This book walks up through the author’s arguments, evidence, and analysis instead of just hitting us over the head with conclusions. While a reader might not agree with the conclusions the author reaches in every case based on the evidence, at least this author gives us a window into his decision-making process.
That said, for those of us who are also in Dr. Cooper’s Readings in African American History: Race & Place class, Sweet’s arguments of course feel quite familiar, as we read Michael Gomez’s Exchanging Our Country Marks last week, which sets out a similar argument regarding the role of African ethnic culture and religious practices in the forging of an African-American race-based identity. Sweet discusses Gomez, whose book was published 5 years before Sweet’s, in Footnote 40, where he argues that the process at least in Brazil was two-part, in terms of first transforming African ethnic identities into a collective “African” identity before formulation of a race-based identity, and that there was more survival of African ethnic identities in Brazil overall. A clear distinction between the works, which Sweet does not particularly grapple with directly, is that Brazil and North America present different cases in that (a) far more of Brazil’s African slave population came from a particular region of Africa (Central Africa) and (b) that the North American slave population comes much later, after the Portuguese slave trade would already have caused far more significant cultural and demographic effects in Africa.
What I found most intriguing (although I am not convinced I entirely buy his analysis) is Sweet’s argument that “the impact of Christianity on Africans was not greater than the impact of African beliefs on Christians.” (230) While I do not question that African beliefs left “the indelible imprint of Central Africa on the emerging Brazilian nation,” (230) and I am open to Sweet’s well-formulated arguments about the use of African religious ritual to mediate and somewhat limit/curb white/Catholic power and some of the excesses of white/Catholic atrocities, I’m not yet ready to take as gospel (sorry) the argument that these traditions had coequal effects on the development of Brazilian culture especially given the power dynamics in which slaves could be killed, sold, turned over to the Inquisition, etc. at the will of their owners.
I also found myself wondering a great deal about the effects of Brazilian indigenous culture and belief on both Portuguese and African traditions, as this element of Brazilian culture is entirely absent from Sweet’s analysis. It is an odd consideration to leave out, especially given that Sweet certainly acknowledges that there was a significant period of time in which the transition was slowly made from indigenous to African labor. (22-24)
I wish I could have said this sooner. Great job Sarah. I too read this in conjunction with 'Exchanging Our Country Marks' and saw the continuation of Gomez's work in Sweet's. While I see the bias of Sweet's work towards the power and resilience of African religious and spiritual strength, what fosters my support of his argument is the overall shear numbers of the Angolan and Congolese Africans enslaved in Portuguese colonial territories during the time of Sweet's research. I am convinced of the Africanization of Catholicism in Brazil to this day as a result of the influence of the diaspora.
From Kyle: "I feel similarly about the effects of Western religion on the African slave population and vice versa. It reminds me of the story of chocolate, and which culture had more influence on its consumption domestically and overseas. Again, the indigenous side of the story is missing. Sweet's analysis is much appreciated in form, giving the reader a very detailed view into the methodology, but is somewhat lacking in perspective (despite his acknowledgements of where the evidence falls short)."
Sarah I agree with you analysis. Even though I am not Dr. Cooper's class, I have had her in the past and have read the book by Gomez. You made a connection to the power within the Christian church and the role that it played in gaining dominance within western civilization. I found a reference made by Gomez regarding pieces written by Kenneth Stampp and Eugene Genovese. Gomez writes, "The Functionalist model employed by Stampp and Genovese is premised upon twin notions of European religion as political appendage and African religion as emanation and instrumentation of social order. The imposition of European political will and consequent disruption of African society could therefore only lead to the eradication of African religious systems." (p. 261-262) This stressed the point of how religion was used as a tool to depose of the African culture, traditions, being as a whole.
In the conclusion, Sweet argues that much of the African struggle against slavery occurred in the religious realm. He goes on to say that religion mitigated the amount of physical violence against slave masters because religious rituals were stealthy killers that engendered paranoia and fear into slavers. However, there were multiple stories throughout the book that showed slave masters using spiritually powerful slaves to ferret out runaway slaves. There is even an example where the wife of a Brazilian captain co-opted an African ritual in order to bring back runaway slaves. Thus, I feel that the author's argument about religious rituals replacing physical violence in order to undermine slave master control is diminished by the power dynamics within the plantations between those who were spiritually powerful and those who were not. It appeared that Portuguese slavers respected the validity of African rituals, but that validity was then used against other slaves to the benefit of the slaver.
I agree with your analysis Rafael. African religious beliefs were used as a weapon by slave owners to keep their slaves in line during this time period. I also agree that the argument from Sweet was too narrow. The reason is that he focused on the sexual and physical abuses face by slaves in Chapter 3, which I found to be different from how slave masters used religion to control their property. I could be wrong about how the two are different, because somebody could argue they are two sides to the same coin. Please let me know what you think.
Rafael, I totally agree with your point on the power dynamics of African bonds-people being utilized to serve the "master," as opposed to being utilized to construct some form of more overt collective of resistance. While I found the use/acceptance/adherence of African rituals by Portuguese Catholics valid for various reason that mostly have to do with the Catholic Church's history, I never considered that this adherence by Portuguese Slave holders may have been for other reasons. Is it possible that by allowing for a level of agency, and relevancy, in regards to African religion these slavers were just "playing" these shamans and seers to expedite and enforce their oppressive authority? I don't know, hence the question mark, however I don't think Sweet dug deep enough for any of us to really know with any certainty. But the power dynamic you raised in your comment raises some interesting questions. Both about the overt oppression between African slaves and Portuguese slave holders and the relationships among slave communities, especially considering Sweet's narrative.
