Slave flights and runaway communities in Angola ( 17 th-19 th centuries )

This article explores slave resistance in Angola by focusing on slave flights and the formation of runaway communities during the era of the transatlantic slave trade from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. It argues that slave flights and runaways communities were integral to societies under Portuguese influence in coastal and internal Angola. It demonstrates that flights occurred due to a wide variety of reasons, including opposition to shipment to Brazil, mistreatments by slave owners, and the influence of African social institutions and customs. Runaways’ fate depended on the willingness of African rulers to taken them as fugitives, and many became part of gangs that disrupted the trade between coastal Angola and slave markets in the interior. The article argues that slave flights and runaway communities became more numerous in the nineteenth century, as the transatlantic slave trade declined and commercial agriculture was established in the Luanda hinterland.


Introduction
Despite attempts to broaden the geographic scope of studies of resistance to slavery in the Atlantic world, Africa still lingers in the periphery of the scholarship on slave flight and runaway communities.Pétré-Grenouilleau writes that 'unlike the case of the Americas, no real interest has been manifested for the acts of resistance and the role of the agency of the slaves in relation to internal forms of slavery' in Africa (PÉTRÉ-GRENOUILLEAU, 2008, p. 250).This bleak assessment does not reflect the fact that scholars have indeed dealt with the subject of resistance to slavery and the slave trade in Africa (LOVEJOY, 1986, p. 235-272; KLEIN,  1988, p. 203-219; NOWAK, 1990, p. 5-29; MOITT, 1993, p. 70-86;  DIOUF, 2003; MOUSER, 2007, p. 27-44).Yet the recent trend to marginalize Africa is undeniable and seems to derive from at least two factors.Firstly, as pointed out by Curto, scholarly focus on the middle passage has come at the detriment of more detailed analyses of slavery and resistance to slavery in Africa (CURTO, 2005, p. 67-86).Secondly, the dearth of studies on slave resistance in Africa can also be attributed to the relative paucity of studies on pre-colonial African History (REID, 2011, p. 135-155).
In Angola, as Heintze's pioneering study demonstrates, slave flight became part of the social fabric of colonial enclaves in Luanda, Benguela and their hinterland almost immediately after the onset of Portuguese presence (HEINTZE, 2007, p. 507-538).Thornton goes as far as to posit that runaway communities 'were fleeing the deadly prospect of trans-Atlantic transportation and not a [slave] labor regime [in Angola]' (THORNTON, 2010, p. 98-99).Endorsing the notion of a culture of resistance in Angola, Curto points to more than three thousand episodes of slave flights in Luanda and nearby regions between 1846 and 1876 (CURTO, 2005, p. 67-86).Despite this scholarship's many insights, much still remains to be understood about the resistance to slavery in Angola, a region that lost the largest number of Africans to the slave trade and had a significant internal slave population.
This article begins by examining the multiple social and cultural factors that contributed to slave flights and the formation of runaway communities in Angola, ranging from opposition to the slave trade to resistance to slavery in regions under Portuguese control.I argue that the growth of Angolan slave population in the wake of the transatlantic slave trade in the 1840s correlated with the incidence of slave flights and contributed to the growth of runaway communities in the Luanda hinterland, which presented a palpable threat to the trade between coastal and internal Angola.I relate the formation of these communities, known in Angola as Mutolos or Quilombos, to shifts in the supply of slaves shipped from Luanda in the early eighteenth century (FREUDENTHAL, 1997, p. 111; SWEET, 2007,  p. 225-251).I demonstrate that Mutolos became firmly entrenched in the Luanda hinterland, withstanding many military campaigns sponsored by the Portuguese administration, and drawing on extensive support from free and enslaved Africans.Mutolos' resilience eventually forced the administration to abandon military expeditions and establish a policy of negotiated coexistence with runaway communities by mid-nineteenth century.

