“Black Troops” and Hierarchies

of Color in the Portuguese

Atlantic World:
The Case of Henrique Dias and His Black Regiment

Hebe Mattos

Este artigo examina as carreiras de um pequeno número de homens de

origem ou descendência africana que fizeram parte de uma elite militar
do império português: comandantes da “Guerra Preta” e comandantes dos
terços de tropas negras. O mais famoso deste grupo é o Marechal Henrique
Dias, um “homem preto”, plenamente reconhecido como um comandante
chave nas lutas para expulsar os holandeses do nordeste do Brasil no século
XVII. A instabilidade apresentada pelas lutas dos portugueses contra os
holandeses, quilombolas, e populações indígenas no Brasil e na África no
século XVII e no começo de século XVIII abriram estreitos caminhos de
mobilidade social para os comandantes de cor que prestaram serviços milita-
res significantes à Coroa. Alguns conseguiram títulos de nobreza e entraram
para as mais exclusivas Ordens Militares como recompensa por seus fei-
tos. Mas no começo do século XVIII, esta porta de entrada para tais ordens
militares se fechou para os comandantes negros. Este artigo explora como a
cor destes oficiais virou um motivo em si para justificar sua exclusão destes
redutos da mais alta nobreza portuguesa e contempla suas implicações para
a história das hierarquias de cor no mundo atlântico.

H enrique Dias “was a black man,” explained the marginal note to the
royal decree of June 6, 1657, as recorded in the Book of Decrees of the King-
dom. The body of the document did not repeat this information, which ap-
pears in the registry as an explanation for the unusual royal decision taken

6 Luso-Brazilian Review 45:1

ISSN 0024-7413, © 2008 by the Board of Regents
of the University of Wisconsin System
Mattos 7

(in consultation with the Overseas Council) to provide some of the royal
favors requested by this “nobleman of the House of Your Majesty.”  The
military feats of Henrique Dias and the favors that he had received from the
Portuguese crown were, by then, well-known. They figured prominently in
the first Portuguese narratives of the war against the Dutch occupation in
the Brazilian Northeast (1630–1654), part of the struggle for control over the
South Atlantic sugar-producing areas and their slaves. Dias commanded
the Terço da Gente Preta (Black Regiment), or Henrique Dias Regiment as
some contemporaries called it, a unit formed in Pernambuco in the early
years of the war.
This article examines trans-Atlantic African military forms to under-
stand the creation of this black regiment during Portugal’s seventeenth cen-
tury South Atlantic wars. The historiography of the Atlantic world has barely
begun to examine the political and cultural exchanges in the South Atlantic
during this time, despite the centrality of these processes for the invention
of the Atlantic itself as a social space. To revisit the experience of the black
regiment in the Brazilian Northeast in the context of trans-Atlantic African
military forms sheds new light on the invention of modern slavery. In fact,
Portuguese discussions about Henrique Dias and his black regiment helped
to shape the process by which race and slavery became intertwined in the
Portuguese Atlantic. The claims that Henrique Dias and some of the officers
who succeeded him presented to the Portuguese crown and the royal favors
that they actually received reveal that the officers of this first colonial black
regiment were new social actors in the Portuguese Atlantic world. They
lived in a context of undefined possibilities and this article’s analysis of their
claims highlights a moment when colonial slavery and conceptions about
race were still under construction in the Portuguese Atlantic.

The “Black Man” Henrique Dias

A hero of the War of the Pernambucan Restoration (1645–1654), Henrique
Dias first achieved recognition in the resistance against the initial Dutch
occupation (1630–1638), when Pernambuco and much of the northeast coast
of Brazil fell under the control of the West Indies Company. Because of the
services provided in this first phase of the war against the Dutch, in 1638,
Dias received from Felipe III of Portugal (better known to English-speakers
as Philip IV of Spain) the promise of a minor title of nobility (fildago) and
a knighthood of one of the military orders. He subsequently received a
second royal favor without even having asked for it. After the restoration
of Portugal’s independence in 1640 and the Portuguese victory in Recife
in 1654, João IV rewarded him with the commandery (knighthood) of the
Moinho de Soure in the Order of Christ. It was, therefore, as the beneficiary
8 Luso-Brazilian Review 45:1

of these royal favors that Henrique Dias reached Lisbon in March 1656 to
“request recompense for his services carried out in the Brazilian wars.” It
was only then that he presented to the Overseas Council a solicitation in his
name, requesting reward for his services.
The expansion of the Portuguese empire was based on a corporatist con-
ception of society and power. Society was thought of as an integrated organ-
ism, with a natural order and hierarchy created by divine will. The king,
as the head of this body, was responsible for distributing favors, according
to the functions and privileges of each of its members. These royal favors
could be obtained by “means of grace,” the product of pure royal generosity,
or by “means of justice,” as compensation for services provided. Such com-
pensatory favors were, in general, requested by the interested party, through
a petition, which went to the appropriate royal council for an assessment of
the request.
Henrique Dias’ first request to the Overseas Council was accompanied
by a narrative of his services to the Portuguese Crown, a document which
gave pride of place to his military feats. The text of the petition states that he
was born in Pernambuco, but gives no information about his father, mother,
or grandparents. It declared that he had served in the war of Brazil from
1630 to 1656, “when by your leave he came to this kingdom [Portugal].” In
the war, “he had assumed the post of captain of the black men, and later
governor of a regiment of the same men.” 
Little is known about Henrique Dias’ origins. At least two narratives
from the period called him an ex-slave. Friar Manuel Callado called him a
“crioulo forro” (a Brazilian-born freed slave), while, in his “Memórias Di-
árias da Guerra do Brasil” (Daily Memoirs of the War of Brazil), Duarte de
Albuquerque Coelho stated that Dias was already free when he presented
himself in 1633 to fight against the Dutch. In the contemporary documents
analyzed in this article, Henrique Dias is in general vaguely associated with
crioulos (Brazilian-born people of African descent) and Angolas. He came to
be referred to as the Governador dos Negros (Governor of the Blacks), even
in official documents, after 1636. In April and May 1638, his troops partici-
pated actively in the defense of the city of Salvador from attack by the Dutch
Prince Johan Maurits of Nassau. It was as a reward for these services that he
received the royal favor of minor nobility from Felipe III. The expanded title
of Governador dos Crioulos, Negros e Mulatos (Governor of the Crioulos,
Blacks, and Mulattoes) was confirmed by letters patent from the Count of
Torre on September 4, 1639. He fought in the entire campaign of the so-
called War of Divine Liberty (1645–1654) for the restoration of Pernambuco
to Portuguese dominion. The black regiment received a prominent place in
accounts of the war, especially in the two battles of Guararapes (1648 and
Mattos 9

