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Chapter eleven Echoes of the Atlantic: Benguela (Angola) and Brazilian Independence roquinaldo ferreira This chapter reconstructs the trajectory of Francisco Ferreira Gomes, a black man born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, who was arrested in the city of Benguela, Angola, in 1824 on charges of plotting a revolt that would cause Benguela to secede from Portugal. According to the accusation, Gomes and four accomplices intended to “surreptitiously arrest the governor [of Benguela] and then hoist the flag of the empire of Brazil.”1 This would have turned Benguela— the second-largest slave port in Angola—into an overseas province of newly independent Brazil. To achieve their goals, the secessionists, who had the support of troops and sailors from slave vessels, allegedly sought military support from Brazil, which provoked a crisis that seriously threatened Portuguese control of Benguela. In the words of the bishop of Angola, “Some merchants [of Benguela] had requested that the royal prince [of Brazil] dispatch ships to subjugate this kingdom [of Angola] and Benguela.”2 These accusations were by no means the only controversial episode in Gomes’s eventful career in Benguela, which had begun when he was sent to the city as a criminal exile in 1800. Gomes would stay in Benguela for thirtyfour years, marry an African woman, and found a dynasty of slave dealers who remained in the city after he had returned to Brazil in 1834. His career in Angola was controversial. In 1811, he was arrested on the charge of perjury; later he was accused of authoring pamphlets (pasquins) against the government of Benguela. These incidents led to his temporary discharge from the military, into which he had been recruited shortly after arriving in Benguela.3 Although they shed light on Gomes’s early political ambitions, these events 225 Echoes of the Atlantic pale in comparison to the much more serious charge of plotting the secessionist revolt against Portugal in 1824. As a result of the accusation of fomenting secessionism, Gomes and his followers were put in jail and called “thieves, niggers, and bode [goat]”— deeply derogatory terms. They were later sent to jail in Luanda, the capital city of Angola, and one was deported to Brazil. Strikingly, all men were wealthy merchants. To argue against the arrest, in fact, they claimed that the combined value of their businesses was worth four times more than Benguela’s royal treasury, which they were accused of planning to ransack before escaping to Rio de Janeiro to seek support from the emperor of Brazil. The five men were allowed to appoint representatives to manage their businesses before they were transferred to Luanda—but were also warned that they would be killed if they talked to one another during the trip. The draconian reaction against Gomes grew out of deeply rooted Portuguese fears about Benguela’s century-old ties to Brazil, in addition to metropolitan fears about the repercussions in the city of Brazilian independence from Portugal in 1822. Adding to the explosive nature of the charge of secessionism, the revolt was also said to be driven by racial animosity toward the small white population of Benguela. This was revealed in several accounts produced by colonial officials. As the governor of Benguela explained to authorities in Luanda, the situation was critical “because the troops [in Benguela] are black and the commander is black and Ferreira Gomes . . . also is [black].”4 Later, a witness interrogated by authorities stated that Gomes’s plan was to “wash his feet in the blood of European [white] loyalists.”5 An examination of the Benguelan secessionist sedition demonstrates that, by the early nineteenth century, links between Angola and Brazil were not only commercial and cultural in nature, but had also assumed a political dimension. To understand the accusations against Gomes, the Benguelan revolt must be placed in the broader context of the Atlantic, and more specifically in relation to the process of Brazilian independence from Portugal. Beginning with the shipment of slaves to Brazil in the 1730s, Benguela had been tightly linked to Brazil, particularly Rio—and, by contrast , had weak ties to Portugal.6 Once Brazil became independent in 1822, there was widespread fear that Angola would follow suit. As the governor of Angola Cristovão Avelino Dias stated, “This country [Benguela] cannot afford not [emphasis added] to belong to Brazil, due to its geographical location [in relation to Brazil], commercial relations [with Brazil] that have lasted centuries, all types of aid that are easier for Brazil to provide and [3...

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