Slave Flights
As early as the first half of the seventeenth century, many runaway slaves fled from Luanda and joined Ndongo armies led by the Queen Njinga that fought the Portuguese in the Luanda hinterland (CADORNEGA, 1939, p. 132-133).The Ambundo background of these fugitives facilitated their incorporation into the Ndongo army, where runaways played a strategic role as they held sensitive information about Portuguese forces and fortifications near Luanda.However, the Luanda hinterland was by no means the only region where runaways sought refuge, since the kingdom of Kongo was a common destination for runaways, with the Luanda administration even using this as a pretext to wage wars on the kingdom in the 1660s (CADORNEGA, 1939, p. 136).Yet no other place became so associated with runaway slaves than Quissama, which was located south of Luanda and beyond the control of the local Portuguese administration (CADORNEGA, 1939, p. 191-192).
Slave flight remained a factor of daily life in Luanda, Benguela and nearby regions throughout the history of the transatlantic slave trade.This was in part a function of the slavery's important role in the regions' economies.In addition to providing labor for Luanda and Benguela's service economy, including for ships that transported slaves to Brazil, enslaved Africans worked on nearby farms [arimos] that produced food supplies consumed in both cities.Moreover, because Luanda and Benguela were top ports of the slave trade, thousands of captives were held there for shipment to Brazil.
As early as 1698, Governor of Angola Luis Cesar de Meneses recognized the difficulties of holding Africans under slavery in Luanda.'They are in their land and they could easily flee'. 1 In Benguela, where the state apparatus was far weaker than in Luanda, slaves 'either die easily or easily run away'. 2If they managed to escape, runaways sometimes relied on communal networks and on kinship ties.Two examples are revealing.In 1655, slaves seeking to evade their owners were aided by fellow captives who lived in Luanda convents. 3In 1798, slaves that belonged to the chapel of Santo Amaro were punished with deportation to Brazil for helping runaways. 4Escapees were helped by relatives as well.In 1798, Xavier Joaquim Sacapoco was accused of providing refuge for a relative who fled from his master, Dionizio Barboza Mello. 5In 1850, the father of a runaway named Diogo not only refused to obey orders from an African ruler to return Diogo to his owner but also helped his son to flee to 'a libata named Bombo in the lands of Anduro'. 6s Governor of Angola Adrião Acácio da Silveira Pinto stated in mid-nineteenth century, 'blacks had a natural and to some degree excusable' inclination to escape slavery. 7The frequency of slave flights was in part related to the fact that slave owners used to employ slaves as itinerant traders [pumbeiros] in the sertões (interior), which provided them with plenty of opportunities to escape.Among several slaves re-captured in Ambaca in 1798, for example, there was a man named "Miguel Assazala, with an enslaved woman and six children".He confessed that several years earlier his Luanda owner had sent him to the sertões but that he had used the goods given to him to purchase the woman who became the mother of his children.Despite the fact that authorities claimed that the woman was a slave, Assazala said that she was free "because her relatives had ransomed her". 8lso paving the way for slave flights was the integration of Luanda and Benguela into the internal trading networks of colonial Angola.Individual traders routinely visited both cities, as illustrated by a case involving a twenty-six year female slave named Naquibuacura in Benguela in 1857.According to Naquibuacura, three men -all traders from the Benguela highlands -had showed up at the tavern where she worked and asked for rum 'on the grounds that they were from the same land'.After she gave them the equivalent of one hundred réis in rum, they tried to 'seduce' her into robbing the tavern and escape with them back to their homeland in the sertões.Although Naquibuacura refused the proposal, she eventually decided to execute the plan on her own. 9In the following year, Saquipindi, a trader who had gone to Benguela on a business trip, was arrested on the charge of convincing two slaves to escape to Bailundo.Despite claiming that he did not even know the escapees, who managed to evade authorities, Saquipindi ended up in jail. 10s Thornton points out, much of the motivation to run away derived from resistance to the transatlantic slave trade.In fact, enslaved Africans resisted even when they had to relocate abroad with their owners.In 1652, for example, Luanda merchants filed a petition against Bartolomeu Paes Bulhão, a resident of the city who planned to relocate to São Tomé with his slaves.As the merchants argued, such departures had twice already been the cause of episodes of slave flights.In their words, these flights 'cause great damage and ruin to the residents of this kingdom'.Because of the merchants' pressure, Governor of Angola Salvador Corrêa de Sá e Benevides ordered Bulhão to maintain his slaves in Luanda. 