This is my favorite book of the semester—the delving into Portuguese Inquisition (I didn’t even know there had been one) to uncover subaltern stories and show that, contrary to the dominant discourse, Africans who were enslaved and brought to the Americas not only didn’t lose their culture but that their cultural practices and beliefs thrived, although in modified form to fit the circumstances of their enslavement. As in the Stephanie Wood piece, I love that this restores agency to a culture that has often been portrayed as helpless victims without agency. And also as in the Wood piece, the role of the Catholic Church in the story is a complex one, with some priests helping retain culture and others fighting it as blasphemy. Just as we saw in the Wood article where there was much discussion of whether corn could create the host, here we see debate about whether helping the Africans the church was attempting to indoctrinate to see connections between their beliefs and those of the Church is retaining enough of the original religious intention to “count.” Many of the enslaved had been exposed to Catholicism in Africa, Sweet documents, and it is this creole version of Catholicism that some priests embrace with hope and others reject as sin. I appreciated the chapters on what traditional African beliefs and practices looked like in Brazil. The idea that the goal of the African worldview was explanation, prediction, and control made a lot of the discussion clearer for me (p. 114). The way Sweet documents two common approaches to the topic—the idea that the beliefs become a creolization, and the rejection of that as Christian defensiveness, I found intriguing. He argues that this is not the case and that it is an unwillingness to recognize the elements of the African rituals and belief systems as a separate set of beliefs. He also rejects the “survival” theory of African cultures and beliefs merely “surviving” because those who embrace that theory paint with an overly broad brush of “Africa” rather than looking at the specific cultures, beliefs, and rituals that can be identified with specific groups from Africa. Instead, Sweet argues that these practices didn’t just “survive” but were, in fact, “a counter-hegemonic force that constantly chipped away at the foundation of Brazilian slave society” (116). This willingness to challenge the dominant thinking and discourse and seek the evidence of a subaltern resistance sets this book apart from so many that I have read that generalize the “African” experience in the Americas.
I agree with you about how the book provides agency to these people, especially when compared to the Stephanie Wood's reading that proved to be controversial a couple of weeks ago. Sweet was able to provide these enslaved people their own narrative, while not ignoring the atrocities being inflicted upon them.
As with Sarah and Mr. Ali, I also had to read Michael Gomez for Dr. Cooper's class. Sweet appeared to be of the same school and even confirmed his association with the discipline by dropping Gomez's name, among others, in the Introduction.
That said, I think that the mission of extricating the lost history of the acculturation and cultural preservation among Africans forced into slavery and commodified by the Atlantic Slave Trade is very important and significant to the larger narrative of African and American (the continents) history. Sweet made a very interesting argument for the impact of African culture on Catholicism, as opposed to the other way around, which given the religions history, would most likely be many's assumption. As someone raised Catholic I found the adoption of divination and magical healing by Catholics not surprising at all. This is, after all the religious group that assimilated hundreds of pagan religious practices into its "universal"/Catholic program. Thus, following the divine premonitions of an African slave to increase the chances of catching a runaway, or the healing herbs and chants of an African healer does not seem out of character for the history of Catholicism. Although the act of covert rebellion is essentially played out through religion/spirituality, Sweet admits his primary sources are written in a colonial perspective and come from the Inquisition, leaving me to wonder just how much "interpretation" such records we need to provide a narrative of empowerment for a people believed to be inhuman by their barbaric European captures.
The inclusion of sections within chapters detailing the effects and counter measures taken within the system of slavery revealed a level of barbarism that is not characteristic of slavery alone. While the section on children alone is enough to make any half-decent human shake with rage at such inhumanity the acts committed against Africans are acts committed against unruly and obstinate workers throughout history. In this particular case the cruelty of the ruling class is highly racialized however, I think it important to mark that such violence was dealt out to any, regardless their distinction as woman, child, or infirm, who refused to act on the bosses orders or worse yet out right revolted. I think the chapter concerning the covert rebellion played out within the spectrum of religion gives a false sense of camaraderie at times when the actual surface dynamic appears to be oppressors taking advantage of the oppressed, only being too ignorant or arrogant to know that in such instances the oppressed was turning the tables of authority in such matters. Still, the ultimate fate of even the most influential African shaman or effectual "witch" was to remain as property, a fact which may be too demoralizing of an existence to sufficiently counter with covert rebellion?
Additionally, while I have acknowledged the significance of these cultural histories I still find the lack of material substance disconcerting. Why was slavery popular? Who benefited from this trade in human life? What was the main driver behind such insidious practices? What was the process or organizational structures that upheld this system, and why? While Sweet must unavoidably touch on some of these questions, that he left out a more detailed analysis of the systems and process leaves the book lacking, and for me, the only distinction is the cultural information correlated. Which may have been the point. Ultimately, I found Sweet's book to be very good at describing the multiple layers of oppression dealt with and tactics for cultural survival made by Africans, however I wish he had offered a more robust explanatory framework for addressing the root causes of slavery, the economic significance of the system, and the multi-layered oppression the system as a whole produced.
This shows another way researchers are working with the archival records we have to reconstruct the stories of individuals rather than just speaking in broad terms about "the enslaved." I do think Sweet does a good job of showing how the enslaved in the archival records he was accessing (remembering, of course, that a lot never makes it to the archives) attempted to assert some agency rather than just being passive victims, although clearly there is a power differential.
As usual I agree with your disappointment towards the lack of discussion about the root causes of slavery and the multi-layered oppression that enslaved people suffered. However, I also recall that we discussed about the nuances of African diasporic history and the objective of giving a group of people agency when history thus far had determined that they had none. Even then, I do think that there could have been a more significant discussion towards the material implications of a small group of slaves who engendered fear and paranoia into the slave masters. I mentioned in my blog post that I found the multiple instances where African rituals were used to ferret runaway slaves to be a concerning omission considering the possibilities of creating power dynamics between slaves. The spiritually powerful from that point on could have had better material conditions than the others and also have fostered a sense of disunity that would counter Sweet's central argument(s).
I also would have liked more context around the causes of slavery. There is a point where Sweet mentions a rise in the prosperity of coastal areas under the control of inland groups leading to conflicts in Africa which produced a supply of slaves. As Sweet presented it the conflicts were a result of commercially benefited coastal areas reacting against oppression from inland groups. The way I had previously been led to understand the rise of violence in Africa, creating the slave supply that Europeans would capitalize on, is that through the existing Muslim slave trade European weapons flowed into Africa increasing the intensity of traditional warfare. While Sweet's abridged narrative seems too simple and removes some of the responsibility from European interaction I feel that the other narrative I had been exposed to understates the sophistication of power structures and warfare which had existed in the area prior to European influence.