1649) and in the final siege of the city of Recife. In fact, almost everything
that is known about Henrique Dias is directly linked to his military role “in
the war of Brazil.”
Despite some opposition from the Procurador da Fazenda (Attorney for
the Treasury) and some discussion about the size of the pensions, almost all
of the requests presented in Dias’ 1656 petition were granted by the queen
regent, Luiza de Gusmão, including a pension for himself and the trans-
fer of the decorations and knighthoods awarded to him to his sons-in-law.
In times of war in the conquests, such decorations and knighthoods in the
military orders fulfilled a fundamental political role in motivating and re-
warding services carried out overseas. While the granting of decorations
and knighthoods resulted from royal generosity, the confirmation of these
favors depended on the requirements specified by the regulations of each
of the orders, as interpreted by the Mesa de Consciência e Ordens (a reli-
gious council). In the seventeenth century these included the requirements
for “purity of blood” which excluded descendents of Moors, Jews, or Gen-
tiles – the latter term designated the various pagan peoples existing in the
conquests, especially in the Americas and Africa. Rules also excluded even
Portuguese tainted by the “manual labor defect” which required applicants
to demonstrate that their forebears had not practiced manual trades for
three generations. By consenting not to receive personally the decorations
and knighthoods of the military orders awarded to him as favors, Henrique
Dias freed himself and the Mesa de Consciência e Ordens from the custom-
ary investigations regarding his parents and grandparents (although such
investigations could have been dispensed by the crown).
According to the Council’s recommendation, confirmed in the royal de-
cree of June 6, 1657, the commandery of the Moinho de Soure passed to
his son-in-law, Pedro de Val de Vezo (“a very noble man”), and the knight-
hood in the Order of Christ, which he had been promised, was reserved “for
the marriage of his [Henrique Dias] daughter Guiomar” (in other words,
it would go to her future husband). It was also determined “that, upon the
marriage of his other two daughters with soldiers who have services,” ac-
cording to the summary in the inventory of decrees of the kingdom, or
with soldiers of quality and services, according to the Council’s opinion,
“they will each receive a knighthood of São Bento de Avis or Santiago.” Thus
Henrique Dias avoided an investigation into the purity of his ancestors’
blood, and placed the onus on his sons-in-law. In a period in which there
was still no established prohibition based simply on color, the marriage of
Dias’ daughters with Old Christians would allow the transfer of the royal
favors to be confirmed and would permit his descendents to maintain their
noble status.
10 Luso-Brazilian Review 45:1

The Black Regiment

On October 12th of the same year, the Overseas Council dealt with another
request from Dias, entitled “Governor Henrique Dias requests that the regi-
ment that exists in Pernambuco of black men be confirmed (established as
an ongoing colonial institution in peacetime), and that all who are slaves be
freed.”  The requisition of slaves with the promise of compensation to own-
ers and the recruitment of the enemy’s slaves under the promise of liberty
to them was a common practice in wars in the Americas. It was also com-
mon for slaves to escape to join armies in wartime. There is considerable
controversy about the origins of the troop of blacks at the head of which
Henrique Dias presented himself to Mathias de Albuquerque in 1633, and
the possibility cannot be discarded that they were escaped slaves. The later
presence of slaves as soldiers and even officers in Henrique Dias’ troops is
clearly indicated by contemporary sources. Dias commanded “forty Angola
blacks” when he was promoted to Governor of the Black Troops, and it was
a slave or an ex-slave freed for the war – “Count Bagnuolo’s black” – who
took command of Dias’ company. During the battle of Tabocas (1645), ac-
cording to Callado’s narrative, “Governor João Fernandes Vieira . . . took
leave of the black Mina slaves that he had in his care, and other Angolas,
and crioulos, and sent them to where the skirmish was going on, promising
them letters of manumission if they went valorously.” 
The extent of the involvement of freed slaves and slaves as soldiers in
the Pernambucan wars is, however, a controversial issue. According Evaldo
Cabral de Mello, those who actually fought in Dias’ Regiment (around 400
soldiers) accounted for no more than 0.7 per cent of the region’s slave popu-
lation of approximately 43,000. Slave-based sugar production financed the
war, and control over the sugar-producing areas and the supply of slaves
from Africa was the principal motive for the struggle between the Dutch
and Portuguese. Clearly, slave labor in the plantations could not be a po-
tential source of mass recruitment for the war. But these numbers are not
insignificant in the context of the number of men fighting in the wars. Based
on the data provided by Diogo Lopes Santiago, Mello calculates that the
Henrique Dias Regiment accounted for slightly less than 10 per cent of the
total men in arms on the Portuguese side in the War of Divine Liberty. But
according to data from 1646 contained in a representation from the cap-
taincies of the Northeast, this proportion rises to almost 15 per cent of the
troops in arms that year. And it increases still further if we consider just the
so-called Infantaria Natural, consisting of men recruited in Pernambuco.
In this case, the 410 men in the companies of blacks and pardos (browns)
formed around one-fift h of the troops in 1646, and numbered only slightly
less than the 460 Indian soldiers registered.
Mattos 11

Of course, any suggestion of “racial fraternization” in the context of the

South Atlantic wars in the 1600s is simply anachronistic. Nothing like the
modern notion of race existed among the various European, African, and
Amerindian “nations” involved in the conflict. The Dutch invasion of Bra-
zil prompted many slaves to flee, thereby increasing the population of the
Palmares mocambos (communities of escaped slaves) in the Barriga Moun-
tains, in the south of Pernambuco, and prompting fears of a general slave
uprising and a massacre of the Portuguese-Brazilian populations. But, for
exactly this reason, the black regiment, rather than a threat, offered slaves a
Portuguese alternative to deserting to the enemy or to escaping to Palmares.
This is at least what some Portuguese authorities expected, as is clear from
the Overseas Council’s discussions about the status of the Henrique Dias
Regiment.
There was no significant controversy among the Attorney for the Royal
Treasury, the councilors, and Queen Luiza herself regarding the justice of
emancipating the Henrique Dias Regiment’s soldiers and officers who were
slaves when they served in the Pernambuco wars. The attorney called for
more careful procedures to identify those who had really served in the war
to reduce the number of slaves emancipated and to avoid cases of fraud, but
the council concluded that Brazilian authorities, especially Governor André
Vidal de Negreiros, were in the best position to know who had served and
should be freed. It was thus resolved, by royal decision, that the rich slave
owners and nobles should grant emancipation free of charge and present
the emancipation as a service provided to the Crown, when they requested
favors, while poor slave owners should be compensated with a “moderate
price” with assets confiscated from the Dutch or with payments from the
royal treasury.
In contrast, the request for the establishment of the black regiment
proved to be especially controversial. The Attorney of the Treasury firmly
opposed maintaining the regiment, because he considered that this would
amount to “giving Henrique Dias [authority over] all the negroes of Bra-
zil.” The maintenance of a regular infantry with black soldiers and officers
in peacetime was too dangerous, all the more so because, according to the
attorney, for such soldiers there is no “military discipline, except when the
enemy is in sight.” Their very existence would give “reasons to others to join
them, and escape from service to their owners.” He concluded: “There is no
time to describe the evils that could result from this union of people living
in idleness, and giving an example of liberty to the slaves, and reasons to
escape to the backlands.” 
The attorney’s forceful defense of Brazilian slaveowners’ interests did not
completely convince the members of the Overseas Council. They considered
the war to be far from completely behind them, and held that the black regi-
12 Luso-Brazilian Review 45:1

ment could play a role in “reducing and bringing to settlement” the many
mocambos that had formed during the war. Thus, the council approved a
strategy completely different from that presented by the attorney. It pro-
posed that “the most exemplary religious figures” be sent to convince the
mocambo residents to return to the colonial settlements, where they would
“serve in the regiment.” Returning them to slavery was impossible, “because
their owners cannot oblige them to return to their service.” 
Runaway slaves had created mocambos throughout the backlands of the
Northeast since the early 1600s, some of which coalesced into a confedera-
tion that became known as the Quilombo of Palmares (circa 1605–1694).
In 1658, the councilors considered the “blacks of the mocambos” lost to their
owners, and proposed a form of armistice with them, through which they
would be incorporated into the troops of Henrique Dias. They planned to
extinguish the regiment later by dividing it “little by little among the cap-
taincies of that state [Brazil].” In this manner, the mocambo runaways would
come to live as Christians, “in obedience to us”; they would receive “liberty”
as a reward, while their leaders would receive “posts in the regiment, which
will be a service to God and to Your Majesty.”  In fact, this was not the
first time that such an idea had been proposed. In 1640, Viceroy Marquês
de Montalvão proposed sending Henrique Dias to the mocambos, with a
“priest fluent in the language of the blacks, to bring them to us and enlist
them in his regiment.” The proposal was, however, rejected by Salvador’s
municipal council (to which it had been presented) on the grounds “that
it is in no way appropriate to make concessions nor give space to the slaves
or compromise in any way in this regard, and that the only appropriate re-
sponse was to eliminate and conquer them so that those who were slaves
would not go to them, and the runaways not aspire to greater damage.” 
This disagreement among Portuguese authorities over how best to deal with
the Palmares blacks persisted until the quilombo was finally eliminated by
the troops of Domingos Jorge Velho in the 1690s.
Likewise, authorities disagreed about the best way to absorb the regiment
of Henrique Dias in peacetime. In the late 1650s, the institutionalization of
the black regiment was seen as undesirable by the attorney and by the Over-
seas Council. The latter supported the maintenance of the regiment only
“while there [was] no firm peace with Holland” and argued that it should be
disbanded when there was no further threat to Portuguese America.