11owever, what slaves mostly feared was the slave trade.As Luanda authorities admitted, 'despite the fact that [Luanda residents] owned many slaves on arimos [farms], senzalas [slave dwellings] and their houses, they cannot sell them [into the slave trade to Brazil] because if they sold one [slave], all others would flee'. 12This resulted not only from the slave trade's uprooting and brutality but also from the widespread fear that being taken to Brazil meant being cannibalized by whites. 13By the end of the seventeenth century, flights provoked by fear of the slave trade had become so frequent that merchants wrote a letter to the Luanda city council and requested changes in the baptism of slaves.According to the merchants, it was common for slaves to escape during the trip to the house of the cleric charged with branding them and baptizing them prior to shipment to Brazil.Instead, council members suggested that a general baptismal ceremony be conducted on the Island of Luanda, where slave ships departed for Brazil, so that captives no longer had an opportunity to escape. 14he relationship between slave flights and the slave trade seems to have become particularly acute in the nineteenth century, when Portugal took steps to eradicate shipments of slaves to Brazil.Because of the decline of shipments to the Americas, the Luanda slave population doubled between 1845 and 1850, accounting for half of the city's population (CURTO, 1999, p. 381-405).The same increase in the slave population occurred near Luanda, due to the increase of farms that produced export commodities, as Portugal sought to replace the slave trade with a plantation system (FERREIRA, in press).However, 'ownership of slaves was precarious because they [slaves] are persuaded that all slaves bought [and taken to farms] are destined to Brazil, and thus they continually flee, which causes great damage to the owners'. 15hese flights also affected factories (feitorias) that existed along the coast of Benguela to collect urzela weed, a dyestuff that was in high demand in the European textile industry.After diminishing in the early 1850s because of the precipitous decline of imports of captives in Brazil, exportation rebounded later that decade, as the slave trade from Angola to Cuba increased.An incident is illustrative.In 1860, 'the slaves of the neighboring feitorias saw shipments of slaves that Manoel José da Correia organized with a Spanish ship'.As a result, several of them grew fearful that 'the time of embarkation overseas was back and that they would soon become victims' of such shipments.'Shortly afterwards, there began several flights', including one when thirty slaves escaped together and another in which runaways attacked and murdered the overseer of a feitoria as retaliation for the slave trade. 16et the slave trade was by no means the only cause of slave flights, since resistance to slavery in Angola also motivated runaways.Overworking, for example, was a major cause of slave flight.As governor of Angola José Rodrigues Coelho do Amaral acknowledged, 'slave holders risked having their captives running away if they demanded too much work from them'. 17In addition, slaves resisted oppression and mistreatment in the hands of slave -holders.In 1856, for example, Luiza, Luzia, and Joaquina, who were 'slaves of Dona Tereza de Jesus Ferreira Torres Viana, fled from Equimina near Benguela after one of her friends was beaten to death on the order of Manoel Ferreira Torres'. 18In 1866, due to mistreatments, more than four hundred slaves escaped from a coffee farm that belonged to the largest coffee producer in Cazengo. 19n addition, cultural factors also contributed to slave flights.For example, in the eventually of the death or absenteeism of slave owners, captives would almost certainly flee.This was what happened after the death of merchant named Manoel José da Costa in 1856. 20Three years later, the death of Ana Joaquina dos Santos Silva, one of the largest slaveholders in Angola, led hundreds of slaves to revolt on farms near Luanda. 21According to a report by a Portuguese man who visited Luanda in the 1860s, cases of slaves who escaped after the death of their owners had 'already happened hundreds of times'. 22n fact, slaves might flee even when owners went away on business trips.In 1694, for example, a priest appointed chaplain on a slave ship headed to Brazil sought to evade the assignment by arguing that his slaves would run away if they knew he was absent. 