Slaves under Trial: Asians and Africans
Patricia Souza de Faria
Professor
Federal Rural University,
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
With
Dale Luis Menezes
Georgetown University
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Dale Luis Menezes: Hello and welcome to this special series on the Goa Inquisition. The series introduces you to the most recent research produced by internationally recognized scholars. I am Dale Luis Menezes. Our guests will give you a glimpse of their research, as well as the research that has taken place over the last 50 or more years. You will hear directly from the experts about the nature of state and religious violence, as well as the challenges a historian faces in researching a difficult topic such as the history of the Inquisition.
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Our web series aims to educate the general public about the various aspects of this historical phenomena. The web series is supported by the Al-Zulaij Collective in Goa. Additionally, the series is also supported by the History of the Inquisitions Group, a group of scholars spread across the world, with institutional support from the Center for Religious History Studies at the Catholic University of Portugal and the Chair of the Sephardic Studies Alberto Benveniste at the University of Lisbon. We thank them all for their generous moral support.
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Our guest today is Professor Patricia Souza de Faria. She is a professor at the Department of History at the Federal Rural University in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. Professor Faria completed a PhD in history from the Fluminense Federal University in Brazil. At the University of Évora in Portugal, she had a postdoctoral position later.
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Some of her relevant publications, though in Portuguese are, “A conquista das almas do Oriente: Franciscanos, catolicismo e poder colonial em Goa,” or “The Conquest of Souls in the Orient: Franciscans, Catholicism and Colonial Power in Goa” –and this is a rough translation, Professor Faria will correct me later on if there is some discrepancy. Or, her other publications also include “O Pai dos Cristãos e as populações escravas em Goa: zelo e controle dos cativos convertidos,” “The Father of the Christians and the Slave Population in Goa: Zeal and the control of the Captured Converts”. And, lastly, “Cruzando fronteiras: conversão e mobilidades culturais de escravos no império asiático português-séculos XVI e XVII,” or, “Crossing Frontiers: Conversion and Cultural Mobilities of slaves in Portugal’s Asian Empire in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries”. Her main research topics include the Franciscans in Goa, the Goa Inquisition and slaves in Portuguese empire in Asia. Professor Faria, welcome!
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Patricia Souza de Faria: Hello, Dale, first of all, I would like to thank you for the invitation. It’s a huge pleasure to participate in this web series about the Goa Inquisition.
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Dale Luis Menezes: Thank you and without wasting any more of your time, I know how busy you were and you accommodated us in your busy schedule, I just want to jump right into the first question. I want to begin by asking you about your research into Asian and African slaves in the Indian Ocean region, broadly the region that stretches from the Cape of Good Hope to Southeast Asia and even to parts of China and Japan. Much of your published work on slavery has been carried out through the Inquisitional records and you’re one of the few scholars to be doing this kind of work.
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I’m given to understand that you’re primarily engaged in research about the Inquisition. So, how and why did you get interested in studying the Asian and African slaves tried by the Inquisition?
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Patricia Souza de Faria: Good question. Yes, in the beginning of my research, in the doctoral research and the following few years, my research dealt with some issues regarding the historical process of Christianization of Goa, and the other settlements in which the Portuguese had control in Asia. So, in the beginning of my research the main question was about the role of the missionaries and the Goa Inquisition in this broader process of the expansion of Christianity in Goa.
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And when I was doing the research, I found in several, several mentions of captives and slaves in the inquisitorial sources. Initially, I tried to understand who these people were, who these captives were, who these slaves were. What it meant being enslaved in Goa? I am a Brazilian historian so the research on slavery is messy my country, but obviously in Goa it is not the same thing. So, I tried to understand a general profile of these kind of the slaves: birth place, gender, the kinds of trades they performed, [like] agricultural [work], housework.
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So, in the first moment I tried to understand who these people were. These people appeared in the Inquisitorial sources and I tried to understand precisely what it meant to be a slave in Goa and in the other Portuguese settlements in Asia. In the first phase of my research, I found more information about the religiosities of these slaves because of the kind of sources. The Inquisitorial sources has more information about those issues.
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One of the challenges of using Goa inquisitorial sources is [the fact that] most of the full trial records have been destroyed. So, I need to compensate and try to analyze case summaries—or, how to say?—lists of sentenced people, not the entire document.
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Dale Luis Menezes: The ‘Reportorio’, you mean?
