CONTESTED
LEGACIES
PORTUGAL
The Early Atlantic Slave Trade in Portugal: A Digital Archive of Contested Legacies
++SITES
LAGOS
LISBON
- Terreiro do Paço
- Casa dos Escravos
- Rua Nova dos Mercadores
- Campo das Cebolas
- Chafariz d’El-Rei
- Church of São Domingos
- Court of the Inquisition
- Rua do Poço dos Negros
- Monument to the Discoveries
++OBJECTIVES
- This digital archive aims to excavate and document the legacy of the early Atlantic slave trade in Portugal. We deal with sites in which the controversial memory of slavery ...
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++CONTRIBUTORS
1. Arlindo Manuel Caldeira
2. Pedro Cardim
3. Paula Cardoso
4. Gabriela Có
5. Beatriz Gomez Dias
6. Djuzé (Batoto Yetu)
7. Naky Gaglo
8. Giuseppe Marcocci
9. María Elena Morán Hernández
10. Ricardo Roque
11. Sofia Yala
PARTNERS
3. Rua Nova dos Mercadores
Mapping Coordinates: 38.7147° N, 9.1388° W
Location: Lisbon, Portugal
Status: Uncontested
Situated in the very heart of early modern Lisbon, just behind the Terreiro do Paço, the Rua Nova dos Mercadores was the city’s most important commercial street in the early modern period and was destroyed by the Lisbon’s earthquake of 1755. A late sixteenth-century painting, today kept at Kelmscott Manor, provides a vivid depiction of street life in Rua Nova, and shows several enslaved women and men of African origin carrying out various tasks. The eastern end of the Rua Nova culminated in a square called Largo do Pelourinho Velho, which hosted a major slave market.
From the archives
A description of the Pelourinho Velho slave market (1552)
There is also a square where everything is sold at auction, which is called Pelourinho Velho. Many chattels that belong to the category of those which are usually auctioned are sold there by an auctioneer who calls out prices. Therefore this revenue is rented for 130,000 reis… And likewise many slaves are sold at auction, on whom the slave tax is paid. And linen fabric also with its tax; and gold and silver which are tax exempt… And with all these conditions I would say that the sales made in that place are worth 10,000 cruzados per year.
(João Brandão, Estátistica de Lisboa, in Lisbon, Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, Fundo Geral, Cod. 679)
There is also a square where everything is sold at auction, which is called Pelourinho Velho. Many chattels that belong to the category of those which are usually auctioned are sold there by an auctioneer who calls out prices. Therefore this revenue is rented for 130,000 reis… And likewise many slaves are sold at auction, on whom the slave tax is paid. And linen fabric also with its tax; and gold and silver which are tax exempt… And with all these conditions I would say that the sales made in that place are worth 10,000 cruzados per year.
(João Brandão, Estátistica de Lisboa, in Lisbon, Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, Fundo Geral, Cod. 679)
Original
Também tem um chão, onde se vende tudo em almoeda, ao qual se nomeia por Pelourinho Velho, onde se vendem em pregão muitos móveis os quais pertencem ao ramo do pregão… E outrossim vendem muitos escravos em pregão, os quais pertencem à sisa dos escravos. E o pano de linho também à sisa dele; e oiro e prata que não paga sisa… E com todas estas condições afirmaria que vendem em cada um ano no dito lugar dez mil cruzados.
Também tem um chão, onde se vende tudo em almoeda, ao qual se nomeia por Pelourinho Velho, onde se vendem em pregão muitos móveis os quais pertencem ao ramo do pregão… E outrossim vendem muitos escravos em pregão, os quais pertencem à sisa dos escravos. E o pano de linho também à sisa dele; e oiro e prata que não paga sisa… E com todas estas condições afirmaria que vendem em cada um ano no dito lugar dez mil cruzados.
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