Marrying Men with No Attachment to the Land: Strategies of Luso-African Women to Protect Their Wealth in 19th-Century Luanda

Through the nineteenth century, the port cities of western Africa attracted foreign men seeking quick enrichment through participation in the trade in enslaved Africans and in the items of the so-called legitimate commerce. Many of these newly arrived men entered formal and informal relationships with local women of African and Eurafrican origin celebrated through Christian or local marriage practices. The Luso-African elite of Luanda, the capital of the Portuguese colony of Angola, professed Christianity and, therefore, celebrated the marriage of their offspring according to Catholic rituals. Foreign men based on the Angolan capital benefitted greatly from their unions with local women. Their local wives acted as cultural brokers and commercial partners and provided accommodation and healthcare that were crucial for their husband’s survival in a land known as the “white men’s grave”. Many Luso-African women were successful merchants in local trade and did not hesitate from using strategies to protect their wealth prior to marrying men with no attachment to the land. This contribution analyses Luso-African women’s use of contracts of marriage to formalize their unions with foreign men in nineteenth century Luanda. Drawing upon contracts of marriage, travel accounts, and the local gazette the Boletim Oficial de Angola, this paper suggests that local women were aware of the importance of their economic and cultural capital for the advancement of immigrant men in Angola as well as the risks they faced when relying on the more common charter of halves.