"That Abominable Practice": Forced Marriage of Girls in Two Slaving Ports (Luanda and Benguela), c. 1797 - 1846

In 1825-1826, Nicolau de Abreu Castelo Branco, then Governor of colonial Angola, bitterly complained about "that abominable practice" in reference to a forced marriage, most likely performed in Luanda, involving a local nine year old girl and a much older, mid-level Portuguese military officer. The depiction of the occurrence as "practice", clearly indicates that this was far from being a new phenomenon. Yet, it was also not the last time that the forced marriage of young girls would occupy the attention of the highest colonial administrators in colonial Angola. This contribution seeks to understand the "practice" in two particularly important slave exporting towns in colonial Angola, Luanda and Benguela, by analyzing a number of cases relating to the period from 1797 to 1846 as found in documents from various archives in Angola, Brazil, and Portugal. As we will argue, this longstanding phenomenon was a direct outcome of the (under) capitalization of slaving in these particular port towns: by and large, the young girls in question happened to be orphans and heirs to the wealth accumulated by their parents.