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Patricia Souza de Faria: Yes! Probably in the other episodes you talked about the ‘Reportorio’—so important a source for that. This was the first phase of my research. And the other way of compensating for the fact that the full trial records of Goa Inquisition having been destroyed was doing research with the Lisbon Inquisition sources. Why? Because some men and women were taken from the Indian Ocean to Portugal in the 16th century and the 17th century were tried by the Lisbon Inquisition. So, I found a full trial record in which the defendants were enslaved or freed Asian who lived in Lisbon in the sixteenth and seventeenth century.
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So, in the second phase of my research I began to analyze this kind of sources and because of that the title of my research project was ‘From Goa to Lisbon’. Because I begin by studying the cases of enslaved Asians and African based on the Goa Inquisition sources and afterwards the Lisbon Inquisition sources.
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And you are correct in the beginning my study was a broader question regarding the Christianization of local population. One group in particular, the slaves. Now I am in this moment where I am thinking of the circulation and displacement of enslaved Asians and Africans from the Indian Ocean to Portugal.
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Dale Luis Menezes: Being a scholar from Brazil it’s also helped to propel you to also think about the issue of slavery in the Indian Ocean right?
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Patricia Souza de Faria: Yes, I think indirectly. The background in Brazil give me some feelings [a sense] that would you like to explore, to analyze, because I was not doing the same research, the history of slavery in Brazil is entirely different from that in Goa. I think it helped me to think about the methodologies and one of those methodologies [dealt with the question of] how I could capture aspects or dimensions of the activity, the action of the enslaved.
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I think one of the outputs of Brazilian scholarship on the lived slavery, especially in the last decades, pays attention to slaves as agents, as historical actors. So maybe because of that, I try to identify who was this person. What was the trajectory of life of this person. Maybe this kind of a background highlight some aspects of social history of Goa because of that. I am not trying to maybe apply the schemes, the models because it’s not the same thing, but maybe some questions, some methodologies, I think, could help me in an indirect way. Good question!
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Dale Luis Menezes: Let’s move on to the next question, which is more pertaining to the topic or closest to the topic that we are discussing today. I wanted you to talk about the development of scholarship on the broad theme of the Inquisition and slavery. What according to you are the main developments or trends in the study of slavery through Inquisitional record? I am looking for the highlights in the sub field of slavery and the Inquisition.
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Patricia Souza de Faria: I think I can go on [continue] with the last question about how this Brazilian background helped me to think about slavery in Goa. In the case of the development of scholarship based on Inquisitorial documents, in order to analyze slavery or the life of slaves, I think one of these developments is the possibility of the Inquisitional sources showing us some dimensions of the slave’s agency.
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That is, it reveals actions, individual actions or collective actions that helps us treat the enslaved as an agent. A kind of historical actor not as an abstract or generic category of ‘slave’. But the Inquisitorial sources can allow us to capture this kind of dimension. Obviously, the Inquisitorial documentation was written following protocols, models, and the speech of the slaves is filtered by notaries, by Inquisitors.
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It’s not a free speech, but if you use carefully methodologies, it is possible to identify, for example, some strategies adopted by slaves, exploring communication networks formed by slaves and freed [persons]. It is possible to identify how these slaves were able to manage to escape and avoiding capture again. And the many ways that the slaves used in order to survive in the different contexts.
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It is even as possible that a slave built his life in a [unclear] context, by marriage and other ways. So, studies on slavery based on such historical sources can allow this kind of, I think, a more human, a more, as mentioned, linked to expectations of the slaves, strategies as were possible despite the control by the master and other institutions.
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I think a second development is that the Inquisitorial sources can allow us to identify life paths, displacements of slaves and the displacement, the movement, is part of the life. For example, I am thinking of a book written by James Sweet. He studied the life of Domingos Álvares, a slave, a man who was born in Dahomé, in West Africa. He was taken from Africa to North-eastern Brazil, after to Rio de Janeiro, after to Lisbon, so the Inquisitorial sources allow us to identify this kind of displacements.
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There are many, many books in which you can find this kind of information. In my research I find Paulo’s life fascinating. He is a man who was born in India, he was a merchant and was captured in East Africa. He was sold to a man who lived in India, precisely in Bardez. But Paulo was able to escape and come back to his homeland, marry the woman who had been promised to him before his capture. They were able to have a son. Unfortunately, he came back on a trip to Goa, near Bardez and he was recognized and arrested by the Goa Inquisition and sent to Lisbon. But his life is amazing. Paulo deserves a book about his life. So, this is a kind of possibility [to do research] based on Inquisitorial sources.
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The last aspect that would like to highlight is the studies based on Inquisitorial sources also allow us to analyze the religiosities of slaves. In some moments it is possible to identify how the practices and beliefs of slaves were intertwined with the practices and beliefs of the other social groups in the colonial society and even in European society.