Black Troops on Both Sides of the Atlantic

The slaves mentioned as soldiers in the accounts of the wars in Pernambuco
are almost always described as Africans, “Angolas, Minas, and Ardras.”
As we have seen, Vieira sent Mina and Angola slaves to fight in the battle
of Tabocas. Frei Callado and Diogo Lopes Santiago both report that the
Mattos 13

unique way in which these Africans fought filled the rest of the troops with
enthusiasm, and were largely responsible for the victory:

The blacks came down from high on the hill in two parts, armed with bows
and arrows, spears and machetes, all with their own style of headdresses,
and playing flutes, drums and horns, shouting and making a huge noise,
and with such fury, thundered down the hill, so that our troops began to
shout, victory, victory, and the enemy began to lose ground, and our men to
pursue them.

Such slaves likely had African military experience, for the use of armies
composed of slaves was common in many of the politico-military orga-
nizations of Atlantic Africa; indeed, the Portuguese were no exception to
this general military practice. Thus, the repeated references to the use of
Angola, Mina, and Ardra slaves who came from African regions in which
warfare generated the supply of slaves to the Americas, suggests new ways of
understanding the use of slaves in the opposing armies in Pernambuco. In
the context of the South Atlantic wars of the 1600s, it should be added, the
incorporation of slaves and freed slaves into armies in no way implied any
questioning of the institution of slavery.
Taking prisoners to be enslaved was one of the objectives of African wars
and there is no shortage of references to the fact that dividing captives as
slaves among the soldiers (including among the black troops) was one of the
principal forms of compensation for the companies fighting in Pernambuco.
As a rule, the slaves captured from the enemy by Portuguese troops were
sold to Bahia, and the revenue shared among the soldiers if there were no
Portuguese owners to whom the captives should be returned. As well, along
with the slaves and freed slaves fighting in the two armies, slaves also served
as support workers for military units and, when captured, such slaves could
also be sold for the benefit of their captors.
In a single page, with no sense of contradiction, Callado describes this
range of slave experiences:

[A]rriving at Rio Beberipe to get water, our soldiers attacked them, and killed
eight Dutch men, and took alive nine black men [negros] . . . and reaching our
camp told of their success, and presented the nine slaves to Governor João
Fernandes Vieira; he ordered them to be sold, and the soldiers to divide their
price among themselves amicably, and by mutual agreement, and it would
go to help each one buy their shoes.

Some paragraphs later, however, the word negro takes on new

meanings:

On October 14th, thirteen Mina blacks [negros] escaped from Recife, and
crossing the Rio Capibaribe at low tide at night, reached with their arms the
14 Luso-Brazilian Review 45:1

camp of Henrique Dias, as the closest to the enemy, and his soldiers wanted to
take them and kill them. [The Mina blacks] said that they had escaped from
the Dutch to serve in the war with the Christians, for which they requested
to be taken to Governor João Fernandes Vieira. What they requested ap-
peared good, and when presented to João Fernandes Vieira, [they] told him
how many relatives of theirs were ready to come to us; however, it would not
be delayed many more days, even though some were reluctant, because the
Dutch had put the idea in their head that the Portuguese delivered all the ne-
gros that came to them to the savage Tapuias, and to the Brasilianos [Indian
allies] serving under [their leader] Camarão, so they would eat them broiled
and boiled; but if they knew that among us they would be treated well, and
[that] we would not kill them, they would come little by little. Hearing this
Governor João Fernandes Vieira made Captain of the most valiant of them,
and ordered them delivered to the Governor of the Blacks Henrique Dias, so
as to serve in his Regiment [my emphasis].

As this case suggests, slave and freed slave soldiers formed part of the
Dutch troops. While Callado sometimes writes of “Dutch soldiers and some
black porters,” at other times the military status of the black man is what
stands out: “On July 22 . . . 300 Dutch with some Brasilianos Caboclos (native
Indians) and blacks from Guinea set out from Recife for the fort of Afogados,
determined to do a good business on our people, taking us by surprise.” 
The differentiation between “Brasiliano” and “Tapuia” Indians and the pres-
ence of slaves from different regions of Africa in the battles figures promi-
nently in Callado and Santiago’s narratives. The names of these groups al-
ways take a capital letter. Along with the “Portuguese” and “Dutch,” these
chroniclers speak of “Brasiliano,” “Tapuia,” “Mina,” “Ardra,” and “Angola”
soldiers, designating different “nations,” according to the expression of the
period, and treating their various members as “relatives.” It was with his
“relatives,” by all accounts Crioulos and Angolas, that Henrique Dias joined
the Portuguese troops in 1636.
The conflicts between the Dutch and Portuguese played out on both sides
of the Atlantic in disputes over the plantations and their workforces. In 1637
the Dutch took the fort of São Jorge da Mina, with troops brought from
Pernambuco. Forces from Recife, sent by Nassau, temporarily expelled the
Portuguese from Luanda, Benguela, and São Tomé in 1641, while the peace
treaty between Portugal and the United Provinces had not yet been ratified
by João IV. On the coast of Africa, the Dutch made alliances with African
leaders who were enemies of the Portuguese to secure their positions in São
Tomé and Luanda and to gain control over the slave trade. The 1648 recap-
ture of Angola by the Portuguese was carried out with troops from Brazil,
who included veterans of the wars of Pernambuco, among them one com-
pany from Henrique Dias’ black troops.
The slaves called Minas in contemporary accounts were brought from
Mattos 15

Africa from the Fort of São Jorge da Mina (in modern-day Ghana) which
the Dutch took from the Portuguese in 1637. Despite the regional predomi-
nance of peoples of the Akan language group in the seventeenth century,
political power in the so-called Mina Coast was distributed among a large
number of small rival kingdoms, with which rival Europeans created alli-
ances to construct and defend fortified positions in the region. According
to John K. Thornton, war was endemic on the Mina Coast throughout the
seventeenth century and “professional and well-trained soldiers were an im-
portant part of the military system” in the region. Ardras were shipped
from the Port of Ardra or Allada, the principal centralized kingdom to the
west of what is now Benin, in the mid-seventeenth century. According to
Thornton, the troops from Allada likewise consisted of professional soldiers,
organized in companies, whose marches and parades impressed the first
European observers. In battle, however, individual hand-to-hand combat,
rather than fighting in formation, prevailed. In both regions, war was the
principal means of producing captive slaves and using slaves as soldiers was
a common practice. Swords, shields, bows and arrows, spears, and assegais
were the most widespread weapons, but European firearms had also been
incorporated, if only partially, into local warfare. Allada also used cavalry
and riverboats in combat.
The military practices specific to the Mina blacks – with whom the Ar-
dras were often conflated – can be identified in the accounts of the wars in
Brazil. According to Diogo Lopes Santiago:

conflicts were so commonplace that as soon as the Dutch went out to collect
cashew nuts or other fruits from the forest, the Mina blacks soon fell upon
them and took their lives, and these Minas were such barbarians that they
did not want to spare them, but rather cut off the heads of those whom they
killed. [They] came with their own instruments of warfare from their land
with horns and drums, making merry, saying that the Dutch had gone to
capture them in their homelands where they were free.

