evidence for analysing individual and collective flight, the formation of maroon communities and revolts.  
Ecclesiastical documents constitute another important source for studying the experiences of Africans in the diaspora and have been used by historians for decades. These records show that Catholicism was not only a manorial platform for controlling Africans, but also an instrument of African power, autonomy and organization. The research conducted by Soares (2002) on brotherhoods organized around West African 'origin groups' uses documents produced by the brotherhoods themselves, such as minutes and by-laws, along with baptism, marriage and death records kept by the Catholic Church. Soares (2019) recently published a study on a manuscript written by Francisco Alves de Souza, the leader of a Catholic congregation in Rio de Janeiro; in the manuscript, de Souza describes himself as a member of the Makii people from the northern border of the kingdom of Dahomey. These ecclesiastical sources are used extensively in the research on the Atlantic world (Reginaldo, 2011) because the brotherhoods were 'the first and main institutionalized form of organization for black Africans and their enslaved and free descendants' (Soares, 2002, p. 61). In the chapter she has written, Lucilene Reginaldo uses this kind of source to examine the creation and internal dynamics of Catholic brotherhoods founded by both enslaved and freed Angolans in Brazil.