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.
