Sephardic Jews of Angola

There was never a Jewish community in Angola — not at any point in the Portuguese period, and not since. What there was, from the late sixteenth century, was a New Christian commercial presence: merchants, factors and contract-holders operating in and out of Luanda and Benguela.

And that presence was, almost entirely, the slave trade. Angola was the largest single source of enslaved people in the Atlantic world, supplying Brazil above all, and the New Christian merchants who appear in the Angolan records appear there as slave traders. This is not an incidental feature of the subject. It is the subject. We say so at the start rather than in a footnote at the end, because a page about Angola that discussed New Christian commerce without saying what the commerce was would be dishonest.

Why were New Christians in Angola?

Because Portuguese long-distance commerce in this period was substantially New Christian, and Angola was the supply end of the South Atlantic system.

The Portuguese reached the Congo coast in 1483 and founded Luanda in 1575. Within a generation Angola had become the place from which Brazil’s labour was taken: Brazil grew sugar, sugar required labour, and Angola supplied it.

The Iberian Union of 1580–1640 is the period that matters. With Portugal and Spain under one crown, Portuguese merchants could operate throughout Spanish America, and the asiento — the Spanish crown’s contract to supply enslaved Africans to its colonies — passed into Portuguese hands.

Why that commerce was New Christian is set out on our Portugal, Brazil and India pages: capital, kinship networks spanning several jurisdictions, and exclusion from most other routes to standing. The same families and the same structures that financed the Asian trade financed the Atlantic one.

The asiento holders of the period include men who were New Christians or came from New Christian families — Pedro Gomes Reinel, who held the contract from 1595; António Fernandes de Elvas, who held it from 1615; and others in the same circle. João Rodrigues Coutinho held the asiento and was simultaneously governor of Angola, which tells you as clearly as anything could how the colony and the contract related to one another.

We put these names cautiously. The identification of individual asiento holders as New Christians varies between sources, and “New Christian” in Portuguese records is frequently an accusation rather than a statement — often made by a commercial rival. The general pattern, that this commerce was heavily New Christian, is well established. The particulars need checking case by case.

Was there a Jewish presence under Dutch rule, 1641–1648?

Nobody has looked — and it is a bounded, answerable question.

In 1641 the Dutch West India Company took Luanda, sending the expedition from Dutch Brazil. For seven years Angola was Dutch, governed as an extension of the Pernambuco enterprise, until Salvador de Sá retook it in 1648 with a fleet from Rio de Janeiro.

Dutch Brazil in those years had an open, organised and substantial Jewish community at Recife — Kahal Zur Israel, the first congregation in the Americas — deeply involved in West India Company commerce.

It would be surprising if no Jews from Recife were present in Dutch Luanda. The traffic was constant, the personnel were the same, and the commercial purpose of taking Luanda was to secure the supply of enslaved people to Dutch Brazil.

But we have not seen it documented, and we will not assert it. The West India Company records at the Nationaal Archief in The Hague cover the occupation in detail. Somebody should look.

What we cannot say

There is no Jewish community to trace. No congregation, no registers, no cemetery, no rabbi at any point in Angolan history before the modern expatriate presence.
New Christian identity in Angolan records is usually an allegation. Denunciations went to Lisbon, and denunciation was a commercial weapon as often as a religious observation.
The Dutch period is a hypothesis, not a finding.

What about Angola since?

Portuguese rule resumed in 1648 and continued until independence in 1975. There was a small Jewish presence in twentieth-century Luanda — European traders and officials, and a handful of refugees during the Second World War — but never a community with institutions.

Today there is a small Jewish presence in Luanda, largely Israeli and Portuguese, connected to the oil and diamond industries. It is expatriate and recent, and it has no historical continuity with anything on this page.

What records can you actually reach?

Portugal

Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, Lisbon — the Angola series, which is substantial and covers administration, commerce and shipping from the sixteenth century.
Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Lisbon — the Inquisition material, through Digitarq. There was no tribunal in Angola; denunciations and cases went to Lisbon, as from every Portuguese African possession.

Spain

Archivo General de Indias, Seville — the asiento contracts and the administration of the trade into Spanish America. For the Iberian Union period this is essential, and it is where the contract-holders are documented.

The Netherlands

Nationaal Archief, The Hague — West India Company records, including the occupation of Luanda, 1641–48. This is where the open question above would be settled.

Brazil

Angola and Brazil are one subject and the records reflect it:

Arquivo Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, and the Arquivo Público do Estado da Bahia — the Brazilian end of the trade
Brazilian Inquisition visitação records, which are published, and which name New Christians on both sides of the Atlantic

Angola

Arquivo Nacional de Angola, Luanda — colonial administration, with significant holdings for the later centuries.

What has and hasn’t been researched

The Dutch Luanda question is open and answerable. Seven years, one archive, a well-defined population. Nobody appears to have asked whether Recife Jews were present.
The New Christian identification of individual asiento holders needs proper work. The general claim is well established; the particulars are repeated from source to source without much re-examination.
José Gonçalves Salvador did the foundational work on New Christians in the Portuguese slave trade, and it has not been substantially built on in English.
The Angola–Brazil family networks have not been reconstructed, though both ends are documented and the Brazilian Inquisition records name people.

Organisations and repositories

Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino and Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo (Digitarq), Lisbon.

Archivo General de Indias, Seville.

Nationaal Archief, The Hague.

Arquivo Nacional, Rio de Janeiro; Arquivo Público do Estado da Bahia.

Arquivo Nacional de Angola, Luanda.

Help us find records

We are looking for:

Evidence of Jews from Dutch Brazil present in Luanda between 1641 and 1648 — this is the specific open question
Inquisition denunciations arising in Angola
Documentation of the New Christian identity of named asiento holders
Records connecting Angolan and Brazilian New Christian families

If you hold any of this, or know where it is, please email [email protected]. Material contributed is credited, and we are happy to work under any conditions you set.

Research services

Angola is not a place to look for Jewish ancestry. If you have a Portuguese or Brazilian New Christian family that appears in the Angolan trade, that is a Brazilian and Portuguese research problem with an Angolan chapter, and the records are in Lisbon, Seville and Rio. We will tell you honestly what can be established. If you would like help, including for a Portuguese or Spanish nationality application, you can hire a professional Sephardic genealogist.

If you have found this page useful, please consider making a small donation to support this site.

On this page