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For example, the book, in Portuguese, ‘Metrópole das mandingas: religiosidade negra e inquisição portuguesa no antigo regime’ or [as the subtitle reads] ‘Black religiosities and the Portuguese Inquisition in the old regime’ written by Daniela Calainho is a book in which we can find how this kind of belief is practiced; magical and healing practice of slaves was was intertwined with the practices adopted by Portuguese and freedmen, so it’s another possibility. Finally, thinking of my background in Brazil, of the book of Laura de Mello e Souza, not a literal translation, ‘The Devil and the Lands of Santa Cruz: Witchcraft and Popular Religiosity in Colonial Brazil’. So I highlighted these three, but we can think a lot about the possibilities of the developments based on Inquisitorial sources.
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Dale Luis Menezes: Thank you. That’s a good sense of what can be done with the Inquisition sources. So on one hand, you can think of the slave’s agency, as you said, and the mobility across space and sometimes this is across the oceans. Sometimes this is as large as Goa to Lisbon and also, the belief system, as you mentioned the book by James Sweet on Domingos Álvares. It’s a biography of Domingos Álvares and I think we could recommend it to our viewers. It’s a fantastic book and it’s a great read also and it just shows how much can be done with these kinds of archives.
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I want to move to the to the next question and talk about your research more particularly. In one of your research articles, you talk about again the religious beliefs, and I think we can move to the religious beliefs since you made the last point. And you talk about the religious beliefs and practices of the slave tried by the Inquisition in Goa. You specifically talk about Islam in this context, and it’s something that we don’t know much when we talk about the Inquisition in Goa. So could you elaborate on this interesting connection with Islamic practices and the Inquisition?
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Patricia Souza de Faria: Slaves were tried by the Goa Inquisition for different religious offenses such as witchcraft, the invocation of the devil, the performance of sacrifice, a lot of things labelled in Portuguese as ‘gentilidade’ or gentile rituals or Hindu rituals. However, the main religious offense attributed to the slaves tried by the Goa Inquisition was the adoption of Muslim beliefs and practices.
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When you analyze the ‘Reportorio’, the period from 1561 to 1623, about 70% of slaves tried by the Goa Inquisition were associated with Islam. So it is a huge percentage. When you think about the same period for all the defendant tried by the Goa Inquisition, we have 44% who were accused of gentile rituals, or Hindu rituals and 18% for Islamic practices. So, if we compare the slaves, 70% and all the defendants [the non-slave ones] at 18% it is a huge proportion because, obviously…
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Dale Luis Menezes: If I may interrupt. So you’re saying, just to be clear, there is a huge amount of whoever is recorded as slaves, ‘escravos’, they were tried for Islamic practices right? And, in this period that you’re talking about the percentage is extremely high? Could you also tell us why this percentage or why such a large number of slave population was tried for [Islamic practices]?
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Patricia Souza de Faria: Yes, the number…The entire ‘Reportorio’, the entire list in this period [1561-1623] is more than 3000 defendants. In the case of the slaves in the period is more than 200, or about 240 is this number. It’s not huge. This group of slaves, less than 300, the entire population of slaves tried by the Goa Inquisition in this moment, 70% of them were accused of adopting Muslim beliefs and practices. So, the total amount of slaves—I do not remember precisely— about 214 slaves, not a huge number in the entire or all the defendants tried by the Goa Inquisition in this moment [1561-1623].
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Obviously, Dale, we have some difficulties. I will only count the cases labelled as ‘captives’ or ‘slaves’, but there are other words that could have meant a condition close to slavery. For instance, ‘bicho’. I don’t know how to translate precisely into English because it is not an animal, not in the same sense. Or, there are some words that could be applied to someone who lives and looks like a slave. So, I only thinking these numbers, the 240, the cases that I was sure of. But there are dozens of cases more where it was possible to be a slave. But the precise word [was not used], maybe because it was called housework [domestic work] slavery…
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Dale Luis Menezes: I think the problem is how the historical archive is available to a historian right? And also the fact that in pre-modern South Asia, there were different kinds of servitudes, unfree labor, so on. So, everybody isn’t a slave, everybody isn’t an ‘escravo’, there is a ‘faraz’, there are several things and so I think it’s a good thing to pause for a moment and to also think about the difficulties that a historian like you, engaged with this kind of limited number of sources has to face. So that’s why the number is so less right?