Most of northeastern Brazil’s slave population of the region, however,

had come from ports in West-Central Atlantic Africa, especially from Lu-
anda, in Angola. The Portuguese occupation of the Ndongo coast, which
began with the founding of São Paulo de Luanda in 1576, drew the Portu-
guese, Portuguese-Africans, Portuguese-Brazilians, and later the Dutch and
various African kingdoms into a series of wars during the seventeenth cen-
tury, known as the Angolan wars. At the same time, kingdoms to the east
of Luanda formed through the expansion of the Imbangala warring groups.
The origins of the Imbangala, called Jagas by the Portuguese, is controver-
sial, but we know that they were originally exclusively male groups, whose
members lived in militarized camps called ki-lombos (hence the Portuguese
16 Luso-Brazilian Review 45:1

term Quilombos for maroon communities in Brazil). Ki-lombos constituted

an alliance among young warriors who rejected traditional kinship struc-
tures and the supremacy of elders.
In Angola, the Portuguese military adopted the tactics and organiza-
tional forms characteristic of the region. The Portuguese forces were made
up of small European contingents and a variety of African forces, including
the private armies of local authorities (sobas). Imbangala armed groups al-
lied with the Portuguese, mercenary groups, and slave regiments to form
the so-called guerras pretas (black troops). Each guerra preta was a small
infantry force.
These central African political institutions left their mark on the Bra-
zilian Northeast of the 1600s. The best-known example of this is the po-
litical organization of the escaped slaves in Palmares. Silvia Lara has re-
cently called attention to the 1678 peace agreement worked out between the
quilombo’s leader, Ganga Zumba, and the Governor of Pernambuco, ne-
gotiated by a delegation from Palmares consisting of three sons of Ganga
Zumba and twelve other men. According to her, “the agreement was negoti-
ated according to the diplomatic rituals of the Old Regime of the Portuguese
monarchy (and perhaps of Central Africa), with exchanges of presents and
other signs of friendship between the parties.”  One copy of the agreement
went to Palmares, and the other to Lisbon. In addition to receiving lands
and guarantees of liberty for the residents of Palmares, Ganga Zumba was
named field Marshal of all his people (the same rank ultimately accorded
to Henrigue Dias and other commanders of the black regiment of Pernam-
buco). The definitive shift to a Portuguese policy of extermination or re-
enslavement of Palmares maroon inhabitants only occurred after internal
conflicts resulted in Ganga Zumba’s death and the weakening of the confed-
eration’s military strength.
In the accounts of the period considered here, especially Callado’s, the
Angola blacks were often conflated with crioulos, an important indication
of the predominance of Central African culture in the crioulo population
present in the wars, including Henrique Dias himself. On August 18, 1644, a
royal letter to the new governor of Angola advised him that the Crown had
sent reinforcements in the form of a ship from Lisbon with arms and muni-
tions. The ship would sail via Bahia, where it would pick up 200 Angolans
who were in that city and the Governor of the Blacks, Henrique Dias, “with
100 men of his black people.”  On November 14, 1644, João IV sent a let-
ter directly to Henrique Dias, in which he wrote: “[I]n the said Kingdom of
Angola [Henrique Dias] will serve in the position of Major [capitão-mor] of
all the black troops [guerras pretas] there, just as you served and practiced
in that State of Brazil.”  On May 9, 1645, another royal letter, this one to
Mattos 17

Antonio Teles da Silva, Governor-General of Brazil, expressed gratitude for

sending reinforcements of 215 “experienced soldiers of that kingdom” and a
“company of black men of Henrique Dias.” 
The concept of the “guerra preta” (black troops) referred to the incorpo-
ration of African leaders with their own troops, some of whom were slaves,
into the Portuguese army. In general this is not recognized as important in
analyses of the war of Brazil. Brazilian historiography argues that Amerin-
dian strategies most influenced the techniques adopted in the Pernambucan
war (especially the use of guerrilla tactics and ambushes). Despite this,
there is considerable evidence of similarities between the Henrique Dias
Regiment and the Angolan black troops, which was explicitly recognized by
João IV when he appointed Dias to command the latter. Even though one
of his companies had been sent to Angola, Dias did not accompany it, nor
did he assume the post of major of the black troops in Angola. According to
Gonsalves de Mello, the plans Antônio Teles da Silva was preparing for re-
taking Pernambuco likely led Portuguese authorities to revoke Dias’s orders
to embark for Angola.
In 1658, the queen decided to keep the black regiment in existence “while
Henrique Dias is alive” and, “upon the death of Henrique Dias, resolve what is
to be done.” This association between personal leadership and the regiment’s
existence reinforced the analogy between the regiment and the organiza-
tion of the Angolan black troops. This shows once again that, as the general
commander of all the black troops on in Portuguese America, the military
figure of Henrique Dias cannot be understood without taking into account
the Portuguese experience in WestAtlantic Africa in the same period.

From Black Troops to Hierarchies of Color

Despite the queen’s decision, the Henrique Dias Regiment continued to exist
long after the death of its first field marshal. The establishment of the Hen-
rique Dias Regiment as a colonial institution also extended the possibility
of decoration and elevation to nobility for its black officers in reward for
services provided to the Portuguese Crown. The third field marshal of the
black regiment, appointed by letters patent on March 20, 1665, Antônio
Gonçalves Caldeira, received the royal favor of knighthood in the Order of
Santiago from Afonso VI for services provided in the war against the “bar-
barian pagans” and the “blacks of Palmares.”
According to the 1630 statutes of the Order of Santiago, along with a
minimum and maximum age, those rewarded with this royal favor had to
prove that they were “legitimate sons; Old Christians; with no race how-
ever remote of Jew or New Christian; not descended from any person who
18 Luso-Brazilian Review 45:1

committed a crime injurious to Divine or Human Majesty; not be son or

grandson of pagans, tenant farmers, merchants, money changers, usurers;
nor have a manual trade.” 
Royal dispensations for some of these impediments were, however, com-
mon; in the eighteenth century, they accounted for almost fift y per cent of
those awarded knighthoods in the Order of Christ, which had the strictest
requirements among the military orders. According to Fernanda Olival,
the most common dispensation was for “pátria comum” (common heritage).
This dispensation allowed the investigations of parents and grandparents to
be carried out in Lisbon even if the applicants had not been born there.
In 1667, Afonso VI granted Caldeira’s request for common heritage. By
royal decree, the investigations were thus carried out in Lisbon; they deter-
mined that “Antonio Gonçalves Caldeira [was] a baptized Christian, . . . that
the same was said of his father, and mother, and of his grandparents there
[was] no information whatsoever, but that they said they were from Angola,
where all the blacks that come from that kingdom are first baptized.” As a
result, “Afonso VI dispensed with the impediments,” by instructions dated
April 27, 1667. Francis Dutra speculates that the fall of Afonso VI from the
throne a few months later prevented the royal decision from being imple-
mented, because there is no record in the order’s documents that the cer-
emonies of awarding the knighthood were carried out. Nonetheless, what
is important is the precedent that common heritage was conceded to him,
as well as the dispensation of all the alleged impediments. The fact that his
grandparents had been born in Angola, and the assumption that the slaves
who came from there were in general baptized, meant that the principal
restriction imposed by the rules of the Order of Santiago (not being the son
nor grandson of pagans) did not apply to Caldeira. And the possible slave
origin of his grandparents was not even considered.
What services had Caldeira provided to the Portuguese crown to justify
such a royal favor? The request for induction into the Order of Avis from
another field marshal of the black regiment helps to clarify this point. Do-
mingos Rodrigues Carneiro was appointed field marshal of the Henrique
Dias Regiment by letters patent dated January 12, 1694. Before this, while he
was in Lisbon (with royal permission) to be appointed major of the regiment,
he received a royal letter (carta-padrão) conceding him “the favor of 18,000
réis paid from the tithes of Pernambuco” in reward for his own services and
those of his uncles, Manoel Madeira and Fernão de Souza. This royal letter,
dated April 23, 1688, contains a long description of the services of the three
black officers cited in it. Carneiro, a “black man” born in Pernambuco, was
the legitimate son of José and Joana Carneiro. In 1688, he could show “seven
years, three months, and three days of services,” especially in the campaigns
against Palmares, where he distinguished himself by having directly con-
Mattos 19