Sweet's book about the African slave trade in Brazil is about a history that can be placed in a larger context in the history of the Americas. What some people might not realized, especially here in the United States is that Brazil received the majority of all Africans who came across the Atlantic in bondage, (the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute estimated in 1999 in an entry in the book "Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African-American Experience" that nearly 40% of all slaves from the Atlantic Slave Trade ended up in Brazil). However, Sweet does not do that here. Instead, he focused on the religious practices within the slave community in Brazil. He does a good job with presenting the historical evidence. I want to briefly discuss about what Sweet got wrong with the book. Sweet's title "Recreating Africa" reflects a complicated attempt to reconstruct what was lost from the institution of slavery. At times, Sweet gives the reader that the African slaves were successful to reestablish their lost history. However, other sections of the book reveals that mission was a failure. I also agree with Rafael that the author undermine his argument by discussing about physical violence along with religious manipulation. What Sweet should had done was not to discuss about the physical violence. However, it must be ask if it is possible to discuss one topic without talking about the other?
I agree that it would be impossible to talk about slavery without discussing the physical and emotional violence inflicted about enslaved people, but I actually think that it strengthened Sweet's argument about the pervasiveness of traditional religious practices among enslaved people. I think Sweet's point is that African religious and cultural practices survived and were changed by the trauma people went through. Yes, slave masters used these traditions to their own benefit at times. And there were occasions where enslaved people used their religion to find runaway slaves. (Sweet also makes several points about how freedom wasn't always a viable or even desired option for enslaved people because they might not have been able to meet their basic needs for survival.) But I think part of what Sweet is arguing is that a unified African identity was "recreated" during this time and a large part of that was how African religious practices merged and were also altered by horrors of slavery. So while enslaved people lost their family ties, futures, economic autonomy, and individual power, among many other things, their religious practices were one of the few things that did not need to be reestablished because it was never lost -- it was certainly altered, but traditional religion remained a stronghold.
Zack, I believe that when we discuss the institution of slavery, we should never omit how violent, both physical and psychologically, this institution was. Just imagine his narrative where he does not focus on slavery's cruelty, how would a reader take it? That perhaps Brazilian slavery was not as bad as the others--something that most Portuguese people will tell you nowadays. British and Spaniards are the ones that are known for their savage institution, Portuguese go under the table. and I like that Sweet does not shy away from denouncing their atrocities. I actually think that enhances his overall argument, that even in the harshest conditions, African slaves were also agents in the reshaping of their new reality.
Sweet's book is a fascinating study of religion's role in the lives of enslaved people in the African-Portuguese world. As family ties were being destroyed, cultural and religious bonds united people and could provide at least a small level of solace through trauma. Since the Portuguese took most enslaved people from central Africa, it allowed for a certain level of linguistic and cultural similarity in the new world slave communities. Not only did religion help cope with the traumatic experience of enslavement, but Sweet argues it provided a means for resistance.
In all of the readings we've done so far, I've been fascinating to read about the gaps in colonial control that indigenous and now enslaved people have found to resist European dominance. Here, we see that Portuguese feared and respected African religious tradition. While calling it the work of the devil, Sweet brings up many cases of Portuguese relying on the power of bolsas or other "witchcraft" to cure their ills. Even though some Africans used these rituals to bring back runaway slaves, I still see this as a form of exerting individual autonomy in a world where any independence was limited for enslaved Africans. Making decisions or manipulating situations to one's own advantage was definitely a form of exerting autonomy, even though that did not always benefit the "African" group as a whole or upend the established master-slave hierarchy. There was no unified African identity that this woman was betraying by using her religion to bring back a runaway slave, rather she was manipulating a situation to get some individual power for herself. In the earlier chapters, Sweet provides examples of Africans who converted to Christianity to protect themselves (p. 98). This also shows religion as an avenue by which to exert some levels of autonomy.
Sweet’s “ Recreating Africa” was a fascinating read as a former Catholic. The most interesting statement of the conclusion was the lines “ I would argue the Of Christianity on Africans with no greater than the impact of African beliefs on Christians. those who emphasize the Christian core of African slave communities obscure our understanding of African religious meanings” (Conclusion pg 203). It was extremely interesting how whites would consult African witch doctors for remedies, because the priests were insufficient at there duties to banish such kinds of magic. I did not find the implementation of African spiritual practices surprising. looking at the growth of Christianity and specifically Catholicism can show the themes found in this reading are prevalent in other cases. With Rome's conversion to Christianity, many aspects of the Roman Hellenistic religion were implemented or later appropriated such as a pontifex Maximus (pope) which was a Roman priesthood Julius Caesar once held. This linked the head of the Christian/ Catholic Church to the Roman emperorship. When the Germanic tribes adopted Catholicism some of their Pagan Traditions were also adopted into the local communities interpretations of Catholicism. This would lead to much infighting among Church officials. I also have read that medieval Mali had much intense discussion over their practice of Islam and how that would impact its relationship with the Muslim world with Molly's loose interpretation of Islam and the balance between catering towards fellow Muslims and the indigenous pagan people of Molly which would cause concern to Muslim Scholars. even today there is intense debate in the Catholic world with those who are passionate about Theology and canon law. I believe it is safe to assume that no two people interpret Catholic theology and law the exact same way. Thus as we have studied the reactive nature of the Venezuelan Smugglers and their ability to survive and create an identity in the economic system of Spain, the African slaves integrated themselves into Catholic Brazil and formed their own unique Catholic identity in Brazil that may have gone against the wishes of the Portuguese Catholics. this going against the Portuguese Catholics does not necessarily make them in incorrect in their interpretation of Catholicism.
I agree wholeheartedly with your comment that the coexistence/syncretization of African beliefs with the Catholic Church was not surprising given the Church’s history of incorporating/appropriating various indigenous beliefs as it spread from Jerusalem and the early Christians to the Roman Empire and beyond. That said, I found it a bit surprising that Sweet doesn’t give more attention to the Catholic Church’s long history of incorporating/appropriating local customs and beliefs in his treatment of how the African religious beliefs affected the Church in Brazil. He instead seems to posit the experience in Brazil as unique, but doesn’t seem to fully consider this history. For example, see 193 where he discusses Angolans worshipping ancestral spirits alongside embracing basic Christian theology (some of his language there — in particular the word “even” — is a bit problematic, but that’s a separate issue).