23his was the case in 1782, when one hundred and thirty slaves who toyed on a farm escaped after their owner made a trip to the interior of Angola in search for gold mines.As the owner admitted, 'It was a custom in the country, not ignored by them [authorities] that in case of arrest or death of owners' slaves would flee, and that this was the cause of the flight of one hundred and thirty slaves from the farms and fields of the supplicant'. 24t the heart of these flights was slaves' uncertainty as to heirs or individuals working on behalf of owners would honor promises or eliminate customary rights that slaves had gained overtime.'When slave holders die, slaves become upset about their future because of fears that their new owners will mistreat them and that their customary 'rights' will be curbed'. 25An episode is particularly illustrative.In 1859, when a merchant named Vitoriano de Faria died, twenty--five of his slaves 'came from the bush armed and demanded their letters of freedom, which their owner had promised them when he was alive'. 26here is also evidence that African cultural and social practices drove runaways' actions.In the 1840s, for example, Governor of Angola Pedro Alexandrino da Cunha related the frequency of slave flights to lingering fear of the slave trade and to the fact that male captives 'did not accept agricultural labor, which they see as demeaning and female work'. 27The social origin of enslaved Africans working under Portuguese control in Angola bears particular attention.Some came from societies where a social institution known as chimbika or tombika allowed female slaves 'to go to the residence of a headman, in general someone who was wealthy and influential, and who she had previously selected.In the presence of witnesses, she would kill a dog, goat, sheep or other domestic animal'.The female slave would then offer herself as slave to compensate for the damage she had caused. 28f course, slave flights also became pervasive in and around slave markets in internal Angola, as well as on the long journey from the sertões to the coast.In Bondo, for example, a strategic market that received enslaved Africans from the Holo kingdom, constant slave escapes meant that runaways lived freely despite the complaints by itinerant traders (sertanejos and feirantes) operating in the region on behalf of Luanda merchants.According to authorities, Bondo was 'A land of many runaway communities formed by slaves who had fled from white people, who sometimes were able to apprehend these runaways, as long as they were not related to Africans from the country.Often times the runaways used ties to local people to form large communities led by fugitives who had become leaders.Some would meet their [former] owners on the road, when they performed duties at their pleasure after repeated requests, after which they would freely return to their houses'. 29ore importantly, these flights might have affected the supply of captives to coastal Angola.Reports indicate that traders dealing in slaves in the Luanda hinterland took extra measures to deal with recently purchased captives who were prone to resist slavery. 30However, these strategies were often insufficient.In 1792, for example, Governor of Angola Manoel de Almeida e Vasconcelos declared that a caravan of slaves had recently arrived to Luanda with fewer slaves than expected because many captives had managed to escape during the trip to the city. 31In fact, the Luanda administration would later instruct a colonial administrator in Golungo to ensure that itinerant traders (aviados and pumbeiros) did not allow slaves of Luanda merchants to remain unsupervised in senzalas [dwellings] as slave caravans stopped to rest on the way to the coast. 32owever, it is fair to say that the slave flights occurred mostly in coastal Angola, particularly after exports of slaves to Brazil dwindled in the 1840s.As noted above, by then the Luanda administration and merchants saw slavery as critical for the production of export goods such as sugar, coffee and cotton.The reliance on slave labor also meant the disruption of agricultural production by constant flights by slaves, which even provoked the abandonment of farms (arimos) in Quifangondo in 1841. 33Supporters of a company created to foster agricultural investment in Angola even suggested the importation of captives from Mozambique.'If they ['Angolan' slaves] are not shackled, they immediately run away to the bushes.This leaves the company with no other choice to obtain labor for agriculture than to import [slaves] from Mozambique'. 34According to Governor Sebastião Lopes de Calheiros e Menezes, Angolan commercial agriculture would 'never be as productive as in São Tomé, Havana, Brazil or the United States because blacks can easily escape' slavery (MENEZES, 1867, p. 67).
