War and Diplomacy

Starting in the thirteenth century, the populations of the Upper Guinea region in present-day Senegal, Republic of the Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and the western part of the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire (also known as Ivory Coast) were impacted by the westward migration of Mandinka groups from the Mali Empire.

The Mandinka established themselves along the Gambia River and gradually became hegemonic over other smaller polities in the region. The rise of the Mandinka was connected to the expansion of the trade in gold and enslaved persons across the Sahara and was also linked to the ascension of Islam in the Sahel region.²⁵ The region of Senegambia was also undergoing transformation. By the middle of the fourteenth century, the Wolof broke with the Mali Empire, located in the hinterland, and formed the Kingdom of Jolof along the basin of the Senegal River. As in Mali, Islam predominated in the new Wolof state, which controlled five vassal kingdoms: Waalo, Kajooor, Bawol, Sine, and Saloum.²⁶

Portuguese traders and mariners not only promoted their commercial interests in Senegambia; they also made efforts to convert Muslim local rulers to Catholicism. In many ways this approach extended to West Africa their earlier conception of “just war.” According to a contemporary report by João de Barros, the Portuguese king “always ordered the captains who went to trade in those ports to have a conversation about the things of faith.”²⁷ For example, Portuguese sailors offered gifts to the Wolof prince Bor Biram with the intent to convert him to the Catholic faith through baptism, but the prince always rejected these offers.

To avoid losing Portuguese support, Buumi Jeleen sent his nephew with the group to Portugal once again, this time bringing as gifts one hundred enslaved persons and a huge gold manilla (bracelet), used as a diplomatic credential. In the meantime, however, local opposition against Buumi Jeleen continued to increase. In 1488, the prince and twenty-four remaining followers had to escape by sea and went take shelter at the Portuguese fortress at the port of Arguim, nearly 250 miles north. From there, Buumi Jeleen and two dozen supporters went to Portugal to meet King João II.²⁹

In Lisbon, the Wolof prince and his followers were treated with pomp and ceremony. The delegation was provided with fine clothes to attend court activities. In preparation for their conversion to Catholicism, the group attended a Catholic mass, and on November 3, 1488, Buumi Jeleen was baptized Dom João Bemoim, having as godparents King João II, Queen Leonor, Prince Afonso, a duke, an emissary from the pope who was at the court, and a bishop. A few days later, Buumi Jeleen was awarded with the title of Christian knight and given a coat of arms, and his companions were baptized as well.

Bemoim’s story suggests that, even if in these early diplomatic contacts Portuguese rulers may have considered African rulers as equals, the exchanges between the Portuguese and the inhabitants of the Upper Guinea coast were ultimately uneven. The Portuguese procured enslaved people in Senegambia in exchange for goods such as cloth, gold, and guns that supported internal conflicts, while also demanding that African rulers convert to Catholicism. This practice, like the early raids, derived from the period of Reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula, when the enslavement of non-Christians was justified as part of the principle of “just war.”³³

Although the Portuguese understood they were dealing with African noblemen, there is ample reason to believe that Black Africans were already stigmatized. By the end of the fifteenth century, the Portuguese were already transporting enslaved people from West Africa to the Iberian Peninsula. It is then plausible to think that, already in this early period, there was an increasing association between Black Africans and the legal status of being enslaved. Therefore, as Herman Bennett suggests, when examining these early encounters between Africans and Portuguese, scholars should consider not only the economic but also the political dimensions of these interactions.³⁴ In this context, Bemoim’s assassination is perhaps the most powerful early depiction of how power imbalance marked the first exchanges between Europeans and Africans, signaling fundamental disparities that would only intensify as the Atlantic slave trade evolved.