"Recreating Africa" was a book that had me revisit childhood memories of adults having conversations about neighbor's misdeeds and relating it to witchcraft. Overall, I really enjoyed Sweet's book. However, at some point he did insinuate that Brazil received more diviners than any other slave population; I think that Sweet was writing about a practice of a selective group of slaves who, like their Catholics counterpart, lead the flock--the entire slave population as a whole. If it was the other way around, and Portuguese feared witchcraft so much, why didn't slaves use this to uproot the system? Because it did not happen, I believe the diviner's stories were isolated cases. Additionally, I believe that some of the instances where diviners where summoned by their masters, were slaves' set ups and not actual magic, to capitalize on Portuguese' superstition. On page 135, Marianna Mendonca and Julia Carvalho had lost something of value, called up a slave diviner, who asked for two coins (patacas) to carry her ceremony and ran away (pretty funny by the way). Also, on that same page number, the Guineo slave Antonio, was asked to find the whereabouts of stolen money and a silver cross. Antonio said that the master's son hid the cross in a box that was later located. Sweet does not go on to say if they found the coins, which lead me to think that the slave probably saw the kid running with it and subsequently hiding it. What I am suggesting is that slaves took every chance they took to capitalize on their masters' paranoia. This became more obvious to me when even other masters wanted to gain profit from the collective paranoia to feiticos. Masters had other slaves act as "negra de ganho" (diviners) to bring him/her the dividends. This is not to say that religion was not an effective, to quote Jesse's line, "escape valve." The reliance of the Portuguese Catholics in the "occult" are still carried on today by many Latinamericans in the twenty-first century.I find these writings enriching to one's, and Latinamericans as a whole, sense of self.
Sweet’s book “Recreating Africa” tries to rewrite the African Diaspora to give the enslaved people more agency. The book’s main purpose is to talk about how Africans use culture and spirituality to make sense of and fight against their enslavement. This idea of spirituality being able to be used as a weapon is a recurring theme throughout the book, and it’s a weapon that enslaved people could use against their masters but it was also one that they were often made to use against their own. Both instances are shown throughout the book when Sweet explains how some African slaves used their spirituality to wish ill will or even death towards their masters. Similarly, they were at times coerced into using their spirituality to retrieve runaway slaves. I think that this dynamic is representative of the ways in which African spirituality was able to, in some level, coexist with Christianity.
"Recreating Africa" by James H. Sweet is book that focuses on the impact of and the complications caused by religion and culture between Africans and the Portuguese colonizers. Sweet states that the culmination of this book lies on the shores of Brazil but most of the work takes a look at the African diaspora throughout Portugal and its new world colonies.
I found one of Sweet's arguments to be very compelling, in the way Sweet addressed the hypocritical attitude of the Catholic Church. The theory that the Catholic Church was somewhat complicit and aware of the infusion of the African faith base cultural tribal traditions. In private many Portuguese clerics allowed minor rituals within their local parishes but in the open denied any involvement or claimed ignorance to the practices. This was due to lack of clerics or support from the church when it came to properly educating the followers / Africans on the Catholic Church's traditions.
Another point that supports the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church, is the acceptance of the theory of "forced conversion" (Chapter 4) when it came the church allowing the forcing of slaves and indentured servants to convert to Catholicism but in turn the Catholic Church did not accept nor validate the “forced conversion” when it involved one being forcibly converted from Catholicism to another faith. James Sweet is quoted;
“The Portuguese also believed that these Christians maintained their faith, despite their forced conversions. They were probably correct in assuming the religious devotion of these slaves, but Portuguese officials failed to see the inherent contradictions in such a formulation. It was assumed that the “conversion” of slaves from Christianity to Islam was somehow fundamentally different from the “conversion” of Africans to Christianity. Ironically, Africans were expected to abandon the religious and cultural beliefs of their youths and adopt the Christianity of their Portuguese masters; however, the same was not true of Christians who were enslaved by Muslims”
The church believed that it was releasing the heathen from the grasps of the devil and ensuring the safety of one by the lord and savior. This polluted theory also added to the confusing of what was part of the accepted African culture or the product of denial of one’s faith and the corruption of the Catholic Church.
I found that Sweet made some decision about what to include or exclude which I found presented a somewhat disjointed narrative. I also found that although he begins with a warning about how he needs to rely on documents from the Inquisition when it came to presenting the anecdotes revealed by those documents he presented one possible reading without suggesting any alternative understandings. When showing examples of people pleading that they never abandoned their Catholic when forced to Muslim or Anglican conversion he uncritically accepts these statements as sincere, rather than considering the possibility that they arose from pragmatism. The African beliefs have a pragmatic character and what he identified as a parallel system of holding both Catholic and African beliefs does seem to me highly plausible. What I do not necessarily accept is that the devotion learned in youth is always absolutely sincere and frequently steadfast against all adversity.
Choices Sweet made that jarred me and made the argument have some rather large gaps from my perspective are a lack of early context and history for the Portuguese slave trade and the relatively limited analysis of family practices and other methods of maintaining social identity or life apart from religious practices. He states in the beginning that although his primary subject is Brazil he cannot narrowly limit his analysis by time and geography. He says that the beginning of his period of analysis is 1440 without giving a reason why and although he bounces frequently between Africa, Brazil, and Portugal he does not discuss what the motivations or purpose of slavery within Portugal and its Atlantic island colonies were. This creates a lack of the ability to compare or contrast the experience of slaves serving in Portugal to those who made experienced the Middle Passage, were subjected to the diseases of the Americas, and who worked in brutal mines or plantations.
While I do ultimately find Sweet's arguments persuasive I find the presentation less than satisfying.
This book walks up through the author’s arguments, evidence, and analysis instead of just hitting us over the head with conclusions. While a reader might not agree with the conclusions the author reaches in every case based on the evidence, at least this author gives us a window into his decision-making process.
