Dame Portugaise (d. ''after'' 1634), was a Luso-African

Nhara Signares were the Mulatto French-African women of the island of Gorée and the city of Saint-Louis in French Senegal during the 18th and 19th centuries. These women of color managed to gain some individual assets, status, and power in the hie ...

slave trader. She was likely daughter of a Portuguese man and African woman and established as a slave trader and merchant in

Rufisque Rufisque ( ar, روفيسك; Wolof: Tëngeéj) is a city in the Dakar region of western Senegal, at the base of the Cap-Vert Peninsula. It has a population of 179,797 (2002 census). In the past it was an important port city in its own right, but ...

, where she acted as a contact channel between the Portuguese and the African rulers of the region through her connections with both, in effect controlling the entire business between the Africans and the Europeans in the region.Nancy Hafkin, Edna G. Bay,
Women in Africa: Studies in Social and Economic Change
' She is the earliest example of the many Euro-African businesswomen who acted as business-agents and diplomats between the Europeans and the African from this point on until the end of the 19th-century.

References

{{reflist 17th-century deaths 17th-century African businesspeople 17th-century businesswomen African slave traders Women slave owners