In addition to depriving Luanda merchants and residents of labor used in the city and nearby farms, the constant flight of slaves also disrupted the commercial networks with the Luanda hinterland, since many runaways joined or formed gangs that attacked traders traveling back and forth between Luanda and the interior of Angola.As late as 1850, Governor of Angola Adrião Acácio Pinto stated: 'the incessant attacks that they conducted on the roads near their Quilombos was a serious matter and should no longer be tolerated'. 35n 1852, Luanda authorities complained that the increasing incidence necessitated more intense patrolling on the roads from the city to the interior of the colony. 36In 1854, faced with the daily flight of slaves from Luanda, authorities debated the establishment of a series of fortifications surrounding Luanda to prevent smuggling and the constant flow of runaways to the sertões. 37

Obstacles and Opportunities
According to John Monteiro, a British traveler who lived in Angola in the 1850s, 'by the native laws, a black once sold as slave and escaping back to his tribe [sic] is considered a free man, so that a planter at present has no hold on his slave' (MONTEIRO, 1875, p. 75-76).In fact, runaways had to overcome several obstacles before successfully escaping slavery.To begin with, the Luanda administration rewarded individuals who returned escapees to authorities.In 1781, for example, anyone who caught a slave in Luanda would receive five hundred réis, a prize that would progressively increase depending on how far from the city the slave was caught.Bounty seekers who managed to apprehend Luanda slaves in Cassanje received ten thousand réis. 38fficials known as capitão das marcas had as a primary task 'to prevent the constant slave flights and that arrested individuals who crosses through their jurisdiction'.If they found a suspicious person, they would immediately send him/her to Luanda, where further investigation would determine the person's legal status. 39In addition, owners regularly turned to the colonial administration for help to capture runaways, such as when Manoel de Barros Cunha requested assistance from the capitão mor [commander] of Quilengues to capture nine runaways in 1826. 40On another occasion, a high-profile slave dealer in Benguela named José Ferreira Gomes requested support from the local administration to capture several escapees in nearby Dombe.According to Gomes, he had already apprehended three runaways but several others were still at large. 41nce they made it to the interior of Angola, runaways' fate depended largely on African rulers' willingness to give them refuge.This varied widely.In 1809, a soba received three thousand réis after capturing two runaways that were part of a maroon community in Dande, where there were three Quilombos at the time. 42In 1829, governor of Benguela Joaquim Aurélio de Oliveira related an incident in which slaves had overtaken a slave ship that had departed from the city.The ship made it back to a region near Benguela and the slave escaped to the interior.According to Oliveira, "these slaves would be caught by the gentios (unassimilated Africans) and sold to feirantes (itinerant traders), and they would consequently be taken to Benguela" again. 43In 1857, however, authorities arrested a soba on the charge of giving refuge to runaways. 44ncorporation into a host community was certainly easier if runaways sought refuge with African rulers who were not allied to the Portuguese (FREUDENTHAL, 1997, p. 116). 45Why would African rulers take runaway slaves?The reasons were multiple.In 1805, for example, an African ruler named Caculo Cacahenda employed a runaway who was literate in Portuguese as a scribe, charged with the diplomatic and commercial correspondence between Cacahenda and Luanda. 46Many fugitives, perhaps the majority, would become members of gangs that attacked trading caravans traveling from Luanda and Benguela to the sertões.In 1733, for example, the Luanda administration stated that many slaves commonly fled to territories controlled by the Mbwila ruler, where 'the ruler took them in, treated them as his slaves, and allowed them to attack travelers conducting business between Luanda and the interior of Angola'. 47xamples of African rulers who gave refuge to fugitives and then deployed them against the Portuguese abound.In 1779, subjects of the Matamba ruler (princess Camana) associated with runaway slaves from Luanda to attack travelers crossing through Bondo to Cassanje. 48North of Luanda, dembo Namboangongo welcomed 'a large number of runaway slaves that had previously belonged not only to Luanda merchants but also to merchants based in the sertão of Angola'.These runaway slaves lived with 'their wives and children, going out to the roads to rob and disturb travelers who pass with goods to resgatar (purchase) slaves to bring to this city [Luanda]'. 49n 1795, authorities declared that a community led by jaga Calandula would admit 'deserters, runaway slaves, and rebel vassals'. 50ithout the support of African rulers, there was very little that the Luanda administration could do to recapture runaways.In fact, since the administration could not always mount military campaigns to re-capture runaways, it had to rely on allied African rulers to apprehend runaways. 51The problem was that even allied African rulers would sometimes give refuge to runaway slaves, as demonstrated by several examples.In 1798, authorities accused sobas who lived in Icolo and Bengo near Luanda of helping runaways. 52he same sort of accusation surfaced in 1814, when a long-time ally of the Portuguese was accused of protecting several slaves who belonged to Joaquim Anselmo Coelho, a merchant from Ambaca. 53n the same year, the Luanda administration accused dembo Gombe Amuquiama of refusing to follow orders from local officers to return runaways. 54

Quilombos
By analyzing Mutolos, it is possible to trace how shifts in the supply of slaves to Luanda and Benguela affected the formation of runaway communities in Angola.The maroon communities established near Luanda in the first half of the eighteenth century provide a case in point.At the time, ships bound from Benguela for Brazil would first stop over Luanda to pay taxes on human cargoes.Many slaves held in the city managed to escape to nearby regions, where they formed runaway communities that significantly disrupted the commerce between the Luanda and the sertões.