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Patricia Souza de Faria: I realized that the number is lower than we imagine because of this kind of a source is only about a specific group of slaves. The slaves who usually converted to Christianity and tried by the Goa Inquisition. But the number of slaves in each society, Goa or other Portuguese settlements in Asia are higher than this proportion.
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The ‘Reportorio’ only shows a specific sample of this slavery in the Portuguese empire in Asia. It is a sample. It is not a kind of a mirror of the slavery in different spaces, because I only identified this case, the case of slaves tried by the Goa Inquisition. If you think about the question as a gender issue, in the ‘Reportorio’ there are more male slaves than female slaves tried by the Goa Inquisition.
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There are other questions we can analyze like why that? It is not why there are few females slaves. It is because, maybe, what the action of the inquisition over this kind of the population [was]. So, this kind of questions, Dale, are important to make the understanding of slavery and the methodologies that are needed to analyze the Inquisitorial sources. When I said this number of about 240 slaves, is the only the cases of which I am sure. But the example you gave of ‘faraz’, I found many cases of ‘faraz’, maybe they would be enslaved.
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Dale Luis Menezes: So, why were so many of these cases because of Islamic practices, whatever the number might be? But it seems it’s disproportionately leaning in trying Muslim practices. So why do you think that is?
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Patricia Souza de Faria: I think one of the reasons…there was an association between being as slave and be tried for this kind of offense, Islam. Maybe one of the reasons is the profile of these slaves in this Portuguese settlements in Asia, usually was a man or woman converted to Christianity whose parents were Muslim or Hindus. And according to the perception of the Inquisitor the converted people were really inclined or revert to, or to come back to the old beliefs.
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So the slave was converted to Christianity, but the possibility to come back to the Muslim beliefs and the practice was huge, according to the mentality of Inquisitor. How? One can think of the same in the case of the Jews converted to Christianity. How the Inquisition think, Oh, the Jewish converts were inclined to revert to the old belief, to Judaism. So, it is the same stereotype.
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On the one hand, we have this kind of a perceptions of the Inquisitors, the stereotypes created by the Inquisitors regarding the slaves. Maybe one subject that needs to be analyzed in the future is the relationship of the Portuguese mentality…who the Inquisitor was. A Portuguese who arrived and worked in Goa. What was the history of Portugal regarding the relationship to slavery.
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Until the beginning of the 16th century, the majority of slaves in Portugal were the Mouriscos, the Muslims converted to Christianity. So maybe it’s a kind of perceptions and the stereotype maybe brought to India, it is a possibility. The other, beyond the imaginary or the stereotypes, there is a reality. Goa, and the other Portuguese settlements in India were surrounded by Sultanates, or Muslim kingdoms.
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So common and regular the possibility of the fugitive slaves to cross the boundaries, and go to Muslim kingdoms and the practices and the Muslim rituals and afterwards come back to Christian communities. According to the inquisitorial sources, we can see this kind of movement and if you read the letters of the Inquisitors written in Goa, they often mention this kind of movement, crossing boundaries. So maybe there are two reasons, one the imaginary the other, the reality.
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Dale Luis Menezes: Right, and I think that’s a good sense we get why many slaves were tried for Islamic practices or Muslim practices, and this is something that we need to think about more, as you say. I want to move on to the next question and it’s about mobility as you mentioned a while ago.
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So I want to talk about it in more detail about this idea of mobility, but the idea of mobility that historians use to analyze. You described in your work the cultural and geographical mobility of many slaves and you have just briefly alluded to it a while ago. I want to know what do you mean by mobility? So that’s one. Is it physical mobility, is it social mobility in terms of a slave being free from an unfree condition? One presumes that a slave would not have the resources or the power to move about or to enjoy certain limited degrees of freedoms, as you say, so what can you tell us more about this term ‘mobility’. And what does it tell us about the lives of the slaves?
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Patricia Souza de Faria: Good question. The notion of ‘mobility’ was very important for me, especially in this research that I developed in 2014 or 2016 where the sense of mobility was physical. That is, the displacement between territories, kingdoms, and societies. [Mobility] was physical. In turn, I assumed that physical mobility favor the development of a cultural mobilities, that is the crossing of cultural boundaries, the crossing of a religious boundaries.
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Why the reasons? Physical mobility was a striking feature of the lives of slaves. These slaves were captured in their birthplace, they are sold many times across oceans. So it is part of their lives, but in addition to this physical mobility caused by compulsory displacements, capturing and selling, slaves could ‘freely’ escape and go, for instance, from Portuguese territories to Muslim and Hindu territories.
