African Voices from the Inquisition

This book contains some of the richest written material in existence for precolonial West Africa with unique insights into daily life in an Afro-Atlantic coastal trade settlement. Presenting the complete translated and annotated text of the Inquisition trial of Crispina Peres, an African woman born in the Guinea-Bissau region, of a Portuguese father and an African mother, it documents the Portuguese Inquisition's religious persecution of Africans on African soil. Set in a slave port in 17th century West Africa, the trial focuses on the worldview of an African woman accused of engaging in African rites and witchcraft, who is imprisoned and brought before Inquisitioners in Lisbon. It highlights her resourcefulness, resilience and spirited defence of her innocence, providing precious details on her life, household, work, health and social and commercial networks in this understudied African region.

Dr Toby Green has conducted research or over twenty years in Guinea-Bissau, Senegal and The Gambia. He is the author of a number of books, including A Fistful of Shells: West Africa From the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution (2019), The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa, 1300-1589 (2012), and as co-editor with Patrick Chabal, Guinea-Bissau: Micro-State to 'Narco-State' (2016).

Philip J. Havik (PhD Social Sciences, Leiden University, The Netherlands) is senior researcher at the Instituto de Higiene e Medicina Tropical (IHMT) of the Universidade NOVA in Lisbon, also teaching at the same institution. His multidisciplinary research centers upon the study of global health, public health, health systems, anthropology of health, history of tropical medicine, and indigenous medicine, as well as colonial and post-colonial governance and the development of ecosystems in sub-Saharan Africa, with special emphasis on Lusophone countries and Guinea-Bissau in particular. He has (co-)authored over 80 publications, including 35 peer reviewed articles, 37 book chapters and 7 books.

Filipa Ribeiro da Silva is a Senior Researcher at the International Institute of Social History focusing on the history of labour, migration, commerce in Sub-Saharan Africa. She is the author of The Dutch and the Portuguese in Western Africa: States, Merchants and Atlantic System, 1580-1674 (2011), (co-editor with David Richardson), Networks and Trans-Cultural Exchange: Slave Trading in the South Atlantic, 1590-1867 (2014), and (co-editor with Marcelo Badaró Mattos, Paulo Matos, Raquel Varela and Sónia Ferreira) Relações Laborais em Portugal e no Mundo Lusófono: História e Demografia / Labour Relations in Portugal and Lusophone World: History and Demography (2014).