Africans of “Língua Geral”: Language, Ethnicity and the Slave Trade Between Bahia and the Bight of Benin (c. 1690s-1817)

This thesis examines the trading relations between Salvador of Bahia, Brazil, and the Bight of Benin in the eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries. The focus is on the supply of enslaved Africans to Brazil’s sugar plantations, urban areas and mining zones during the period of slavery expansion in the Atlantic world in the eighteenth century. Several studies have highlighted the close links between these two Atlantic regions. This work adds to our understanding of how captives were selected on the west African coast. It argues that slave masters’ preferences for captives from the Bight of Benin, particularly those from specific ethnolinguistic groups, influenced the patterns of slave raids by the kingdom of Dahomey and its rivals in the region. And these slaving expeditions had a significant impact on the affected peoples. This thesis draws upon Portuguese records, including correspondences of authorities in Salvador and Lisbon, letters from Bahian businessmen, early nineteenth-century newspapers, probate, baptismal and death records. Additionally, documents from the British Royal African Company (RAC), the Dutch West-Indische Compagnie (WIC), and the French West Indies Company were also included in this research. Expanding on Pierre Verger’s work, this thesis reveals that slave masters did not randomly select west African captives. Instead, they sought out enslaved Africans who spoke língua geral, a type of língua franca based on Gbe languages spoken in the kingdom of Dahomey and the neighbouring regions (present-day Republic of Benin). Although the regular trade between Salvador of Bahia and the Bight of Benin was known since the late seventeenth century, this thesis argues that the preference for língua geral captives influenced, at least partially, the pattern of African arrivals in Bahia during the eighteenth century. The concentration of certain ethnicities in various regions of the Atlantic world can be attributed to slave masters’ efforts to maintain ethnolinguistic cohesion on their properties, in order to improve economic performance, and Bahian slavers aimed to meet these expectations. These findings are significant because they challenge the widely disseminated notion in scholarly works that slave masters mixed their estates with enslaved Africans from different regions to prevent rebellions. Moreover, it demonstrates that the selection of enslaved Africans on both sides of the Atlantic was highly specialised, as was the transatlantic slave trade.