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How I said the Inquisitors often reported these kinds of displacements, not only regarding slaves but regarding the converted in general. But in the case of slaves it was identified the slaves captured in Muslim or Hindu society, in the Portuguese society became a Christian, they escaped and adopted the Muslim or Hindu behaviors and rituals, and sometimes tried to come back to the Christian community. So, the life is a life of movement.
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The mobility could help me to understanding this movement because on one hand, you have the inquisitor who would you like to establish fixed boundaries, and on the other hand we have the life and the movement of the slaves.
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Dale Luis Menezes: If I may ask you to clarify. When you talk about escaping, the physical crossing of boundaries and then you talk about crossing, which is let’s say a metaphorical crossing of cultural boundaries. Are you are suggesting that it was easy, relatively easy, for slaves to cross these boundaries in that time in the 16th and 17th centuries? Was it relatively easy to do it given the limits?
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Patricia Souza de Faria: I have some suspicion that it became easier in some chaotical or difficult situations. For instance, during a war, during the instability it is a good occasion to escape. Unfortunately, we don’t have a lot of remaining full trial records produced by the Goa Inquisition. But in one of them it is possible to identify the escape, especially, for instance, during the invasion at the beginning of a war and maybe the slaves were able to escape.
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The possibility to exploit what I said, using a kind of network, a communication network. Because these slaves were not just the slaves attached to the lands. There were, in the case of Goa, slaves who worked at the City [of Goa], at the ports, so there is a kind of a communication. So it’s very difficult to know precise figures about the relationship between the circumstance of escape during the war, during a crisis. But that is a possibility. The case of Paulo I quoted, is one of the cases. During the war he was able to escape.
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Dale Luis Menezes: Maybe at this point, could you give us more details about Paulo’s life? I think it would make sense to have more details about Paulo’s life, is that possible?
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Patricia Souza de Faria: Yes, I think, in the case of Paulo’s life is a good example of for thinking about physical mobility and the cultural mobility. And the case of Paulo is good to think about the idea of a slave. Not as an abstract category because he wasn’t [an abstraction]. He was a merchant, he said he traveled to Africa and he had a good memory, because—one of the challenges to analyze Inquisitorial sources about slaves is that a slaves was usually captured during the childhood, so usually slaves do not have any memory about their birthplace, in the case of a Paulo, no! Paulo had a good memory and he was able to identify the precise historical moments, it is amazing!
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He was able to point the precise moment in which he was captured in Africa. He said the Viceroy was in Africa trying to control a rebellion against the Portuguese authorities and that matched, the date reported by him and the date we know about the historical narrative. When he went to India he found a fishermen in Bardez, he told about this moment when he was able to escape during a moment when the Marathas were advancing and the Mughal emissaries are going to Goa, so it is this precise moment.
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I don’t know if in some moments Paulo was a kind of man who would like to show what kind of power he had, because he told the Inquisitors he travelled with his brother, his brother worked for the Mughal authorities so maybe he would like to show a kind of a power to the Portuguese.
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Dale Luis Menezes: Yeah it’s amazing. So, where was he born? Was he born in Goa or in Africa?
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Patricia Souza de Faria: In India. In Surat.
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Dale Luis Menezes: OK, so he was born in Surat, so he was from Surat, he traveled all over.
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Patricia Souza de Faria: Yes, I could share a small timeline about his life.
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Dale Luis Menezes: About Paulo’s life? Yes, sure! So could quickly explain the timeline?
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Patricia Souza de Faria: [SHARES HER SCREEN] Yes, the timeline is obviously a [unclear] data because, according to the speech of Paulo and the other information in the documents I tried to put on the timeline. But it is not complete but it is possible to know at least this kind of a displacements, this kind of mobility. Paulo was born in Surat…
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Dale Luis Menezes: …and if I may interrupt, so his Muslim name is Sidi Assem?
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Patricia Souza de Faria: Yes, he…
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Dale Luis Menezes: He was from the Sidi or the descendant of the African population?
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Patricia Souza de Faria: He did not say it himself, but because of ‘Sidi’ [in his name] there maybe this kind of connection.
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Dale Luis Menezes: OK. Maybe, but we are not sure.
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Patricia Souza de Faria: Not sure. Because there wasn’t precise information about that, but there are suspicions about this kind of connections between African ancestor and how he was captured in Africa, maybe there are connections, maybe with the local groups, so there is a connection maybe. There is suspicion of links to Africa but in the trial records, there is little information about that, because of the Inquisitor was paying attention for a specific question regarding the religiosities.
