João Figueiredo: Sorcery and Jurisdiction in Angola. Law and Multinormativity in Early Modern West Central Africa

When the Portuguese arrived at the mouth of the Zaire River in 1483, two vibrant normative regimes came into contact. The European traders, missionaries, and soldiers who followed the first explorers brought a jurisdictional system of government that accepted local uses and customs as biding and a theological understanding of natural law with universalist claims. They encountered complex African societies based on various normative systems, emphasizing arbitration and mediation between corporate groups and protection against evils attributed to preternatural forms of personal agency – what the Portuguese framed as feitiçaria or sorcery. João Figueiredo focuses on the intense cross-cultural translation of normative knowledge in West Central Africa following this initial encounter. He argues it was afforded by an evolving, shared understanding of sorcery and constant renegotiation of the limits and meanings of jurisdiction, the law, and the institutions of slavery.

About the Author

João Figueiredo was a research assistant at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg ‘Legal Unity and Pluralism’ at the University of Münster.

Bibliographic Data

João Figueiredo: Sorcery and Jurisdiction in Angola. Law and Multinormativity in Early Modern West Central Africa, 2025, 566 Seiten, gebunden (Einheit & Vielfalt im Recht / Legal Unity & Pluralism, Bd. 3), Böhlau, Druckausgabe: ISBN: 978-3-412-53313-7, Preis 95,00 EUR; E-Book: ISBN: 978-3-412-53314-4, Open-Access.

You can find further information on the Böhlau Verlag website.