Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas: Restoring the Links

4. Greater Senegambia/Upper Guinea

C H A P T E R F O U R Greater Senegambia/Upper Guinea The blacks of the rivers and ports of Guinea . . . we refer to, because of their excellence, as of law [having a written religion with ethical-legal traditions]. They are much more faithful than all the others, of great reason and capacity, more handsome and attractive in appearance; strong, healthy, and capable of hard work; and for these reasons it is well known that all of them are more valuable and esteemed than anyof the other nations.These peoples and coasts are numerous, and referring to all of them would be an exhausting and infinite task. But giving some information about them would be pleasant, advantageous , and even very necessary to our task. Among them are Wolof, Berbese, Mandinga, and Fula: others Fulupo, others Banun; or Fulupo called Boote; others Cazanga and pure Banun; others Bran; Balanta; Biafara; and Biofo; others Nalu; others Zape; Cocolis and Zozo. —Alonso de Sandoval, Un tratado sobre la esclavitud, . This chapter challenges some of the prevailing wisdom among historians who minimize the demographic and cultural contribution of peoples from Greater Senegambia to many important regions in the Americas. During the first  years of the Atlantic slave trade, Guinea meant what Boubacar Barry de- fines as Greater Senegambia: the region between the Senegal and the Sierra Leone rivers. In Arabic, ‘‘Guinea’’ meant ‘‘Land of the Blacks.’’ It referred to the Senegal/Sierra Leone regions alone. In early Portuguese and Spanish writings, ‘‘Guinea’’ meant Upper Guinea. Early Portuguese documents and chronicles called the Gold Coast, the Slave Coast, and the Bights of Benin and Biafra the Mina Coast.1 In the writings of Alonso de Sandoval, ‘‘Guineans’’ meant Greater Senegambians. As late as the nineteenth century, ‘‘Guinea’’ continued to mean Upper Guinea to other Atlantic slave traders as well. When King James I chartered the first English company to trade with Africa in the early seventeenth century, the Portuguese and Spanish usage of the term ‘‘Guinea’’ was initially adopted. The English company was named the Company of Adventurers, and it was to trade specifically with ‘‘ ‘Gynny and Bynny’ (Guinea and Benin).’’2 After the northern European powers began to enter the Atlantic slave trade legally and systematically in the s, ‘‘Guinea’’ was gradually extended to mean the entire West African coast from Senegal  Greater Senegambia/Upper Guinea  Map .. Greater Senegambia/Upper Guinea, –. Adapted from a map by Boubacar Barry, in UNESCO General History of Africa, vol. , ed. B. A. Ogot (Berkeley: University of California Press, ); copyright ©  UNESCO. down through Angola. But the meaning of ‘‘Guinea’’ continued to depend on time and place and was far from precise or universal. It often continued to mean Greater Senegambia among Iberians and at times among Atlantic slave traders of other nations as well. A French document dating from  ordered a ship to go to Africa and get slaves from ‘‘the Coast of Guinea or else-  Greater Senegambia/Upper Guinea where.’’3 There is credible evidence that as late as  ‘‘Guinea’’ or the ‘‘Coast of Guinea’’ still referred to Africans from Sierra Leone. Greater Senegambia is much closer to Europe and North America than any other region of Africa. Voyages were much shorter. The earliest Atlantic slave trade began in this region. Half a century before the ‘‘discovery,’’ conquest, and colonization of the Americas began, African slaves, mainly Senegambians, were brought to Portugal by ship, sold in the active slave market in Lisbon, and then resold throughout the Iberian Peninsula. The earliest information we have about them comes from Valencia, Spain. Their ‘‘nation’’ designations have been interpreted as regional rather than ethnic, cultural, or linguistic. They include ‘‘Guine,’’ ‘‘Jalof’’ (Wolof), and, by the s, ‘‘Mandega’’ (Mandingo). The Mandingo were Mande language group speakers, descendants of the peoples of the Mali Empire who were prominent conquerors, traders, and interpreters of languages throughout Greater Senegambia. Many speakers of West Atlantic languages had been conquered, displaced, and/or acculturated by Mande language speakers.4 African ethnicityand regional names overlapped. According to Stephan Buhnen, in these documents ‘‘Jalof’’ meant all of northern Upper Guinea, ‘‘Mandega’’ meant central Upper Guinea (from the Gambia to the Rio Geba), and ‘‘Sape’’ meant southern Upper Guinea (to the Sierra Leone River).5 Many enslaved Africans brought to the Iberian Peninsula and their descendants were converted to Christianity and spoke Portuguese and/or dialects of Spanish. The Wolof were prominent among...