fronted “their leader Zombi [sic].” Manoel Madeira, “also a black man” was
the brother of Carneiro’s mother. His services began under the direct com-
mand of Henrique Dias in the war against the “Dutch” and extended to his
death in 1683. He fought in the first battle of Guararapes and in the siege of
Recife, and was wounded many times, including in one instance when he
was sent to find a língua (an interpreter or informant) in the middle of the
night, and returned at 8:00 the following morning “with a live Dutchman
on his back, bound with a firearm, from whom the intentions of the enemy
were discovered.”
Fernão de Souza was Carneiro’s uncle by marriage to Maria Ferreira, his
mother’s brother. He was a black man born in Angola and had served for
“thirty-three years, six months, and fourteen days, from January 25, 1652,
to his death on August 10, 1687, as a soldier [and] sergeant in active service.”
He “retired as a lieutenant and adjutant” after having fought many times
against the Dutch under the command of Henrique Dias, in the two battles
of Guararapes, in the Rio Grande march, “being on these occasions given
responsibility for guarding the points of greatest risk, of discovering camps,
attacking the enemy, conducting ambushes, capturing Dutch as interpret-
ers, working in the trenches, and serving in all situations as he should.”
Along with being nominated field marshal of the black regiment, Do-
mingos Rodrigues Carneiro also received the royal favor of a knighthood in
the Order of Avis. In his first petition for knighthood, Pedro II, as Afonso
VI had done with Carneiro’s predecessor, dispensed with the obligation to
provide information about his grandparents, based on his claim that all of
them had “been born, lived, and died in Angola.”  The Mesa de Consciên-
cia e Ordens was, however, adamantly opposed to granting the knighthood,
arguing that Carneiro was a black man, an “ex-slave, and the son of slaves,”
and that the title of knight of the Order of Avis could not be granted to
someone of such low origins. Pedro II accepted this recommendation. This
was the first invocation of the color black as an impediment to receiving a
knighthood in one of the military orders in all the applications for knight-
hood that we have examined, which according to Francis Dutra, constitute
the totality of cases involving the Portuguese military orders.
Thus, the case of Domingos Rodrigues Carneiro established a new im-
pediment to induction into the military orders, the impediment of color,
although it was not written in the order’s statutes. Until then, only the Jew-
ish or New Christian “race” was explicitly banned from the knighthood in
the Order of Santiago, no matter how remote their “stain of blood” was.
In practice, this meant taking into account hints and rumors going back
further than three generations, while for the other converts it was enough
to prove Christian heritage for three generations. The statutes of the Or-
der of Santiago expressly barred only the sons or grandsons of pagans from
20 Luso-Brazilian Review 45:1

knighthoods; great-grandsons were eligible. In this sense, a black man could

be an Old Christian. According Dutra, at least two African black men re-
ceived knighthoods in the Order of Santiago, Luís Peres, a “nobleman from
the house of the king of the Congo,” and Pedro da Silva, a “noble knight of
the royal house, a black man and ambassador of the king of Angola.”  In
1609, “Dom Domingos, Prince of Warrit (in present-day Nigeria) became
a member of Order of Christ in Lisbon.”  Now the identification as black
meant the presumption of slave origins.
Carneiro did not accept the decision and requested dispensation from
the impediment of color. He presented an appeal in 1694, the year in which
he received the appointment as field marshal of the Henrique Dias Regi-
ment. In response to a new negative opinion from the Mesa de Consciência
e Ordens, Pedro II ruled that Carneiro could once again petition for the
knighthood after some additional years of service. He did so in 1703, and
the king finally dispensed with the impediments, considering that such “an
honor to this Field Marshal would stimulate others of his color to dedicate
themselves to royal service.” Thus color was retained as an impediment, but
one that could be dispensed by the king. To obtain this dispensation, how-
ever, Pedro II required Domingos to serve for eight more years. In 1710, af-
ter fulfilling this requirement, Domingos Carneiro again petitioned for his
knighthood, but the process was not completed. Dutra suggests that he died
before the ceremonies for awarding the knighthood had been held.
The end of the war against Palmares and the so-called War of the Bar-
barians (1651–1704) against the Tapuia Indians’ blockade of Portuguese colo-
nization in the backlands of the Northeast marked a turning point in the
chances for officers from the black regiment to obtain nobility. A key case
in this shift was that of Amaro Cardigo, son-in-law of Henrique Dias, de-
scribed as “a black man born in the captaincy of Pernambuco.” On Septem-
ber 23, 1711, his appeal requesting (for the second time) induction into the
Order of Santiago was turned down, despite the fact that Henrique Dias had
received the promise of this reward for his future son-in-law.
The royal favors to the sons-in-law of Henrique Dias required the mar-
riage of his daughters to men “of qualities and services,” as was claimed of
the “very noble” Pedro de Val de Vezo, who had received as dowry the royal
favor of the commandery of the Moinho de Soure and a knighthood in the
Order of Christ. Benta Henriques, however, had married Amaro Cardigo,
captain in the black regiment, son of freed slaves, and grandson of slaves
from Angola. Cardigo had services to present when he went to Lisbon to
solicit the favor promised to his father-in-law. He had served for more than
thirty years, from 1674 to 1706, in the war against the “barbarian pagans,”
especially in the campaign of Açu (1687–1699) in Rio Grande do Norte and
Ceará. The petition that he sent to the Overseas Council on July 20, 1709,
Mattos 21

contains accounts of the principal episodes of his participation in these bat-

tles, in which he had conducted himself “like a valiant soldier.” 
In response to this petition, a royal resolution dated August 26, 1709,
granted him, as dowry from Benta Henriques and as reward for the ser-
vices that he himself provided to the crown, a knighthood of the Order of
Santiago and the pension of 20,000 réis, promised to the sons-in-law of
Field Marshal Henrique Dias. To receive these rewards, however, Cardigo
had first to submit to the investigations required by the Order. Cardigo, a
“lieutenant of the same regiment as Field Marshal Henrique Dias” was in
Lisbon in 1711, when he personally petitioned the king to dispense with the
impediment of color so that he could receive the knighthood of the Order
of Santiago, but the petition was turned down. In yet another case, the cor-
relation between the impediment of the color black and the stigma of slavery
appeared, but this time the royal dispensation of this impediment was not
granted. Well-informed about the previous cases, Cardigo again appealed.
He argued that the king customarily “dispensed with the impediment of
black color, for those serving in that captaincy, as it was decided . . . [in the
case of] the Field Marshal Domingos Rodrigues Carneiro.” The Mesa de
Consciência e Ordens reiterated its view that it was not possible to concede
such a dispensation. The board held that any request for dispensation could
only be considered after conducting “the investigations and approvals of his
person pursuant to the statutes and definitions of the Order.” Only if the
supplicant proved that he met “the other requirements set out in the rules”
would it consider the dispensations.
In response, Cardigo presented a third appeal. Again noting his and his
father-in-law’s services, he requested that the inquiries about his ancestry
be carried out in Lisbon, because his grandparents had been born in the
Kingdom of Angola, where, as in Carneiro’s case, they could not be con-
ducted because of the distance “and the difficulty of having been born in
the backlands of that kingdom.” He therefore asked that the inquiries be
carried out “in this Court [Lisbon], as commom heritage . . . as Your Majesty
has conceded to many people from various foreign nations.” In 1712, how-
ever, the Mesa de Consciência e Ordens and João V did not accord Cardigo
the same tolerance that Afonso VI had given to Caldeira and that Pedro II
had granted to Carneiro.
After Cardigo’s case there are no more reports of royal favors of knight-
hoods or commanderies in the military orders being granted to Africans or
black officers from the colonial troops. The persistence of Amaro Cardigo,
Domingos Rodrigues Carneiro, and Antônio Gonçalves Caldeira reveals
to us a military elite that had been promoted directly from slavery, whose
members, until the early seventeenth century, claimed prestigious positions
in the Portuguese empire’s social hierarchies. In the petitions that they sub-
22 Luso-Brazilian Review 45:1