ReplyDeleteThat said, for those of us who are also in Dr. Cooper’s Readings in African American History: Race & Place class, Sweet’s arguments of course feel quite familiar, as we read Michael Gomez’s Exchanging Our Country Marks last week, which sets out a similar argument regarding the role of African ethnic culture and religious practices in the forging of an African-American race-based identity. Sweet discusses Gomez, whose book was published 5 years before Sweet’s, in Footnote 40, where he argues that the process at least in Brazil was two-part, in terms of first transforming African ethnic identities into a collective “African” identity before formulation of a race-based identity, and that there was more survival of African ethnic identities in Brazil overall. A clear distinction between the works, which Sweet does not particularly grapple with directly, is that Brazil and North America present different cases in that (a) far more of Brazil’s African slave population came from a particular region of Africa (Central Africa) and (b) that the North American slave population comes much later, after the Portuguese slave trade would already have caused far more significant cultural and demographic effects in Africa.
What I found most intriguing (although I am not convinced I entirely buy his analysis) is Sweet’s argument that “the impact of Christianity on Africans was not greater than the impact of African beliefs on Christians.” (230) While I do not question that African beliefs left “the indelible imprint of Central Africa on the emerging Brazilian nation,” (230) and I am open to Sweet’s well-formulated arguments about the use of African religious ritual to mediate and somewhat limit/curb white/Catholic power and some of the excesses of white/Catholic atrocities, I’m not yet ready to take as gospel (sorry) the argument that these traditions had coequal effects on the development of Brazilian culture especially given the power dynamics in which slaves could be killed, sold, turned over to the Inquisition, etc. at the will of their owners.
I also found myself wondering a great deal about the effects of Brazilian indigenous culture and belief on both Portuguese and African traditions, as this element of Brazilian culture is entirely absent from Sweet’s analysis. It is an odd consideration to leave out, especially given that Sweet certainly acknowledges that there was a significant period of time in which the transition was slowly made from indigenous to African labor. (22-24)
I wish I could have said this sooner. Great job Sarah. I too read this in conjunction with 'Exchanging Our Country Marks' and saw the continuation of Gomez's work in Sweet's. While I see the bias of Sweet's work towards the power and resilience of African religious and spiritual strength, what fosters my support of his argument is the overall shear numbers of the Angolan and Congolese Africans enslaved in Portuguese colonial territories during the time of Sweet's research. I am convinced of the Africanization of Catholicism in Brazil to this day as a result of the influence of the diaspora.
DeleteFrom Kyle: "I feel similarly about the effects of Western religion on the African slave population and vice versa. It reminds me of the story of chocolate, and which culture had more influence on its consumption domestically and overseas. Again, the indigenous side of the story is missing. Sweet's analysis is much appreciated in form, giving the reader a very detailed view into the methodology, but is somewhat lacking in perspective (despite his acknowledgements of where the evidence falls short)."
DeleteSarah I agree with you analysis. Even though I am not Dr. Cooper's class, I have had her in the past and have read the book by Gomez. You made a connection to the power within the Christian church and the role that it played in gaining dominance within western civilization. I found a reference made by Gomez regarding pieces written by Kenneth Stampp and Eugene Genovese. Gomez writes, "The Functionalist model employed by Stampp and Genovese is premised upon twin notions of European religion as political appendage and African religion as emanation and instrumentation of social order. The imposition of European political will and consequent disruption of African society could therefore only lead to the eradication of African religious systems." (p. 261-262) This stressed the point of how religion was used as a tool to depose of the African culture, traditions, being as a whole.
DeleteIn the conclusion, Sweet argues that much of the African struggle against slavery occurred in the religious realm. He goes on to say that religion mitigated the amount of physical violence against slave masters because religious rituals were stealthy killers that engendered paranoia and fear into slavers. However, there were multiple stories throughout the book that showed slave masters using spiritually powerful slaves to ferret out runaway slaves. There is even an example where the wife of a Brazilian captain co-opted an African ritual in order to bring back runaway slaves. Thus, I feel that the author's argument about religious rituals replacing physical violence in order to undermine slave master control is diminished by the power dynamics within the plantations between those who were spiritually powerful and those who were not. It appeared that Portuguese slavers respected the validity of African rituals, but that validity was then used against other slaves to the benefit of the slaver.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your analysis Rafael. African religious beliefs were used as a weapon by slave owners to keep their slaves in line during this time period. I also agree that the argument from Sweet was too narrow. The reason is that he focused on the sexual and physical abuses face by slaves in Chapter 3, which I found to be different from how slave masters used religion to control their property. I could be wrong about how the two are different, because somebody could argue they are two sides to the same coin. Please let me know what you think.
DeleteRafael, I totally agree with your point on the power dynamics of African bonds-people being utilized to serve the "master," as opposed to being utilized to construct some form of more overt collective of resistance. While I found the use/acceptance/adherence of African rituals by Portuguese Catholics valid for various reason that mostly have to do with the Catholic Church's history, I never considered that this adherence by Portuguese Slave holders may have been for other reasons. Is it possible that by allowing for a level of agency, and relevancy, in regards to African religion these slavers were just "playing" these shamans and seers to expedite and enforce their oppressive authority? I don't know, hence the question mark, however I don't think Sweet dug deep enough for any of us to really know with any certainty. But the power dynamic you raised in your comment raises some interesting questions. Both about the overt oppression between African slaves and Portuguese slave holders and the relationships among slave communities, especially considering Sweet's narrative.
DeleteJames H. Sweet, Recreating Africa
ReplyDeleteThis is my favorite book of the semester—the delving into Portuguese Inquisition (I didn’t even know there had been one) to uncover subaltern stories and show that, contrary to the dominant discourse, Africans who were enslaved and brought to the Americas not only didn’t lose their culture but that their cultural practices and beliefs thrived, although in modified form to fit the circumstances of their enslavement. As in the Stephanie Wood piece, I love that this restores agency to a culture that has often been portrayed as helpless victims without agency. And also as in the Wood piece, the role of the Catholic Church in the story is a complex one, with some priests helping retain culture and others fighting it as blasphemy. Just as we saw in the Wood article where there was much discussion of whether corn could create the host, here we see debate about whether helping the Africans the church was attempting to indoctrinate to see connections between their beliefs and those of the Church is retaining enough of the original religious intention to “count.” Many of the enslaved had been exposed to Catholicism in Africa, Sweet documents, and it is this creole version of Catholicism that some priests embrace with hope and others reject as sin.