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So, what can we identify: the birthplace, he was born in the Muslim family as Sidi Assem Vacanady. He was captured in Africa, as I said earlier. And there are many details about these moments. He was in Africa for some months. After he was sold to Francisco Fernandes and went to Bardez. So he escaped in this moment when he said that the emissary of the Mughal empire was in Goa and during the Maratha war.
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Dale Luis Menezes: If I may interrupt, do we know who Francisco Fernandes is?
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Patricia Souza de Faria: All the information in the document is that he is a fisherman and the precise village in which they lived—Francisco Fernandes and Paulo lived, but no more details. I don’t know If I was able to identify the details precisely of the family.
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Dale Luis Menezes: So, as far as we know, Francisco Fernandes was a fisherman living in Bardez.
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Patricia Souza de Faria: And how I had said he came back to Surat and when he came back to Surat he reverted back to Islam. He lived as a Muslim. However, he said he was traveling and because of his business involved traveling and selling things, travels in the north and south of India. And after some years he come back to Bardez, he was recognized and because of that he was arrested and sent to Portugal.
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And it was fateful for sending Paulo’s case was sent to Portugal it is possible to identify this trial and there is indeed a copy of the full trial record. So the cases of people tried by the Goa Inquisition sent to Portugal or the Inquisitors in Goa asked some advice from Lisbon Inquisitors it is possible that one of the conditions to copy these kinds of documents sent to Portugal and because of that we find this information in the national archives of Torre do Tombo.
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It’s not good for Paulo to be arrested but it was the only way he survived in the archives. How these kinds of people usually survived in the archives and because of that I think it is important to try to discover not the entire life, it is impossible to write a biography of Paulo, but try to show what it meant to be a slave. He was not a slave he was enslaved and had many moments in his life and he was in this condition. The boundary, even social boundary, of being a slave or not a slave changed during his life.
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Dale Luis Menezes: Thank you. I want one last detail about Paulo before we move on to the next question. Why was he arrested by the Inquisition? What was the charge? The ostensible charge?
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Patricia Souza de Faria: He was denounced by the local population who lived in Bardez. These people recognize him, even his former master. And the Goa Inquisition tried Paulo for adopting Muslim beliefs and practices, for going back to his original religion. And the fact that he was dressing like a Muslim and he in his confession he gave a lot of information about rituals, praying. So, obviously there was a pressure to give this kind of confession before the Inquisitor. But it is probable that he did that, because there are many details about the rituals, the place.
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Dale Luis Menezes: It’s a fascinating life and what you presented, and it also illustrates again your point about physical and cultural mobilities that you talked about. Next, I want to talk about more specifically about Goa. Your research also talks about a triangular relationship between slavery, manumission, and Christianity. This was a time when certain institutions like the Inquisition is around and also we have slavery, we have we have manumission where slaves were freed.
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So what can you tell us about how these triangular relationships worked and given the fact that the Inquisition was there as a body of control, as a body that disciplined right. What can you tell us more about this triangular relationship?
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Patricia Souza de Faria: These relationships were complex in the normative sphere, the laws encouraged manumission of slaves who converted to Christianity. The laws. Especially in the beginning of the sixteenth century or the middle of the sixteen century, this kind of laws that stimulated the manumission of converted slaves was part of a more extensive set of laws whose aims was expanding Christianity in the Portuguese empire in Asia. So it’s a part of a broader set of laws for expanding Christianity. These laws sought to grant some advantages for people who converted to Christianity. It is the general sense.
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In the first decades of sixteenth century it was possible to find the letters and other documents in which bishops encouraged this kind of initiative, seeking the expansion of conversation. And if you think about the first Christian community created by the Portuguese in Asia, a good part of this population was formed by the enslaved, that is slaves converted to Christianity.
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But these were just laws! Of course, there were these laws in the normative sphere. But obviously this kind of laws collided with the interests of the slave owners, and the merchants obviously. So these laws were changing throughout the 16th century and the links between conversions and the grant of manumission became more fragile not something strong.
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Furthermore, I can do research analyzing the laws, but its very difficult to know precisely if manumission was actually granted to the slaves, the figures. We find the occasional mention to manumission, that is the letter of a missionary saying about a slave boy manumitted, there is mention of views in which the owner of slave establishes that the slave could be manumitted after his or her death. But it is very difficult to know precisely the connection, the precise numbers of the grant of manumissions.
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Even if you analyze the laws, the decrees, for instance, of the First Provincial Council in Goa, you can read the information that the Portuguese did not grant manumission often. It was very difficult and so what did they advice? The priests and the Father of Christians, the Pai dos Christãos tried to convince the Portuguese to grant manumission because it was not so regular or recurrent.
