André do Couto Godinho: black, trained in Coimbra, missionary in the Congo in the late 18th century

Abstract

This paper follows the path of a free man of color who was born in 1720 in the Brazilian captaincy of Minas Gerais, in the town of Mariana, and died in the Kingdom of Kongo, probably during the last decade of the eighteenth century. Between the beginning of his life, in Brazil, and its end, in Africa, André do Couto Godinho spent a number of years in Portugal, in the cities of Coimbra and Lisbon. While his life story is certainly an extraordinary one, the present narrative does not confine itself to his individual trajectory; on the contrary, it uses his life as a lens for seeing into the world of free men of color in different parts of the Portuguese empire during the second half of the 1700s. Thus, in retracing André Godinho’s footsteps, I also examine the historical contexts that defined the possibilities, choices and limitations of his personal history.