I appreciated the chapters on what traditional African beliefs and practices looked like in Brazil. The idea that the goal of the African worldview was explanation, prediction, and control made a lot of the discussion clearer for me (p. 114). The way Sweet documents two common approaches to the topic—the idea that the beliefs become a creolization, and the rejection of that as Christian defensiveness, I found intriguing. He argues that this is not the case and that it is an unwillingness to recognize the elements of the African rituals and belief systems as a separate set of beliefs. He also rejects the “survival” theory of African cultures and beliefs merely “surviving” because those who embrace that theory paint with an overly broad brush of “Africa” rather than looking at the specific cultures, beliefs, and rituals that can be identified with specific groups from Africa. Instead, Sweet argues that these practices didn’t just “survive” but were, in fact, “a counter-hegemonic force that constantly chipped away at the foundation of Brazilian slave society” (116). This willingness to challenge the dominant thinking and discourse and seek the evidence of a subaltern resistance sets this book apart from so many that I have read that generalize the “African” experience in the Americas.
Hi Jen,
DeleteI agree with you about how the book provides agency to these people, especially when compared to the Stephanie Wood's reading that proved to be controversial a couple of weeks ago. Sweet was able to provide these enslaved people their own narrative, while not ignoring the atrocities being inflicted upon them.
As with Sarah and Mr. Ali, I also had to read Michael Gomez for Dr. Cooper's class. Sweet appeared to be of the same school and even confirmed his association with the discipline by dropping Gomez's name, among others, in the Introduction.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I think that the mission of extricating the lost history of the acculturation and cultural preservation among Africans forced into slavery and commodified by the Atlantic Slave Trade is very important and significant to the larger narrative of African and American (the continents) history. Sweet made a very interesting argument for the impact of African culture on Catholicism, as opposed to the other way around, which given the religions history, would most likely be many's assumption. As someone raised Catholic I found the adoption of divination and magical healing by Catholics not surprising at all. This is, after all the religious group that assimilated hundreds of pagan religious practices into its "universal"/Catholic program. Thus, following the divine premonitions of an African slave to increase the chances of catching a runaway, or the healing herbs and chants of an African healer does not seem out of character for the history of Catholicism. Although the act of covert rebellion is essentially played out through religion/spirituality, Sweet admits his primary sources are written in a colonial perspective and come from the Inquisition, leaving me to wonder just how much "interpretation" such records we need to provide a narrative of empowerment for a people believed to be inhuman by their barbaric European captures.
The inclusion of sections within chapters detailing the effects and counter measures taken within the system of slavery revealed a level of barbarism that is not characteristic of slavery alone. While the section on children alone is enough to make any half-decent human shake with rage at such inhumanity the acts committed against Africans are acts committed against unruly and obstinate workers throughout history. In this particular case the cruelty of the ruling class is highly racialized however, I think it important to mark that such violence was dealt out to any, regardless their distinction as woman, child, or infirm, who refused to act on the bosses orders or worse yet out right revolted. I think the chapter concerning the covert rebellion played out within the spectrum of religion gives a false sense of camaraderie at times when the actual surface dynamic appears to be oppressors taking advantage of the oppressed, only being too ignorant or arrogant to know that in such instances the oppressed was turning the tables of authority in such matters. Still, the ultimate fate of even the most influential African shaman or effectual "witch" was to remain as property, a fact which may be too demoralizing of an existence to sufficiently counter with covert rebellion?
Additionally, while I have acknowledged the significance of these cultural histories I still find the lack of material substance disconcerting. Why was slavery popular? Who benefited from this trade in human life? What was the main driver behind such insidious practices? What was the process or organizational structures that upheld this system, and why? While Sweet must unavoidably touch on some of these questions, that he left out a more detailed analysis of the systems and process leaves the book lacking, and for me, the only distinction is the cultural information correlated. Which may have been the point. Ultimately, I found Sweet's book to be very good at describing the multiple layers of oppression dealt with and tactics for cultural survival made by Africans, however I wish he had offered a more robust explanatory framework for addressing the root causes of slavery, the economic significance of the system, and the multi-layered oppression the system as a whole produced.
Jason, I came across this project today: Creating a visual language of marks: approaching African identities through data visualization More information: Traditional African scars are helping researches tell the stories of the slave trade
DeleteThis shows another way researchers are working with the archival records we have to reconstruct the stories of individuals rather than just speaking in broad terms about "the enslaved." I do think Sweet does a good job of showing how the enslaved in the archival records he was accessing (remembering, of course, that a lot never makes it to the archives) attempted to assert some agency rather than just being passive victims, although clearly there is a power differential.
Hi Jason,
DeleteAs usual I agree with your disappointment towards the lack of discussion about the root causes of slavery and the multi-layered oppression that enslaved people suffered. However, I also recall that we discussed about the nuances of African diasporic history and the objective of giving a group of people agency when history thus far had determined that they had none. Even then, I do think that there could have been a more significant discussion towards the material implications of a small group of slaves who engendered fear and paranoia into the slave masters. I mentioned in my blog post that I found the multiple instances where African rituals were used to ferret runaway slaves to be a concerning omission considering the possibilities of creating power dynamics between slaves. The spiritually powerful from that point on could have had better material conditions than the others and also have fostered a sense of disunity that would counter Sweet's central argument(s).
I also would have liked more context around the causes of slavery. There is a point where Sweet mentions a rise in the prosperity of coastal areas under the control of inland groups leading to conflicts in Africa which produced a supply of slaves. As Sweet presented it the conflicts were a result of commercially benefited coastal areas reacting against oppression from inland groups. The way I had previously been led to understand the rise of violence in Africa, creating the slave supply that Europeans would capitalize on, is that through the existing Muslim slave trade European weapons flowed into Africa increasing the intensity of traditional warfare. While Sweet's abridged narrative seems too simple and removes some of the responsibility from European interaction I feel that the other narrative I had been exposed to understates the sophistication of power structures and warfare which had existed in the area prior to European influence.