mitted to the Overseas Council, the services provided in the wars against
the Tapuias or Palmarinos were presented as equivalent to those provided
in the war against the Dutch.
Over time, however, the simple mention of color became an impediment
to receiving the knighthoods and commanderies in the Military Orders.
Blackness became progressively associated with manual labor under slavery
and with the dishonor linked to this condition. The possibility of dispen-
sation, which occurred in the cases of Carneiro and Caldeira, encouraged
Cardigo to claim the knighthood in the Order of Santiago, which he was to
receive as a royal favor because of his father-in-law’s services. The stricter
interpretations of the rules governing entrance to the military orders ap-
pear to anticipate the Portuguese victories over the Dutch, the Tapuias, and
the Palmarinos which were consolidated by the 1720s. Thus, as the strategic
importance of the Henrique Dias Regiment to Portuguese imperial defense
declined, so did the access of its black officers to the status of nobility. It also
highlights the turning point that the end of those wars represented for the
emergence of a slave-based colonial society in Portuguese America, with the
invention of specific racial identities and hierarchies. In this new situation,
the black regiment would be transformed into a specific Portuguese-Amer-
ican institution no longer identified with the black troops of seventeenth-
century Portuguese Africa.

Race and Slavery in Colonial Brazil

Trajectories such as those of the men analyzed in this article suggest a his-
torical context that can only be fully understood by taking into account both
shores of the South Atlantic. We need to learn about African institutions and
political cultures not only to understand figures like Ganga Zumba, Palma-
res’ leader, but also to understand trajectories like those of Henrique Dias
and Domingos Rodrigues Carneiro. In fact, the emergence and incorpora-
tion of a free population, descendents of ex-slaves brought from Africa, into
Portuguese America was a new phenomenon that emerged over the course
of the seventeenth century. The requests for royal favors by the officers of the
black regiment of Pernambuco in the second half of the seventeenth century
reveal the emergence of a social stratum of free men descended from Afri-
can slaves, but without a clearly defined social place in the hierarchies that
would come to characterize the colonial world, with all the ambiguities and
hesitations that this new situation would bring. The cases analyzed here
were in fact crucial for the creation of these new forms of social hierarchy.
In his 1712 Vocabulário português e latino, Raphael Bluteau defines the
Portuguese word raça (race) as follows: “Speaking of generations, it always
takes on an evil nature. To have Race [with no other qualification] means
Mattos 23

having the Race of Moor or Jew.” An eminently religious notion, the convic-
tion that the propensity to heresy was propagated by the “infected” blood
of the “Moors and Jews,” even after three generations, tended to extend also
to the descendents of Africans over the course of the seventeenth century.
In Portugal, the 1640 Constituições Sinodaes of the Archbishopric of Lisbon
already included having “origins in the Hebrew nation, or of any other in-
fected race, or of mulattoes, or of blacks” among the impediments to the
sacred orders. This restriction was reproduced in the 1707 Constituições
primeiras of the Archbishopric of Bahia. Old Christians did not have race.
In Portugal and especially in the Brazilian colony, the formulation “with
no race of Moor, Jew or mulatto” became common in countless documents
produced after that. By the end of seventeenth century color had became a
sign of having race.
It is important to note, furthermore, that the words preto or negro
(black) became increasingly associated with the experience of slavery. As
some studies have shown, in Brazil the term pardo (brown), starting from
a simple designation of color, expanded in significance to also include a
growing population which no longer fit under the classifications of negro or
preto (slave or ex-slave of African origin), or crioulo (slave or ex-slave born
in Brazil), because these terms tended to freeze the social status of the slave
or freed person.
The Henrique Dias Regiment, which in the seventeenth century in-
cluded negros, crioulos, and mulatos, incorporated preferentially ex-slaves
and their direct descendents, and especially during the war with the Dutch,
also absorbed many slaves. This remained the defining element of the regi-
ments called Henriques in the eighteenth century, from which, however, the
companies of pardos tended to separate over the course of the eighteenth
century. The growth of the free population of color would result in the
emergence of militias of browns (free people of color of Indian or African
descent, sometimes of mixed race but always some generations away from
slavery) segregated from those of blacks (ex-slaves and their direct descen-
dents) as well as from the whites and old Christians.
The emergence of a free population of African origin, not necessarily of
mixed race (mestiço) but certainly some generations removed from the more
direct experience of slavery, consolidated the category of pardo livre (free
brown) as a necessary linguistic instrument to express the new reality, with-
out imposing on it the stigma of slavery, but also without losing the memory
of slavery and the civil and religious restrictions that it implied. In the co-
lonial society, hierarchies of color and social status became intertwined. In
this process, the Brazilian colony took on a distinct character within the
Portuguese empire, as a colonial and slave-based society, with its particular
racial hierarchies and classifications.
24 Luso-Brazilian Review 45:1

Notes

1. ANTT (Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo), Livro das Portarias do Reino,

vol. 3, fols. 325v-26, Lisbon, June 6, 1657, and AHU (Arquivo Histórico Ultrama-
rino), códice 83, fols. 266v-67v.
2. See especially, Frei Manoel Callado, O Valoroso Lucideno e o Triunfo da Li-
berdade [1648] (São Paulo: Editora Cultura, 1943); Diogo Lopes Santiago, História
da Guerra de Pernambuco e feitos memoráveis do Mestre de Campo João Fernan-
des Vieira, herói digno de eterna memória, primeiro aclamador da guerra . . . (Rec-
ife: Secretaria do Interior, 1943); Opúsculo de la Guerra de Pernambuco, BNL (Bi-
blioteca Nacional de Lisboa), fundo 2343, Seção de Reservados, microfi lm.
3. According to a 1712 Portuguese dictionary, a terço had “2500 infantry divided
into companies of 250 soldiers each, which practice was soon considered impracti-
cal,” Padre Raphael Bluteau, Vocabulário português e latino (Coimbra: Collegio das
Artes da Companhia de Jesus, 1712; facsimile ed., CD-ROM, Rio de Janeiro: UERJ,
n.d.), 110. The black regiment is mentioned in the royal charter that gave Henrique
Dias the rank of field marshal on March 20, 1658, transcribed in full José Antônio
Gonsalves de Mello, Henrique Dias: Governador dos crioulos, negros e mulatos
do Brasil (Recife: Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, Editora Massangana and CNPq,
1988), 53–54. In other documents it is referred to simply as the Henrique Dias Regi-
ment. See, for example, ANTT, Habilitação da Ordem de Santiago, letra a, maço 6,
doc. 1.
4. On this point see, among others, John K. Thornton, Africa and Africans in
the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1680 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1992); Luis Felipe de Alencastro, O Trato dos Viventes: Formação do Brasil
no Atlântico Sul (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2000); Roquinaldo Ferreira,
“Transforming Atlantic Slaving: Trade, Warfare, and Territorial Control in Angola,
1650–1800” (Ph.D. diss., University of California at Los Angeles, 2003); James H.
Sweet, Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Religion in the African-Portuguese
World, 1441–1770 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).
5. Carta Régia, July 21, 1638, ANTT, Mesa de Consciência e Ordens, códice 34,
livro VII, fol. 95v. Between 1580 and 1640, the Portuguese crown was held by the
kings of Spain, the so-called union of Iberian crowns.
6. Decree dated April 27, 1654, ANTT, Livro de Portarias do Reino, livro 3, fol.
326, microfi lm 4253.
7. “From a social point of view, corporatism contributes to the image of a strictly
hierarchical society, because in a naturally ordered society, the irreducibility of so-
cial functions leads to the irreducibility of legal and institutional statutes,” Ângela
Xavier and António Manuel Hespanha, “A representação da sociedade e do poder,”
Antônio Manuel Hespanha, ed., História de Portugal: Antigo Regime, vol. 4. (Lis-
bon: Editorial Estampa, 1993), 130.
8. Fernanda Olival, As Ordens Militares e o Estado moderno: Honra, mercê e
venalidade em Portugal (1641–1789) (Lisbon: Estar Editora, 2001), 22.
9. According to Olival, the notion of compensatory favors (mercês remunerató-
rias) “allowed the services to become patrimony; they were goods like any others;
Mattos 25

