Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua: An Enslaved Muslim of the Black Atlantic

A literate Muslim born between 1820 and 1830 in present-day Benin, Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua was enslaved in West Africa and forcibly moved to Brazil in 1845. During a trip to New York City in 1847, he escaped from his master and fled to Haiti, where he converted to Christianity. When he eventually returned to the United States, he enrolled in New York Central College. Baquaqua published his autobiography --the only known narrative by a former Brazilian slave-- in 1854 and traveled to England with the intention of returning to Africa. He apparently achieved this goal by the early 1860s, when his paper trail disappears.

Lovejoy and Bezerra’s analysis of this remarkable autobiography--the only known narrative by a former Brazilian slave--illuminates what Baquaqua’s home in Africa was like and examines African slavery in mid-nineteenth-century Brazil. It also offers an Atlantic perspective on resistance to slavery in the Americas in the era of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.

Paul E. Lovejoy is Distinguished Research Professor and Canada Research Chair in African Diaspora History at York University. Nielson Bezerra is associate professor at Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro and director of Museu Vivo do São Bento.