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And the other possibility to analyze this relationship of conversion and manumission is to analyze a very, very important set of sources labelled as the ‘Goa letters of Manumission’. These documents were written by the Pai dos Christãos or the Father of the Christians in the case of Goa. This position was occupied especially by the Jesuits and in these letters of manumission we find records in which there is information about boys and girls and what’s this information?
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These boys and girls typically shouldn’t be enslaved because they weren’t subjected to a just type of slavery. The just type of slavery is the way to say, according to the Portuguese law. According to Portuguese law what’s the [legal] condition to be enslaved? If the mother was a slave, if someone was captured during a just war and that there are many cases of girls, boys and adults in this kind of information. No, they weren’t subjected to just kind of slavery, but how the master of the slave had bought him or her and promised to teach the Christian doctrine which became acceptable that the men and women worked for some years before becoming manumitted.
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So, this kind of letter of manumission allows to think about how the conversion of slaves did not necessarily imply manumission. Maybe, in the first decades [of the 16th century] there were some [efforts] in order to stimulate the conversion in general, but to the local interests don’t allow this kind of granting.
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Dale Luis Menezes: So, two clarifying question: When you say local interest, it means both the Portuguese, as well as non-Portuguese interest in Goa? Obviously non-Portuguese people also had slaves right, so that’s one. And secondly, I wanted to know what was the role of the Inquisition in this? Did you see in any way the Inquisition intervened when it came to slavery and manumission?
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Patricia Souza de Faria: I think not. Not in manumission. I don’t remember precisely a link because there are two big domains, according to the law and who could solve the question of manumission, is not a question for the Church, it is maybe for the state. What was the expectation for the priests, or the Father of Christians? It was to try and save the soul of the master.
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If the master had a slave in an illegal condition, it could be a menace for the soul of the master so what was the expectation of the church? It was to create conditions to convince the master to manumit. So, maybe for the religious institution it was the role, in this moment. I don’t remember the precise connection between the Inquisition and the manumission.
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Dale Luis Menezes: Thank you. Let’s move on to another question, and this question doesn’t pertain to the enslaved population that you talk about but another set of population. You speak about a person called the ‘Naiques’, whom the inquisitors recruited. And you view them as collaborators of the Inquisition in overseeing its jurisdiction and its activities. In talking about the ‘Naiques’ you say that the local population cannot be seen solely as a victim of the institution. Could you elaborate on who is this Naique and why and how you analyze this person.
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Patricia Souza de Faria: Okay, first I would you like to highlight social discipline in general. Social discipline depends on the capacity of the controlling institutions to mobilize local population to expanding their surveillance. How you said. Because in the past societies there were neither official mechanisms, nor enough employees for controlling the entire population. So, it was very important to mobilize local population to create a condition of a self-monitoring, how the population can control themselves.
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The maintenance of colonial powers depended on some degree of a collaboration of the local population and by collaboration this portion of a local population would be granted some advantages, for example, tax exemptions, symbolic advantage as a social distinction. In the case of the Naiques maybe they obtained or attempted to obtain this kind of advantages. So, the Naique was a kind of an intelligence officer who helped the Inquisitor. But regarding the Naique or the other local population in the collaboration with the Inquisitor I think it is important to highlight how this collaboration also needs to be understood in the context of an asymmetrical relations of power because even a Naique or a specific resident in Goa did not have the same power as the Inquisition or the Inquisitor. So, this is the kind of collaboration.
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And this collaboration you need to think about collaborations not precisely as a free decision. Sometime collaboration could be caused by fear, or because of the lack of the other opportunities. So, a Naique had many excuses, a lot of excuses that could help the Inquisitor. Naiques as natives knew the local language, the Inquisitor did not know. Naiques were able to live closer to the local population and because of that see and control the everyday life in a closer way.
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However, a single Naique had little power to negotiate his terms before the Inquisition. So the participation, the collaboration of the Naiques, the helping of the Inquisitors didn’t call into question the hierarchies, the social wars. So it’s a point. I agree that the local population cannot be seen only see as victim of the Inquisition, maybe the local population could receive some kind of advantage in collaborating with the Inquisition but in these terms, in a broader background in which there are asymmetrical relations of power.
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I think one challenging thing is that the first impression could be that the Naique was a kind of local people who did not think about the oppression of the local population, but I think the collaboration of the Naiques should not be understood as a form of a betrayal of the local population, because of the local groups did not necessarily see themselves as a kind of a homogeneous block.