they were inherited, divided, contested in the courts in terms of their adequate re-
muneration and ownership.” Even if the royal will was not subject to law or any
other restriction, “serving the Crown, with the object of requesting recompense
in trade, became almost a way of life for different sectors of Portuguese society,”
Ordens Militares, 24, 21.
10. “Henrique Dias pede satisfação de seus serviços feitos na Guerra do Brasil”
(consulta of May 14, 1657), AHU, códice 83, fols. 266v and 267. See the full tran-
scription in Frazão de Vasconcelos, Henrique Dias: Herói da Restauração de Per-
nambuco (Lisboa: Divisão de Publicações e Biblioteca, Agência Geral das Colônias,
1940), 21–24.
11. Virginia Rau, ed., “Relação inédita de Francisco de Brito Freyre sobre a capi-
tulação do Recife,” Brasília (Coimbra) 9 (1955), 198, cited in J. A. G. Mello, Henrique
Dias, 10; and “Mesa das tres Ordens Militares de Christo, Santiago e Avis, Bullas,
Decretos, Resoluções e Assentos desde a sua creação até o ano de 1731. Recopillados
e reduzidos a matérias distinctas e separados em quatro tomos. Offerecido ao muito
alto e poderoso Rey e Senhor nosso D. João 5, por D. Lazaro Leitão Aranha,” BNL,
Collecção Pombalina, 156, cited in Francis Dutra, “Blacks and the Search for Re-
wards and Status in Seventeenth-Century Brazil,” Proceedings of the Pacific Coun-
cil on Latin American Studies 6 (1977–79), 27.
12. Callado, Valoroso Lucideno, vol. 1, book III, p. 323.
13. Cited in J. A. G. Mello, Henrique Dias, 10.
14. Opúsculo de la Guerra de Pernambuco, fols. 145v and 152; and J. A. G. Mello,
Henrique Dias, 15–16.
15. This document is fully transcribed in Antônio Joaquim de Mello, Biografias
de alguns poetas e homens ilustres da Província de Pernambuco, vol. 2 (Recife:
Typografia Universal, 1858), 230.
16. Santiago, História da Guerra, 620–48; and Callado, Valoroso Lucideno, vol.
2, books IV and V.
17. Maria Luiza Tucci Carneiro, Preconceito racial: Portugal e Brasil-Colônia,
2nd ed. (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1988), 100–101; Olival, Ordens Militares, 283–86.
18. ANTT, Inventário do Livro das Portarias do Reino, livro III, pp. 148–49.
19. Pedro de Val de Vezo was the object of a royal portaria, ordering that he also
be awarded the knighthood of Christ, to have the title of Commandery of Soure,
which he had received as a royal favor, but the portaria determined that the inqui-
ries and approvals for his person be carried out “pursuant to the statutes and defini-
tions of the order,” ANTT, Livro de Portarias do Reino, livro III, microfi lm 4253,
p. 326v. There are no reports that these inquiries were carried out, J. A. G. Mello,
Henrique Dias, 70n78. Amaro Cardigo, upon marrying Benta Henriques, had his
name registered in an addendum to that portaria. As the recipient of the royal favor
of a knighthood in the Order of Santiago, this did not exempt him from the need to
undergo the de genere inquiries, with a negative outcome, as described at the end
of this article. About the invention of hierarchies of color in the Portuguese world
of the period, see also Hebe Mattos, “Pretos and Pardos between the Cross and the
Sword: Racial Categories in Seventeenth-Century Brazil,” Revista Europea de Estu-
dios Latino Americanos y del Caribe 80 (April 2006): 43–55.
26 Luso-Brazilian Review 45:1

20. AHU, Códice de Consulta das Partes, no 46, fols. 78v-79v. See the full tran-
scription in F. Vasconcelos, Henrique Dias, 26–30.
21. See Christopher Leslie Brown and Philip D. Morgan, eds., Arming Slaves from
Classical Times to the Modern Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).
22. Opúsculo de la Guerra de Pernambuco, fol. 145v.
23. Callado, Valoroso Lucideno, vol. 2, book IV, p. 12.
24. Evaldo Cabral de Mello, Olinda restaurada: Guerra e açúcar no Nordeste,
1630–1654, 2nd ed. (Rio de Janeiro: Topbooks, 1998), 236–37.
25. Ibid., 236.
26. Ibid., 453 (Table 9).
27. Ibid., 237.
28. AHU, Códice de Consulta das Partes, no 46, fols. 78v-79v.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.
32. Stuart Schwartz, “Rethinking Palmares: Slave Resistance in Colonial Brazil,”
in Slaves, Peasants, and Rebels: Reconsidering Brazilian Slavery (Urbana: Univer-
sity of Illinois Press, 1992), 122–28.
33. AHU, Códice de Consulta das Partes, no 46, fols. 78v-79v.
34. The minutes of the council meeting of November 25, 1640, are fully tran-
scribed in Luis Monteiro da Costa, Henrique Dias, Governador dos Pretos, Criou-
los e Mulatos: Em torno da biografia de J. Gonsalves de Mello (Salvador: Estudos
Bahianos, 1957), 8.
35. AHU, Códice de Consulta das Partes, no 46, fols. 78v-79v.
36. Santiago, História da Guerra, 380.
37. Callado, Valoroso Lucideno, vol. 2, book III, p. 12.
38. John Thornton, “Armed Slaves and Political Authority in Africa in the Era of
the Slave Trade, 1450–1800,” in Arming Slaves, ed. Brown and Morgan, 79–94; John
Thornton, Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 1500–1800 (London: UCL Press, 1999); Fer-
reira, “Transforming Atlantic Slavery.” For other cases in which armed slaves were
used in colonial Brazil, especially in private militias, see, for seventeenth-century
Rio de Janeiro, J. L. Fragoso, “A nobreza vive em bandos: A economia política das
melhores famílias da terra do Rio de Janeiro, século XVII. Algumas notas de pes-
quisa,” Tempo 15 (Dec. 2003): 11–36; and, for Minas Gerais in the early eighteenth
century, E. Paiva, “De corpo fechado: O gênero masculino, milícias e trânsito de
culturas entre a África dos mandingas e as Minas Gerais da América, no início do
século XVIII,” in Trabalho livre, trabalho escravo, ed. Douglas C. Libby and Junia F.
Furtado (São Paulo, Annablume, 2006), 113–30. See also Hendrik Kraay, “Arming
Slaves in Brazil from the Seventeenth Century to the Nineteenth Century,” in Arm-
ing Slaves, ed. Brown and Morgan, 146–79.
39. Callado, Valoroso Lucideno, vol. 2, book IV, p. 142.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid., 292.
42. M. C. Soares, “Descobrindo a Guiné no Brasil Colonial,” Revista do Instituto
Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro 161:407 (April-June 2000): 78–79.
Mattos 27