DeleteSweet's book about the African slave trade in Brazil is about a history that can be placed in a larger context in the history of the Americas. What some people might not realized, especially here in the United States is that Brazil received the majority of all Africans who came across the Atlantic in bondage, (the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute estimated in 1999 in an entry in the book "Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African-American Experience" that nearly 40% of all slaves from the Atlantic Slave Trade ended up in Brazil). However, Sweet does not do that here. Instead, he focused on the religious practices within the slave community in Brazil. He does a good job with presenting the historical evidence. I want to briefly discuss about what Sweet got wrong with the book. Sweet's title "Recreating Africa" reflects a complicated attempt to reconstruct what was lost from the institution of slavery. At times, Sweet gives the reader that the African slaves were successful to reestablish their lost history. However, other sections of the book reveals that mission was a failure. I also agree with Rafael that the author undermine his argument by discussing about physical violence along with religious manipulation. What Sweet should had done was not to discuss about the physical violence. However, it must be ask if it is possible to discuss one topic without talking about the other?
ReplyDeleteI agree that it would be impossible to talk about slavery without discussing the physical and emotional violence inflicted about enslaved people, but I actually think that it strengthened Sweet's argument about the pervasiveness of traditional religious practices among enslaved people. I think Sweet's point is that African religious and cultural practices survived and were changed by the trauma people went through. Yes, slave masters used these traditions to their own benefit at times. And there were occasions where enslaved people used their religion to find runaway slaves. (Sweet also makes several points about how freedom wasn't always a viable or even desired option for enslaved people because they might not have been able to meet their basic needs for survival.) But I think part of what Sweet is arguing is that a unified African identity was "recreated" during this time and a large part of that was how African religious practices merged and were also altered by horrors of slavery. So while enslaved people lost their family ties, futures, economic autonomy, and individual power, among many other things, their religious practices were one of the few things that did not need to be reestablished because it was never lost -- it was certainly altered, but traditional religion remained a stronghold.
DeleteZack, I believe that when we discuss the institution of slavery, we should never omit how violent, both physical and psychologically, this institution was. Just imagine his narrative where he does not focus on slavery's cruelty, how would a reader take it? That perhaps Brazilian slavery was not as bad as the others--something that most Portuguese people will tell you nowadays. British and Spaniards are the ones that are known for their savage institution, Portuguese go under the table. and I like that Sweet does not shy away from denouncing their atrocities. I actually think that enhances his overall argument, that even in the harshest conditions, African slaves were also agents in the reshaping of their new reality.
DeleteSweet's book is a fascinating study of religion's role in the lives of enslaved people in the African-Portuguese world. As family ties were being destroyed, cultural and religious bonds united people and could provide at least a small level of solace through trauma. Since the Portuguese took most enslaved people from central Africa, it allowed for a certain level of linguistic and cultural similarity in the new world slave communities. Not only did religion help cope with the traumatic experience of enslavement, but Sweet argues it provided a means for resistance.
ReplyDeleteIn all of the readings we've done so far, I've been fascinating to read about the gaps in colonial control that indigenous and now enslaved people have found to resist European dominance. Here, we see that Portuguese feared and respected African religious tradition. While calling it the work of the devil, Sweet brings up many cases of Portuguese relying on the power of bolsas or other "witchcraft" to cure their ills. Even though some Africans used these rituals to bring back runaway slaves, I still see this as a form of exerting individual autonomy in a world where any independence was limited for enslaved Africans. Making decisions or manipulating situations to one's own advantage was definitely a form of exerting autonomy, even though that did not always benefit the "African" group as a whole or upend the established master-slave hierarchy. There was no unified African identity that this woman was betraying by using her religion to bring back a runaway slave, rather she was manipulating a situation to get some individual power for herself. In the earlier chapters, Sweet provides examples of Africans who converted to Christianity to protect themselves (p. 98). This also shows religion as an avenue by which to exert some levels of autonomy.
Sweet’s “ Recreating Africa” was a fascinating read as a former Catholic. The most interesting statement of the conclusion was the lines “ I would argue the Of Christianity on Africans with no greater than the impact of African beliefs on Christians. those who emphasize the Christian core of African slave communities obscure our understanding of African religious meanings” (Conclusion pg 203). It was extremely interesting how whites would consult African witch doctors for remedies, because the priests were insufficient at there duties to banish such kinds of magic. I did not find the implementation of African spiritual practices surprising. looking at the growth of Christianity and specifically Catholicism can show the themes found in this reading are prevalent in other cases. With Rome's conversion to Christianity, many aspects of the Roman Hellenistic religion were implemented or later appropriated such as a pontifex Maximus (pope) which was a Roman priesthood Julius Caesar once held. This linked the head of the Christian/ Catholic Church to the Roman emperorship. When the Germanic tribes adopted Catholicism some of their Pagan Traditions were also adopted into the local communities interpretations of Catholicism. This would lead to much infighting among Church officials. I also have read that medieval Mali had much intense discussion over their practice of Islam and how that would impact its relationship with the Muslim world with Molly's loose interpretation of Islam and the balance between catering towards fellow Muslims and the indigenous pagan people of Molly which would cause concern to Muslim Scholars. even today there is intense debate in the Catholic world with those who are passionate about Theology and canon law. I believe it is safe to assume that no two people interpret Catholic theology and law the exact same way. Thus as we have studied the reactive nature of the Venezuelan Smugglers and their ability to survive and create an identity in the economic system of Spain, the African slaves integrated themselves into Catholic Brazil and formed their own unique Catholic identity in Brazil that may have gone against the wishes of the Portuguese Catholics. this going against the Portuguese Catholics does not necessarily make them in incorrect in their interpretation of Catholicism.
