3 - Women & Food Production Agriculture, Demography & Access to Land in Late Eighteenth-Century Catumbela

Summary

Dona Joana Ribeiro enjoyed extensive access to land and agricultural production in late eighteenth-century Catumbela – on the bank of the Catumbela River, some three miles from the Atlantic coast and some 10 miles north of Benguela (see Map 4 ‘West Central Africa, 1850’). She had four plots of land and three farms, where she produced 98 cazongueis – totalling around 3,234 lb (pounds) – of maize (corn) and beans in 1798. These numbers surpassed the average of 2,515 lb of crops generated per farmer in Catumbela in the same year. Dona Joana belonged to a group of elite African women – one-third of the landowners – who accumulated wealth through access to land, control of dependants and agricultural production in the presídio (interior administrative outpost) of Catumbela. Yet the ability of African women to control land or food production did not constitute their main economic role in Catumbela: more important was their participation as labourers in agricultural production. Most of them were in a situation of economic dependency, often including slavery. Women represented two-thirds of the total number of free and enslaved dependants – i.e. either free or enslaved people whose labour was controlled by people with access to land. The higher number of women than men in this central economic activity supports the thesis that villages like Catumbela were immersed in the supply of enslaved people, mostly men, for the transatlantic slave trade, despite the fact that they were located in coastal areas. In addition, this chapter shows that access to land consolidated rights and the accumulation of dependent labour, despite the lack of land titles. Some African women were able to benefit from land distribution.

Scholars interested in women's agency in pre-colonial and colonial Africa have paid attention to agricultural and other types of production in the private and public spheres. Scholars have tended to generalise the predominant role of women in agricultural production, blurring the power distinctions entailed in the different activities involved. This chapter examines women's and men's control of dependents, access to land and agricultural production in Catumbela, as well as their personal connections in Benguela. I distinguish between women who were dependants and women who had access to land and labourers and controlled food production. Women did not constitute a homogeneous group in Catumbela and, moreover, there was a disparity between women's and men's opportunities to accumulate wealth.