43. Opúsculo de la Guerra de Penambuco, fol. 144v.

44. On the wars between the Portuguese and Dutch for control of Angolan
ports, see Charles R. Boxer, Salvador Correa de Sá e a luta pelo Brasil e Angola,
1602–1686, trans. Olivério M. de Oliveira Pinto (São Paulo: Companhia Editora Na-
cional and Editora da Universidade de São Paulo, 1973); Alencastro, Trato, chap. 6;
Alberto Costa e Silva, A manilha e o libambo: A África e a escravidão de 1500 a 1700
(Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 2002), 451–502; Pedro Puntoni, A mísera sorte:
A escravidão africana no Brasil holandês e as guerras do tráfico no Atlântico Sul,
1621–1648 (São Paulo: Hucitec, 1999), chap. 3.
45. Costa e Silva, Manilha, 464.
46. Thornton, Warfare, 58.
47. Robin Law, The Kingdom of Allada (Leiden: Research School CNWS, 1997);
Thornton, Warfare, chaps. 3–4.
48. Santiago, História da Guerra, 526.
49. The principal account of the period is that of Antônio de Oliveira Cardonega,
originally written in 1680, História das Guerras Angolanas: Edição anotada e corri-
gida por José Matias Delgado, 3 vols. (Lisbon: Agência-Geral do Ultramar, 1972).
50. On the Imbangala expansion, their political institutions, and their role in
the slave trade of the 1600s, see,among others, Joseph C. Miller, “The Imbangala
and the Chronology of Early African History,” Journal of African History 13:4
(1972): 549–74; Joseph C. Miller, Kings and Kinsmen: The Imbangala Impact on the
Mbundu of Angola (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976); Thornton, Warfare, chap. 5;
and Costa e Silva, Manilha, 407–50.
51. On the “guerras pretas,” see Ferreira, “Transforming Atlantic Slaving”; and
Costa e Silva, Manilha, 441.
52. See Schwartz, “Rethinking Palmares, 103–36; Raimundo Nina Rodrigues, Os
Africanos no Brasil (São Paulo: Editora Nacional, 1988), chap. 3; R. Kent, “Palmares:
An African State in Brazil,” Journal of African History 6 (1965): 161–75; Silvia Hu-
nold Lara, “Palmares, Cuacú e as perspectivas de liberdade,” in Trabalho, ed. Libby
and Furtado, 361–81.
53. Lara, “Palmares,” 369.
54. Lara, “Palmares,” 365–66.
55. AHU, códice 275, fol. 26.
56. AHU, códice 215, fol. 34v.
57. AHU, códice 215, fol. 51.
58. Puntoni, Mísera sorte, 142–43; E. C. Mello, Olinda, chap. 5.
59. According to J. A. G. Mello, the second field marshal of the Henrique Dias
Regiment was Antonio Costa, appointed by letters patent from the Governor of
Pernambuco on April 26, 1663, Henrique Dias, 73.
60. Dutra, “Blacks,” 26.
61. Carneiro, Preconceito, 101.
62. Olival, Ordens militares, 180.
63. Ibid., 181. It was through pátria comum that João Fernandes Vieira, born on
the island of Madeira, “who first proclaimed the War of Divine Liberty” and sub-
sequently served as governor of Paraíba and of Angola, called a mulatto by his ene-
28 Luso-Brazilian Review 45:1

mies, obtained a knighthood in that order, Francis Dutra, “A Hard-Fought Struggle

for Recognition: Manuel Gonçalves Doria, first Afro-Brazilian to become a Knight
of Santiago,” The Americas 56:1 (July 1999): 112.
64. ANTT, Antônio Gonçalves Caldeira, Habilitações da Ordem de Santiago,
letra A, maço 6, doc. 59.
65. J. A. G. Mello, Henrique Dias, 11.
66. Dutra, “Blacks,” 28.
67. In addition, according to J. A. G. Mello, after Caldeira, João Martins, and
Jorge Luís Soares were appointed field marshals of the Henrique Dias Regiment, the
latter by letters patent dated July 19, 1686, followed by Domingos Rodrigues Car-
neiro, appointed by letters patent dated January 12, 1694, Henrique Dias, 73.
68. I consulted the transcription of the letter published together with other doc-
uments related to the Henrique Dias Regiment in A. J. Mello, Biografias, 239.
69. Dutra, “Blacks,” 28–29.
70. ANTT, Habilitações da Ordem de Avis, letra D, maço 1, número 1, cited in
Dutra, “Blacks,” 28–29.
71. Dutra, “Hard-Fought Struggle,” 93.
72. Dutra, “Blacks,” 30.
73. All the information about the request for knighthood by Domingos Carneiro
is taken from Dutra, “Blacks,” esp. p. 29.
74. On this war, see Pedro Puntoni, A Guerra dos Bárbaros: Povos indígenas e
a colonização do sertão nordeste do Brasil, 1650–1720 (São Paulo: Hucitec/EDUSP/
FAPESP, 2002).
75. The basic document consulted for the following discussion about the case of
Amaro Cardigo is his petition for induction as a knight of the Order of Santiago,
ANTT, Habilitação da Ordem de Santiago, letra A, maço 6, doc. 10. The petition to
the Overseas Council from February 8, 1709, is also transcribed there.
76. ANTT, Habilitação da de Santiago, letra A, maço 6, doc. 1.
77. ANTT, Antônio Gonçalves Caldeira, Habilitações da Ordem de Santiago, le-
tra A, maço 6, doc. 59; and Dutra, “Blacks,” 29.
78. There are, however, cases of mulattoes, Dutra, “Blacks,” 30–31.
79. On the growing population of free blacks and mulattoes and the role of hier-
archies of color in eighteenth-century Brazil, see A. J. R. Russell-Wood, The Black
Man in Slavery and Freedom in Colonial Brazil (London: Macmillan, 1982); idem,
“Ambivalent Authorities: The African and Afro-Brazilian Contribution to Local
Governance in Colonial Brazil,” The Americas 57:1 (July 2000): 13–36; idem, “Acts of
Grace: Portuguese Monarchs and their Subjects of African Descent in Eighteenth-
Century Brazil.” Journal of Latin American Studies 32:2 (May 2000): 307–32. See
also Silvia Hunold Lara, “Fragmentos setecentistas: Escravidão, cultura e poder na
América Portuguesa” (Livre Docência Thesis, UNICAMP, 2004).
80. Constituições Sinodaes do Arcebispado de Lisboa, 1656 (1640), liv. I, tít. XII,
dec. II$1, cited in Didier Lahon, “Esclavage et confréries noires au Portugal durant
l’Ancien Régime (1441–1830)” (Ph.D. diss., EHESS, 2001), 519n80.
81. Larissa Vianna, “O idioma da mestiçagem: Religiosidade e ‘identidade parda’
na América portuguesa” (Ph.D. diss., Universidade Federal Fluminense, 2004), 56.
Mattos 29

82. Ibid., chap. 1; Lahon, “Esclavages,” chap. 12; Carneiro, Preconceito, chap. 1.
83. Hebe Mattos, Das cores do silêncio: Significados da liberdade no Sudeste es-
cravista (Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1998), chap. 5; Sheila de Castro Faria, A
Colônia em movimento: Fortuna e família no cotidiano colonial (Rio de Janeiro:
Nova Fronteira, 1998), 138.
84. Russell-Wood, Black Man; Hendrik Kraay, Race, State, and Armed Forces in
Independence-Era Brazil: Bahia, 1790s-1840s (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
2001); Kalina Vanderlei Paiva da Silva, “Nas solidões vastas e assustadoras: Os po-
bres do açúcar e a conquista do sertão de Pernambuco nos séculos XVII e XVIII”
(Ph.D. diss., Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, 2003), 157–85.