Bahia’s Mal Revolt

The Brazilian province of Bahia also witnessed a wave of insurrections during the first three decades of the nineteenth century. The country became independent from Portugal in 1822.

The Malê Revolt broke out in the city of Salvador. Bahia’s African Muslims, enslaved and freed, were known as malês.

Approximately 187,700 enslaved men, women, and children who had disembarked in Bahia between 1801 and 1830 were boarded at ports on the Bight of Benin. In the fifteen years preceding the 1835 rebellion, nearly 60 percent of Bahia’s African-born population was composed by individuals identified as Nagôs (Yoruba speakers) and Haussás (Hausa speakers), in addition to Jejes (speakers of Gbe languages) and Tapas (Nupe speakers).⁵⁸ A number of these enslaved Africans were captured during the wars opposing the Muslim Fulani and the states subjugated by Oyo, as discussed in chapter 2. Others were made prisoners by the Kingdom of Dahomey army that waged war against its Yoruba-speaking neighbors, including Oyo. The concentration of Yoruba speakers in Bahia was central for organizing the uprising of 1835. Several of these Africans were warriors, war prisoners, or captured as byproducts of warfare. Therefore, scholars have argued that the Malê Revolt was the continuation of the African jihad begun on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.⁵⁹

Since the sixteenth century, as explained in chapter 7, the humid soils of the Recôncavo region, which surrounds the Bay of All of Saints, favored the development of vast sugarcane plantations in Bahia.

The Malê Rebellion of 1835 can be understood as the culmination of several previous slave conspiracies that stormed through Salvador and its surrounding areas between 1807 and 1830.⁶¹ By 1835, 63 percent of Salvador’s enslaved population consisted of people born in West Africa, and among them were Yoruba, Gbe, Hausa, Nupe, and Borno speakers. Moreover, more than 7 percent of the city’s total population was composed of African-born freedmen and freedwomen. All these nuances considered, the city had a total of nearly twenty-two thousand enslaved and freed African-born residents. Most Yoruba speakers adopted the Orisha religion. Whereas some were already Muslims in West Africa, others may have converted to Islam after reaching Brazilian soil. However, we can assume that most of these West African–born individuals of various ethnic groups, especially those living in Salvador, had been baptized in the Roman Catholic Church and therefore received Catholic names.

When these enslaved Africans were able to purchase their freedom, their social position remained very fragile. The Brazilian Constitution of 1824 had established that only Brazilian-born freedpeople became Brazilian citizens after manumission.

The Malê Revolt was planned to start at dawn on Sunday, January 25, 1835, during a festival day commemorating a Catholic saint. As discussed in chapter 14, days of festivity were opportune times for organized resistance, as both enslaved people and slave owners were distracted. More important, in the Arabic or Hijari calendar, January 25 was the date 25-Ramadan-1250 AH, a few days before the end of Muslims’ fasting for the holy month of Ramadan. On Saturday, January 24, the enslaved and freed population were circulating rumors about the insurrection planned for the next day. Despite its being a rebellion initiated in the city, the rebels planned to be joined by bondspeople from the plantations surrounding the Bay of All Saints. Their goal was to wage war against the white people or, according to some rebels, against all people in the white man’s land, including mixed-race and Black Brazilian-born enslaved, freed, and free individuals.⁶⁵ The news about the impending rebellion reached white residents, however. As the Bahian authorities were alerted and took action to dismantle the conspiracy on Saturday night, they found a leading group of enslaved and freed African Muslim insurgents gathered in one residence.

Bahian authorities interrogated and arrested hundreds of suspects. As the Malê Revolt was dismantled, a report by Bahia’s chief police officer narrating in detail the events of the night of January 24–25 was reproduced in one of the main Brazilian newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, the capital of the Brazilian Empire. This report estimated that a total of fifty insurgents were killed in various parts of the city, some hiding in the bushes, and some even drowned in the sea while trying to escape, while many others were wounded and transported to the hospital. As the records produced by the investigation show, and as noted in the report, the African insurgents were Muslims familiar with the Koran, who could read and write in Arabic.⁶⁷ The day of the revolt, many rebels took to the streets wearing white gowns (abadás) that only the adepts of Islam wore in private spaces in Bahia. Moreover, when the police put down the rebellion, they found insurgents carrying amulets, prayers, devotional manuscripts, and other items written in Arabic, and whose words were even reproduced in one of Rio de Janeiro’s newspapers.⁶⁸

For several months, slave owners and government authorities publicly expressed their fear that other rebellions would follow in Bahia. Newspaper articles in Rio de Janeiro complained about Brazil’s large population of enslaved Africans and the fact that the illegal slave trade from Africa persisted, and they urged authorities to deport existing free Africans introduced in the country after the legal ban of the slave trade in 1831 back to the African continent.⁶⁹ Additional pieces called for increasing surveillance of Africans as a measure to avoid a new rebellion.⁷⁰ Some newspaper articles reported rumors of new African conspiracies.⁷¹ One of these plots was reported as being planned in the towns of Cachoeira and Arraial de São Félix in Bahia, where the police arrested suspected African individuals.

