From the Berlin Conference to the Paris Congress: Catholicism, anti-slavery and religious imperialism in Africa (c. 1880-1900)

• Grant number: 25/10379-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: December 01, 2025
• End date: May 31, 2029
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Modern and Contemporary History
• Principal Investigator: Rafael de Bivar Marquese
• Grantee: Roberta Angélica Quirino Pinto
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This PhD project aims to investigate the role and relationship of Catholicism with European anti-slavery at the end of the 19th century, from a perspective that links religion, slavery and imperialism. This is an extension of my master's research, which investigated Catholic ultramontanism and its relationship with the slavery crisis in the Brazilian Empire between 1866 and 1890.The focus of the doctorate shifts to the African continent, seeking to understand how the Holy See and other historical actors mobilized anti-slavery discourses precisely with Christian rhetoric in order to reconfigure Catholicism institutionally and doctrinally in the face of liberal and anti-clerical modernity.The aim is to see how the Catholic anti-slavery discourse, although based on humanitarian values, was functional to European imperialist expansion and the reaffirmation of the supposed moral superiority of the Christian West over African societies. It is also intended to demonstrate that this discourse operated simultaneously as a factor in international mobilization against slavery and as a legitimizing element of the colonial and racial hierarchies established by the European powers. (AU)