of Fernão de Sousa*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Beatrix Heintze
Beatrix Heintze*
Affiliation:
Frobenius-InstitutFrankfurt am Main
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Extract

The written sources for African history are scattered throughout the world, often in archives to which access is difficult. To reach them often requires a considerable expenditure of time and money, quite apart from the necessary linguistic knowledge. As a result, at least in the German-speaking world, much of the writing of African history and anthropology has for decades rested exclusively on published sources. Besides often leading to a serious deficiency of information, such an approach limits the degree of control to which written testimony can be subjected: even the most assiduous textual criticism soon reaches its limits if comparable information is lacking. In addition, where there are only a few published sources, the historian may all too easily be lulled into a false sense of security. To remedy this, it is not enough to plead for as much archival work as possible (a requirement that can today usually be taken for granted in any case) and encourage the publication of more primary sources. We should also pay more attention to the distinction between primary and secondary sources, that is, take more explicitly into account the proximity of a source to the historical event or situation concerned--quite apart from observing all the other rules of textual criticism.

This paper therefore has two purposes. First, I wish to draw attention to a hitherto-neglected source for Angolan history in the first half of the seventeenth century--the manuscript collection of Fernão de Sousa, Governor of Angola from 1624 to 1630. A rough review of its contents and arrangement will perhaps stimulate scholars to study it and facilitate its use.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 9 , 1982 , pp. 77 - 103
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1982

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to Adam Jones for his valuable comments on the first draft of this article and for translating it into English, and to Gisela Wittner for drawing the diagrams. I should also like to thank the director of the library of Ajuda, Melba M. Ferreira da Costa, and her staff for their help during my research there, which was kindly financed in part by the Deutsche Forschungs-gemeinschaft.

References

NOTES

1. Brásio, António, Monumenta Missionária Africana. África occidental, 1st series, vols.5–10 (Lisbon, 1955–1965)Google Scholar; Jadin, Louis, L'ancien Congo et l'Angola 1639-1655, d'après les archives romaines, protugaises, néerlandaises et espagnoles (3 vols.: Brussels, 1975.Google ScholarBibliothèque de l'Institut Historique Belge de Rome, 20-22); also documents in the appendices of idem, “Le clergé séculier et les Capucins du Congo et d'Angola aux xvie et xviie siècles,” Bulletin de l'Institut Historique Belge de Rome, 36 (1964); idem, “Pero Tavares, missionnaire jésuite, ses travaux apostoliques au Congo et en Angola,” Bulletin de l'Institut Historique Belge de Rome, 38 (1967) 293-393; idem, “Relations sur le Congo et l'Angolatirées des archives de la Compagnie de Jésus, 1621-1631,” Bulletin de l'Institut Historique Belge de Rome, 39 (1968), 361-440; de Cadornega, António de Oliveira, História geral das guerras angolanas, ed. Delgado, José Matias and da Cunha, Manuel Alves (3 vols.: Lisbon, 1940–1941).Google Scholar

2. Mateus Cardoso, Histoire du Royaume du Congo (c. 1624), annotated translation by François Bontinck in collaboration with J. Castro Segovia (Louvain and Paris, 1972) [Etudes d'Histoire Africaine 4], Today most scholars use the modern Portuguese translation, which contains detailed annotation: Montecuccolo, Joãao António Cavazzi de, Descriçãao histórica dos três reinos do Congo, Matamba e Angola, trans, and ed. de Leguzzano, Graciano Maria (2 vols.: Lisbon, 1965 [first published in Bologna, 1687]).Google Scholar

3. Felner, Alfredo de Albuquerque, Angola. (Coimbra, 1933)Google Scholar, José Matias Delgado (editor of Cadornega's História) and Delgado, Ralph (História de Angola. 4 vols.; Lobito, 1948–1955)Google Scholar made use of this source, but only in an uncritical and unsystematic manner. As far as the history of Ndongo between 1617 and 1630 is concerned, I have attempted to rectify this in my article “Das Ende des unabhängigen Staates Ndongo (Angola). Neue Chronologie und Reinterpretation (1617-1630),” Paideuma, 27(1981), 197–273.Google Scholar