Likewise, drawing on the report by Bahia’s chief police officer released just after the Malê Revolt, starting in mid-March until at least end of August 1835, numerous newspapers in several cities of Britain, France, Spain, the United States, and even Germany disseminated the news about the slave rebellion in Brazil.⁷⁴ One British newspaper reported that “on some of the prisoners were found little Arabic books and folded papers, inscribed with verses from the Alcoran, which African Mahometans are accustomed to wear about the person as charms.” Moreover, because the original Brazilian report stated that some rebels were owned by British nationals residing in Salvador, British newspapers also misleadingly emphasized that “the insurgents consisted almost entirely of negroes who were the favourites of their masters, and had always been particularly well-treated.”⁷⁵ As the British had already abolished slavery in their colonies by 1835, these articles gave an opportunity not only to present the rebellion as a warning against the horrors of slavery and to denounce the persisting illegal imports of enslaved Africans to Brazil but also to showcase British residents of Brazil as benevolent slave owners. Months later, on May 15 and May 31, 1835, the French newspaper Le Spectateur and the Spanish newspaper El Guerrero y el compilador reported a story published in the Brazilian newspaper Jornal do Commercio back on March 21, in which Brazilian authorities warned that “the same revolutionary symptoms reproduce in the province of Rio de Janeiro.” According to the article, an enslaved man arrested in the town of Campos had confessed that “the order had been received from Bahia to act, and that each slave should start by getting rid of his master.”⁷⁶

Existing records establish that in the aftermath of the Malê Revolt, 231 people were sent to trial, though only 135 sentences are known. Twenty-eight enslaved people were acquitted, and 4 Africans (1 freedman and 3 enslaved men) were executed, whereas 12 people initially sentenced to death had their sentences commuted to prison and whippings. Sixteen freedpeople were sentenced to prison, and 8 bondspeople and freedpeople were sentenced to forced labor. Whereas 40 enslaved persons were sentenced to floggings, 34 freedmen were sentenced to deportation. But later, more than 150 other freed Africans were added to a list of people to be deported.

Ultimately, the Malê Revolt was the most important slave rebellion staged in Brazil. The uprising confirmed the high degree of organization of African-born enslaved and freedpeople and their distinction from the Brazilian-born enslaved and freed population. Brazilian-born enslaved people and freedpeople were more adapted to the Brazilian society. Enslaved since their birth, they spoke Portuguese, were Catholics while practicing African-based religions such as Candomblé, and had created bonds with their owners, with whom they shared a language, a religion, and several cultural elements. In contrast, African-born enslaved men and women had not been born in slavery. They remained connected to their homeland, and they preserved their religions, memories, languages, music, and even their names. It comes as no surprise that they resisted enslavement.

After the end of the Malê Revolt, more than ever, freed Africans were considered a serious menace to Brazilian society. As we will see in chapter 17, the revolt launched the deportation and the voluntary migration of hundreds of Africans from Brazil to the Bight of Benin. Yet, Bahia’s Muslim insurrection was not the last of its kind. As the second slavery remained in full swing and Cuba became the world’s largest producer of sugar, enslaved men and women led two revolts on the island in 1843. In the second of these revolts, known as the Triunvirato Rebellion, Carlota and Fermina, two West African–born enslaved women identified as Lucumí (Yoruba speakers) became famous for attacking plantations in Matanzas.⁷⁷ But in 1844, a new larger conspiracy gathered hundreds of free, freed, and enslaved persons, including once again African-born individuals, from urban areas and plantations. Poor white Cubans, unhappy with the Spanish administration, also joined the conspiracy. The insurgents wanted to end the Spanish colonial rule on the island and to abolish slavery. According to an article in a Spanish newspaper of March 1844, the rebellion took over the entire Matanzas territory and there was “not a single mill in which there were no conspirators.... Many free blacks from Matanzas were accomplices and it seems that they expected aid, especially weapons, from English abolitionists.... Blacks who provided domestic service were part of the plan of those in the fields, to whom they had to open the doors of the houses when they showed up.”⁷⁸

As Cuban authorities dismantled the rebellion, they interrogated the alleged participants and witnesses, who were tied face down to a ladder (escalera) and beaten. Because of this method of torture, the revolt became known as La Escalera. During the interrogations, Black insurgents emphasized the sacred dimension of their participation in the rebellion, and how a large array of objects of power and amulets prepared by specialists of West Central African and Afro-Cuban Palo Monte (or Palo Mayombe) religions offered them protection in the battles waged during the revolt.⁷⁹ As in the first slave uprising in New York City in 1712, in which West African conjurer “Peter the Doctor” armored enslaved rebels with a protective powder, and similar to the Malê Revolt, in which Muslim spiritual leaders guided the insurgents, during La Escalera enslaved insurgents drew upon African rituals to acquire strength to fight for freedom.