The persistence of these communities is illustrated by unsuccessful punitive campaigns that the Luanda administration conducted against the maroons in the first decades of the eighteenth century.The first major campaign occurred in 1711, when the runaways crossed the Cuanza River into Quissama to escape fifty soldiers sent by the administration. 55In 1718, government forces conducted another campaign after residents of Golungo, Bengo and Icolo sought refuge in Luanda due to attacks by the maroons. 56ccording to the testimony of a cavalry soldier, the 'Benguela enemy would come with other of several nations, robbing [people] on the roads of the sertão, murdering travelers, and perpetrating attacks in which they burned villages'. 57n 1719, the maroons attacked farms [arimos] of Luanda residents. 58Some of them might have been former warriors enslaved in the course of wars in Benguela.To fight them, the Luanda administration requested support from the dembo Mbwila, who contributed almost two hundred soldiers to forces deployed against the maroons in 1722. 59These operations were clearly unsuccessful, however, since the Luanda administration had to direct forces to protect roads linking Luanda to the sertões in 1726. 60Much like runaway communities in the Americas, runaway communities welcomed individuals with different backgrounds, including not only Africans shipped from Benguela but also individuals who escaped slavery in the Luanda hinterland.
In addition to disrupting the trade between Luanda and sertões, Mutolos posed a serious threat to farms in Dande and Bengo that produced food supplies for Luanda.By the 1740s, Luanda merchants voiced their discontent about the 'insults of the Quilombo of black people from Benguela that exists in the sertão of this kingdom [of Angola].Whenever they wish they come to the roads and take as captives slaves that belong to the moradores (residents), robbing goods and supplies and everything else they can get their hands on, preventing pumbeiros (traders operating on behalf of Luanda merchants) and other merchants from being able to conduct trade with Luanda.They were so bold that they come to the Mayanga and Senzala de São Jorge [two neighborhoods of Luanda] to kidnap slaves'.Due to these attacks, Luanda residents could not send their slaves to regions near Luanda to gather wood logs and bring supplies from their farms. 61erhaps unsurprisingly, given the growth of shipments of slaves from Benguela after the beginning of the direct trade with Brazil in the 1730s, slave flights also led to the formation of maroon communities there.These flights became so frequent that the Luanda government deployed troops in pursuit of maroons.According to the first hand testimony of a soldier, 'colonel José Ribeiro de Almeida with fifty soldiers and two companies of free blacks [left Luanda] to arrest or kill a troop of Benguela blacks who had fled from the settlers of this city [Benguela] and that held weapons and committed robberies and killed people'.After a thirty-day campaign that extended almost five hundred kilometers inland, however, the maroons managed to escape to regions outside the sphere of influence of the Portuguese at Libolo. 62n Benguela, maroons were led by a former slave named Calumba, who founded a community comprised not only of enslaved Africans but also of free individuals.Calumba 'was very shrewd and brought under his control slaves of several owners, in addition to free blacks, to the point that his community was made up of twenty something libatas (dwellings).He commanded respect of many people, replacing and appointing African chiefs and allowing members of his community to rob travelers and traders going to the sertões.He was known as régulo (ruler) and was feared by the most powerful of the [African] rulers'. 63In a Portuguese military campaign against Calumba, sixty-four individuals were captured, hinting at the size of the community. 64Equally important, one of the most loyal allies of Calumba was a local chief named Luceque, who supported the rebel despite warning from the colonial administration. 