4. Biblioteca da Ajuda (hereafter BAL). Old class-marks: Cód. 51-VIII-30 and 51-VIII-31.

5. Brásio, , Monumenta, vols. 7–8Google Scholar; Felner, , Angola, 519–30Google Scholar; Heintze, “Ndongo,” appendix.

6. In the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino in Lisbon there is a faded and scarcely legible duplicate of this map.

7. Perhaps even by de Sousa himself? See BAL, Cód. 51-IX-20, ff. 365, 365v-66.

8. BAL, Cód. 51-IX-21, legend on one or both maps. (I do not have a complete copy of the second map); BAL, Còd. 51-IX-20, ff. 157, 159, 364v. A map ordered by the king on 23 December 1634 and sent to de Sousa on 14 February 1635, has not been found. See f.198.

9. A terminus post quern for the date of this review is the arrival in Angola of Bento Banha Cardoso with fresh supplies on 1 September 1625.

10. Each duplicate copy was sent by a different ship and generally by a different route, in order to minimize the risk of being lost.

11. See the letter of his son, Tomè de Sousa, to Afonso de Barros Caminha, dd. later than 2 December 1643, in Boletim do Arquivo Histórico Colonial, 1(1950), 251 (no. 40).Google Scholar

12. Vasconcelos' opinion probably dated from 1625 or 1626 (cf. Braśio, , Monumenta 7: 356).Google Scholar The special committee, however, met on at least two separate occasions--on 12 October 1626 (cf. the two maps in BAL, Cód. 51-IX-21) and at the beginning of the 1630s, when de Sousa, having returned from Angola, took part in its deliberations (cf. BAL, Cód. 51-IX-20, f. 200v).

13. Brásio, , Monumenta 7: 505, 524-29, 640Google Scholar (see also ibid, 497-99, 503-04, 506-07); Felner, , Angola, 471–72Google Scholar; Heintze, “Ndongo,” appendix.

14. Published in Heintze, “Ndongo,” appendix. They have also been published in modern Portuguese in Delgado, , História de Angola 2: 102–03Google Scholar; but this version contains several misreadings.

15. Felner, , Angola, 471–72.Google Scholar

16. Twenty-six of the documents in this section have been published in full in Brásio, , Monumenta, vols. 7–8Google Scholar, together with extracts from four others. Five further letters published by Brásio from the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino are virtually identical with corresponding letters in BAL, Cód. 51-IX-20.

17. Eight have been published in Brásio, , Monumenta, vol. 7.Google Scholar Among the letters in this section is one from the feitor of Loango to de Sousa (ff. 382-82v) and letters from the Bishop of Kongo and Angola to the King of Kongo and to the Count of Soyo (f. 383v). All are in Brásio.

18. Felner, (Angola, 524–28)Google Scholar lists 96 of the 97 deeds copied in Cód. 51-IX-20 (names of the beneficiaries, size, and location of the land concession that each received), as well as ten of the eleven deeds copied in Cód. 51-IX-21.

19. Mainly in Felner, , Angola, 519–24Google Scholar; also in Brásio, , Monumenta 7: 549–50Google Scholar; Heintze, “Ndongo,” appendix.

20. Felner, , Angola, 522–24.Google Scholar

21. Heintze, “Ndongo,” appendix.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid.

24. One of the few “new” items is the attempt by Governor Luís Mendes de Vasconcelos, following his victory over Ndongo and expulsion of King Ngola a Mbande, to set up a puppet king in Ndongo (BAL, Cód. 51-IX-20, f. 414). This attempt was thwarted by the inhabitants and had no distinguishable political consequences. Although mentioned by Felner, Angola, 209Google Scholar, this incident has been ignored by subsequent researchers.