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They saw themselves as different and were able to occupy different positions in the society. I think we should not view it is a binary between the Inquisition and the local population but the reality is more complex, how to survive, how to exploit the possibilities to get a lower social mobility. Your question is so important. I think it is very important to think about how the Inquisition needed a kind of a local collaboration, but what were the possibilities for the local population in receiving distinction, because of its kind of this kind of collaboration.
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Dale Luis Menezes: Thank you this very rich reflection on who this person, this Naique would be and I am given to understand that we don’t have enough information, at least as of today, we don’t have enough information, but hopefully sometime in the future scholars like you would enlighten us further. I take your point well that it isn’t us versus them. Or the Naique is betraying the people and there is a much more complex history there and that that point is well taken for now. I think we need to think a lot more about this issue when we talk about the Goa Inquisition.
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So my final question is a bit of a personal one for you. Could you let us know what you are currently engaged in? What research you’re doing right now and what could we hope to read from you in the coming few years?
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Patricia Souza de Faria: Oh, I am currently researching the slave populations taken from Indian Ocean societies to Portugal, especially to Lisbon in the 16th and the 17th century. In this moment, I am analyzing especially two sets of sources. One of them is the Lisbon Inquisition trial records whose defendants were enslaved or freed Asians. So they lived in Lisbon, or the surrounding neighborhoods of Lisbon in the 16th and the 17th century. By chance the main religious offense attributed to them is also Islam! Even in Lisbon. The second set of documents is matrimonial petitions—sumários matrimoniais in Portuguese produced by the ecclesiastical chamber of Lisbon.
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And this kind of sources are very good for my research. I found about 200 matrimonial petitions in which at least the bride or the groom is from Indian Ocean, so from Asia and East Africa and what is important in this source? Every foreigner, or everybody who wasn’t born, or everybody who lived outside Lisbon needed proof that they had not been previously married in their homelands.
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And in this case, when an Asian bride or Asian groom would like to marry in the Catholic Church, they needed to prove that [they weren’t previously married] and the because of this situation they need to present a petition. And they needed to say when they arrived to Lisbon, where they lived and they needed to identify who was able to prove this information, and because of that how to prove it.
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In India I was not married, I needed some kind of a witness such as one of the slaves or a sailor. But there are a lot of witnesses who were also bought in the Indian Ocean, in Asia, in general. In addition to brides and grooms, it is possible to find a lot of Chinese, Japanese, and Indian living in Lisbon from this kind of sources. In this kind of sources I only find a fragment of the lives of each enslaved or freed Asian.
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I am compiling a database putting such information as name, age, birthplace, who was the owner, the parishes in which they lived and try to establish a kind of timeline as in the case of Paulo. Obviously, the sources produced by the inquisition give more information than the matrimonial petition. I am doing this kind of research.
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In the future, I would like to systematize, to analyze this kind information, this sparse, this different information and I’ll try to write a book. I don’t know, I mean, I will be able to. But I would like to write a book in order to write this kind of a profile, this kind of case studies. So, its my project in this moment.
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Dale Luis Menezes: Sounds absolutely fascinating and I know you’re only getting fragments but those are really precious fragments of information or biographical data and hope that it turned into a book, magically. And I for one would be lining up to read that book, whenever that comes out.
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So thank you so much for your time, thank you for running us through your research. You began with the Christianization of Goa. Your research began as such as a doctoral student, presumably, and then you found these other people, and then you asked the question ‘who were they?’ and then it led you on to precisely the research that you’ve done now, and you talked about the historiography, the development of historiography of slaves as agents right and then not just as something that had been acted upon.
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What were the slaves’ is strategies through inquisition of records, their mobility, across space and across cultural landscapes as well, about how Inquisitional records can be used to analyze the religiosities and beliefs and over here, I think, we could again mentioned James Sweet’s book on Domingos Álvares.
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But you also talked about the slave tried for Islamic practices and the problems that comes with this kind of research. And again, the mobility about escaping frontiers and how easy or how difficult it was, especially in moments of deep political crisis, wars and invasions. That’s when the slaves had a lot more ease in escaping and, finally, you spoke about the Naiques, the figure of Naique whom we don’t know much about, but it seems to be a very important figure in the history of the Goa Inquisition.
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So, for this and a lot more, I thank you again, and it has been an absolute pleasure learning from you, thank you.
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Patricia Souza de Faria: Thank you so much, for me it was a huge pleasure. And again it’s a big project, the web series, so I am very grateful for the opportunity, thank you.
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Dale Luis Menezes: Thank you.