65elationships between runaway communities and African rulers often had a pragmatic dimension, as suggested by maroons who were welcomed by the Mussulo ruler by the end of the eighteenth century.In 1801, Luanda authorities feared that the former might join forces with the latter to engage in trade with British ships trading in slaves in Ambriz. 66It is impossible to ascertain if Africans who had fled slavery had become sellers of slaves to British slave dealers.However, the Mussulo ruler and the maroons built lasting ties.In 1817, for example, a Quilombo named Saco-Saco formed by ladino [culturally assimilated slaves] and boçal slaves [those who hailed from African societies] 'neighbored the territory of the Marquês of Mussulo, approximately one day of journey [by foot] from that district [of Dande]'. 67ccording to Luanda authorities, the Saco-Saco community had been formed out of the remnants of a maroon community that was known as Mulemvo and that had been recently attacked by Luanda forces.The Mulemvo communities were in Mutolo, near Quissama, and suffered several attacks by government's forces in the first decades of the nineteenth century.In 1801, for example, government forces 'attacked a community that was located just eight léguas [approximately forty kilometers] away from Luanda and that had four hundred members 'of both sexes and different ages'.Out of fear that government soldiers would join the Quilombo, authorities avoided recruiting local soldiers.Signaling that the runaways were former captives of Luanda residents, authorities recommended that soldiers did not kill them, so that they could returned to their owners. 68everal other campaigns followed.In 1803, troops were sent by boat to Mutolo and arrived in the Quilombo 'on the same day [they had left Luanda] and were able to arrest some of the slaves and the others, I hope, will return to Luanda due to the amnesty that I issued and divulged in the region for those that voluntarily turned herself in'. 69In 1822, fifty empacasseiros [soldiers from Luanda] and two hundred and fifty soldiers provided by allied sobas Bango Aquitambe, Quilombo Quicatubia and Bumba Andala were deployed against the maroons.Each soldier would receive six réis for slave they managed to capture and the campaign was to last one month. 70evertheless, Governor Avelino Dias wrote in 1824 that not only was the Quilombo still in place but that free Africans and former soldiers had joined it as well. 71One year later, Luanda authorities ordered a 'secret' military campaign against the Mulemvo that was led by hundreds of recruits from Luanda and nearby districts. 72o dissuade Luanda slaves from joining the runaways, authorities prescribed the decapitation and the public display of the heads of those caught in or that were associated with the Quilombo. 73everal factors explain the longevity of the runaway communities in Mutolo.To begin with, dense jungles [mata virgem] and proximity to Quissama, which was outside Portuguese control, made this region an ideal place for maroon communities. 74As authorities admitted, the runaways simply needed to cross the Quanza River to reach independent territory. 75Runaways escaped Luanda with weapons and gunpowder to 'seek exile in the country known as Mutolo or Quilombo that has been established one day of journey from Luanda, in a dense jungle on the right margin of the Quanza river and where they have access only known to them about how to get to the Quissama'. 76As late as 1856, Quissama was described as a 'safe haven for runaways from Luanda'. 77ow big were these communities?According to Luanda authorities, there were at least five maroon communities in Mutolo in the 1820s.The population of these maroon communities might have reached thousands.In one of the attacks, for example, the government's troops burned two hundred and twenty five dwellings.Equally important, these communities had solid support from locals, since free and enslaved Africans did not shy away from engaging in trade with them, selling them food supplies and purchasing goods that the maroons had stolen from traders traveling from Luanda to the sertões.