25. BAL, Cód. 51-IX-20, f. 350v. See also f. 362; Brásio, , Monumenta 8: 137Google Scholar, and Cadornega, , História, 113, 115n1, 116.Google Scholar The visit took place in 1622: Cavazzi, , Descrição, V § 106Google Scholar; “Catálogo dos governadores do reino de Angola,” Arquivos de Angola, Ser. 1/3 (1937) [1825], 480.Google Scholar

26. BAL, Cód. 51-IX-20, f. 326v; Brásio, , Monumenta 8: 136, 157.Google Scholar

27. See Heintze, Beatrix, “The Angolan Vassal Tributes of the 17th Century,” Revista de História Económica e Social, 6(1980), 57–78.Google Scholar

28. The significance of this source is not by any means confined to the history of Ndongo. It offers valuable information on many topics, especially on the Portuguese in Angola and the administration of their community. There is probably no other seventeenth-century source which offers such rich material on this theme. Out of approximately 900 persons with Christian names mentioned in this source, about 310 lived outside the African continent, had been in Angola before de Sousa's term of office, or arrived only after his departure. Of the remainder, 122 were or became landowners during the governor's time. On the basis of a cursory preliminary survey I have only been able to identify twelve persons, six of whom were landowners in Angola, as baptized Jews, but the number must have been somewhat larger. An unknown, but no doubt considerable, number of persons with Christian names were mulattoes or acculturated Africans: about sixty can be identified with certainty on the basis of statements in the de Sousa collection. The number of non-Portuguese Europeans is extremely difficult to ascertain. Unless I have overlooked important evidence, only two Castilians, two Dutchmen, and one Frenchman are mentioned explicitly.

29. Dapper, Olfert, Naukeurige Beschrijvinge der Afrikaensche Gewesten (Meurs, 1668)Google Scholar and de Lima, José Joaquim Lopes, Ensaios sobre a Statistica das Possessões Portugezas. III: Angola, Benguella, e suas dependencias (Lisbon, 1846)Google Scholar are irrelevant for the history of this period, although valuable in other respects.

30. Delgado, José Matias in Cadornega, , História, 1: xii–xiii.Google Scholar

31. See especially the introduction by Faria, Francisco Leite de in Cavazzi, , Descrição (1965), 1: xi–lviiiGoogle Scholar; Thornton, John K., “New Light on Cavazzi's Seventeenth-Century Description of Kongo,” HA, 6(1979), 253–64.Google Scholar

32. Corrêa, Elias Alexandre da Silva, Historia de Angola ( 2 vols: Lisbon, 1937).Google Scholar For the “Catálogo” see Bontinck, François, “Brèves remarques relatives au ‘Catálogo dos Governadores do Reino de Angola’,” Studia, 39(1974), 69–78.Google Scholar

33. BAL, Cód. 51-IX-20, f. 326v, 414; Brásio, , Monumenta 8: 137, 158Google Scholar; Cadornega, , História, I, pp. 53f (but cf. 83n3)Google Scholar; Cavazzi, , Descrição, V § 106Google Scholar; “Catálogo,” 482.

34. BAL, Cód. 51-IX-20, f. 229v; Cód. 51-IX-21, f. 135. Cf. Brásio, , Monumenta 7: 418; 8: 161.Google Scholar

35. BAL, Cód. 51-IX-20, f. 233 (see also f. 343 for ca. January 1628). Cf. Heintze, “Ndongo,” 240n225; Cadornega, , História, I, 130-31, 137, 144, 148–49.Google Scholar

36. Cadornega, , História, I, 140Google Scholar, interpreted in connection with the statements on the same subject on 130-31, 137, 144, 148-49; Cavazzi, , Descrição, V § 107Google Scholar; “Catálogo,” 482.

37. Cf. Appendices 1 and 2. The items on the mission are List I: 11, 22; List II; 15, 18, 19, 27, 36. I hope to publish the most important sections of the de Sousa manuscript collection.