ReplyDeleteI agree wholeheartedly with your comment that the coexistence/syncretization of African beliefs with the Catholic Church was not surprising given the Church’s history of incorporating/appropriating various indigenous beliefs as it spread from Jerusalem and the early Christians to the Roman Empire and beyond. That said, I found it a bit surprising that Sweet doesn’t give more attention to the Catholic Church’s long history of incorporating/appropriating local customs and beliefs in his treatment of how the African religious beliefs affected the Church in Brazil. He instead seems to posit the experience in Brazil as unique, but doesn’t seem to fully consider this history. For example, see 193 where he discusses Angolans worshipping ancestral spirits alongside embracing basic Christian theology (some of his language there — in particular the word “even” — is a bit problematic, but that’s a separate issue).
Delete"Recreating Africa" was a book that had me revisit childhood memories of adults having conversations about neighbor's misdeeds and relating it to witchcraft. Overall, I really enjoyed Sweet's book. However, at some point he did insinuate that Brazil received more diviners than any other slave population; I think that Sweet was writing about a practice of a selective group of slaves who, like their Catholics counterpart, lead the flock--the entire slave population as a whole. If it was the other way around, and Portuguese feared witchcraft so much, why didn't slaves use this to uproot the system? Because it did not happen, I believe the diviner's stories were isolated cases.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, I believe that some of the instances where diviners where summoned by their masters, were slaves' set ups and not actual magic, to capitalize on Portuguese' superstition. On page 135, Marianna Mendonca and Julia Carvalho had lost something of value, called up a slave diviner, who asked for two coins (patacas) to carry her ceremony and ran away (pretty funny by the way). Also, on that same page number, the Guineo slave Antonio, was asked to find the whereabouts of stolen money and a silver cross. Antonio said that the master's son hid the cross in a box that was later located. Sweet does not go on to say if they found the coins, which lead me to think that the slave probably saw the kid running with it and subsequently hiding it. What I am suggesting is that slaves took every chance they took to capitalize on their masters' paranoia. This became more obvious to me when even other masters wanted to gain profit from the collective paranoia to feiticos. Masters had other slaves act as "negra de ganho" (diviners) to bring him/her the dividends. This is not to say that religion was not an effective, to quote Jesse's line, "escape valve." The reliance of the Portuguese Catholics in the "occult" are still carried on today by many Latinamericans in the twenty-first century.I find these writings enriching to one's, and Latinamericans as a whole, sense of self.
Sweet’s book “Recreating Africa” tries to rewrite the African Diaspora to give the enslaved people more agency. The book’s main purpose is to talk about how Africans use culture and spirituality to make sense of and fight against their enslavement. This idea of spirituality being able to be used as a weapon is a recurring theme throughout the book, and it’s a weapon that enslaved people could use against their masters but it was also one that they were often made to use against their own. Both instances are shown throughout the book when Sweet explains how some African slaves used their spirituality to wish ill will or even death towards their masters. Similarly, they were at times coerced into using their spirituality to retrieve runaway slaves. I think that this dynamic is representative of the ways in which African spirituality was able to, in some level, coexist with Christianity.
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ReplyDelete"Recreating Africa" by James H. Sweet is book that focuses on the impact of and the complications caused by religion and culture between Africans and the Portuguese colonizers. Sweet states that the culmination of this book lies on the shores of Brazil but most of the work takes a look at the African diaspora throughout Portugal and its new world colonies.
ReplyDeleteI found one of Sweet's arguments to be very compelling, in the way Sweet addressed the hypocritical attitude of the Catholic Church. The theory that the Catholic Church was somewhat complicit and aware of the infusion of the African faith base cultural tribal traditions. In private many Portuguese clerics allowed minor rituals within their local parishes but in the open denied any involvement or claimed ignorance to the practices. This was due to lack of clerics or support from the church when it came to properly educating the followers / Africans on the Catholic Church's traditions.
Another point that supports the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church, is the acceptance of the theory of "forced conversion" (Chapter 4) when it came the church allowing the forcing of slaves and indentured servants to convert to Catholicism but in turn the Catholic Church did not accept nor validate the “forced conversion” when it involved one being forcibly converted from Catholicism to another faith. James Sweet is quoted;
“The Portuguese also believed that these Christians maintained their faith, despite their forced conversions. They were probably correct in assuming the religious devotion of these slaves, but Portuguese officials failed to see the inherent contradictions in such a formulation. It was assumed that the “conversion” of slaves from Christianity to Islam was somehow fundamentally different from the “conversion” of Africans to Christianity. Ironically, Africans were expected to abandon the religious and cultural beliefs of their youths and adopt the Christianity of their Portuguese masters; however, the same was not true of Christians who were enslaved by Muslims”
The church believed that it was releasing the heathen from the grasps of the devil and ensuring the safety of one by the lord and savior. This polluted theory also added to the confusing of what was part of the accepted African culture or the product of denial of one’s faith and the corruption of the Catholic Church.
I found that Sweet made some decision about what to include or exclude which I found presented a somewhat disjointed narrative. I also found that although he begins with a warning about how he needs to rely on documents from the Inquisition when it came to presenting the anecdotes revealed by those documents he presented one possible reading without suggesting any alternative understandings. When showing examples of people pleading that they never abandoned their Catholic when forced to Muslim or Anglican conversion he uncritically accepts these statements as sincere, rather than considering the possibility that they arose from pragmatism. The African beliefs have a pragmatic character and what he identified as a parallel system of holding both Catholic and African beliefs does seem to me highly plausible. What I do not necessarily accept is that the devotion learned in youth is always absolutely sincere and frequently steadfast against all adversity.
ReplyDeleteChoices Sweet made that jarred me and made the argument have some rather large gaps from my perspective are a lack of early context and history for the Portuguese slave trade and the relatively limited analysis of family practices and other methods of maintaining social identity or life apart from religious practices. He states in the beginning that although his primary subject is Brazil he cannot narrowly limit his analysis by time and geography. He says that the beginning of his period of analysis is 1440 without giving a reason why and although he bounces frequently between Africa, Brazil, and Portugal he does not discuss what the motivations or purpose of slavery within Portugal and its Atlantic island colonies were. This creates a lack of the ability to compare or contrast the experience of slaves serving in Portugal to those who made experienced the Middle Passage, were subjected to the diseases of the Americas, and who worked in brutal mines or plantations.
While I do ultimately find Sweet's arguments persuasive I find the presentation less than satisfying.