ABSTRACT

Numerous works on the subject have appeared, including attempts to comprehend the numbers of African slaves imported into the peninsula, their origins, their geographic concentration, rates of manumission, and the lives of those who attained their liberty. During the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, slaves obtained on the African coast by Portuguese merchants were mainly destined for Europe and the Atlantic islands where sugar production had been introduced. The growing presence of slaves from sub-Saharan Africa led to changes in the language used to describe slaves, a process sometimes referred to as the Africanisation of slavery, or convergence of “African” and “slave”. One of the most consistent features of the portrayals of African slaves in Iberian literary works was their infantilisation: the blacks were like overgrown children, unable to think for themselves, to think about the future, or exercise self-control. The nineteenth century also witnessed the progressive disappearance of the population of freed black Africans in Portugal.