Escrever o poder: Os autos de vassalagem e a vulgarização da escrita entre as elites africanas Ndembu

Abstract

In recent works it has been brought up to evidence the importance of the writen registers especially through the exuberant example of the Ndembu States. Without abandoning the problems concerning written processes we are focusing on the second half of the XVII century and the two first decades of the XIX century in order to apprehend the articulation between colonial politics and the sedimentation of a bureaucratic language that structures the relations between the constituted and recognizable powers. Bureaucratic colonies, and African bureaucracies, bureaucratic routes/directions settled down on a fine rhetoric give themselves to light through the documentation that covers an wide geographic area (Angola and Benguela governments) and a vast institutional hierarchy (from the Ultramarine Counselor to the Sobados documents, passing by the penitentiary of Capitães-Mores).