The Angolares Maroons in São Tomé and Principe: To Live Free on an Island of Slaves (16th-19th Centuries)

SNSF Ambizione Grant  -  Dr. Jacques Aymeric-Nsangou

How do you live free on a slave-owning island under colonial rule? This question applies to the Africans and Afro-descendants known as Angolares who lived free on part of the island of São Tomé while under Portuguese domination. The ethnogenesis of the Angolares is disputed (Seibert 1998), but it is certain that, from the sixteenth century, they welcomed other Blacks enslaved who had freed themselves from the plantations. Initially free or self-liberated, the Angolares fought to safeguard their autonomy. In the absence of written sources produced by the Angolares themselves, all we have about them is the scattered information provided by Portuguese historical sources. Where were their communities located? How did they live? How did they adapt to the Santomean environment? These three questions form the research focus or Work Package (WP) of the MA-VÎE project, an acronym for Marronnages angolares à São Tomé: vivre libre sur une île d'esclaves (XVI^e-XIX^e siècle). Using an archaeological and historical approach, this project aims to locate the Angolares occupation sites (WP1), by continuing the surveys that began in October 2022, with lidar surveys and oral historical surveys. The material culture (WP2) will be documented through archaeological excavation, the study of artefacts, and the exploitation of historical sources. Environmental adaptations (WP3) will be studied through geomorphological, archaeobotanical, and archaeozoological analyses and environmental history. My research will, therefore, document the strategies adopted by the Angolares to maintain their freedom on the slave island of São Tomé. These excavations will be the starting point for a multi-sourced history of São Tomé and Príncipe, using sources that no longer come exclusively from Portuguese archives.