Between July and September of 1831, for example, at least eighty-five free and enslaved individuals were arrested on the charge of associating with or being members of these Quilombos.Four free men and one slave 'had well-known friendship with the Mulemvos, with whom they do all sort of business'. 78A woman was arrested on the charge of aiding the runaway community to purchase food supplies from local farmers. 79Manoel Mariano confessed that he used to sell cattle to the maroons in exchange for wood. 80Maria Sebastião was paid for using supernatural power to predict attacks by government forces.'The maroons so trusted Sebastião's service that they lived without concerns' regarding surprise attacks by troops from Luanda. 81hese arrests also provided several insights into Quilombos' modus operandi, as well as into the relationship between African rulers and the maroons.Several female runaways alleged that they had been coerced into joining the runaway communities.Others joined simply established personal ties with the maroons.For example, a woman named Constança said she had returned home from work one day and found five maroons, including Quibenga, 'with whom she [Constança] had tratos [a personal relationship], after which she was taken to the Quilombo do Mutolo Pequeno and had a child'. 82ne of the members of the Quilombo confessed 'several robberies, including taking a pistol from a man from Golungo, as well as forcibly taking female slaves' to the Quilombo.With him, authorities found four gold coins, twenty thousand réis worth of silver coins, as well as copper coins, which Salvador had robbed from someone who had just returned from the sertões. 83ore importantly, the arrests revealed that the Quilombos were supported not only by ordinary Africans but also by African rulers.A soba named Quitela confessed that he had 'sold to the blacks of the Mutolo Grande the lands where they inhabit and hold with them close contact'. 84The soba's son was a man named Miguel Antônio, who used to sell dried meat that the maroons produced from game that they hunted down and had a personal relationship with a woman who lived in the maroon community. 85espite these arrests, an increase in the number of maroon communities occurred as the transatlantic slave trade dwindled and the number of slaves in Angola became larger in the 1840s.In 1849, for example, Luanda authorities stated that the number of runaways in the Quilombos 'had become considerably larger due to constant [slave] flights from this city [Luanda]'. 86Shortly afterwards, Governor Adrião Acácio da Silveira Pinto stated that the flow of runaways from Luanda to the Quilombos had reached intolerable levels.According to Pinto, the maroon communities hosted at least two thousand well-armed people, who 'once [they become] aware of their power could launch an attack on this city [Luanda] and threat the fortunes of the merchants of this praça and everybody's lives'. 87he growing threat of Quilombos led authorities to launch a major military campaign against the 'runaway blacks who had formed communities in a place known as Mutolo for the past twenty years'. 88his campaign occurred in 1850, involving more than six hundred soldiers, by far the largest military campaign ever deployed against runaway communities in Angola. 89To lead the government forces, the Luanda administration chose a seasoned commander of the guerra preta and recruited soldiers from several parts of Angola.Illustrating the high stakes, Governor Pinto himself went to the "battlefield" to inspect the troops. 90Some accounts attributed the success of the government forces to the use of a piece of artillery.However, a more likely cause of the defeat was the suicide of the Quilombo military leader, a man named Camello, after being captured by slaves of Ana Joaquina dos Santos, a leading slave dealer in Angola. 91uring the campaign, two government soldiers died and fourteen were wounded, seventy-five maroons were arrested and publicly punished in Luanda.Twenty managed to escape the government's forces. 92Despite this major defeat, a Luanda resident filed a complaint with the Luanda administration about the presence of maroons in one of his farms near Mutolo in 1853. 93Two years later, in addition to estimating, perhaps exaggeratedly, that more than twenty thousand maroons lived in three Quilombos in Mutolo, Luanda merchants warned authorities that Angola would face a 'scene of mourning like in São Domingos, Pará, and Bahia', a reference to successful slave revolts in the Americas (SANTOS, 1970, p. 294).
However, rather than launching more military campaigns against the maroons, the Luanda administration sought a path of accommodation, signing a treaty that allowed Quilombos' existence and paved the way for the recruitment of runaways into the colonial army. 94

Final thoughts
Writing about the relationship between resistance to slavery and abolitionism in Portuguese colonies in Africa in the nineteenth-century Angola, João Pedro Marques states, "no slave revolt spurred on this slow death of slavery in the Portuguese empire" (DRESCHER; EMMER, 2010, p. 58-59).A closer examination suggests a more nuanced picture, however.In Angola, slave flights and the formation runaway communities were so frequent that they disrupted trading networks between coastal and internal Angola, thus certainly increasing the costs of transporting slaves from the Angolan sertões to Luanda.The number of slaves exported from Angola would have been larger if not for runaways' actions imperiling the internal slave trade.At the same time, the incidence of slave flights posed a serious obstacle to Portuguese plans to develop a plantation system in the wake of the slave trade.In the mid-nineteenth century, fugitives so disrupted the production of orchella in Benguela that owners of orchella factories wrote petitioned to the colonial administration s against shipments of slaves, which was the catalyst for these slave flights.Equally important, by forcing the Luanda administration to acknowledge their independence in the second half of the nineteenth century, runaways brought to stark relief the limits of Portuguese power in the Luanda hinterland.