Africa

AFRICA

Portuguese colonial and trading ventures in Africa, whose beginning is conventionally dated from the conquest of Ceuta in 1415, continued with the gradual exploration of the Saharan and then West African Atlantic coastline from the mid-1430s to the mid-1480s. Having reached an early peak in the first three decades of the sixteenth century, the colonial enterprise stalled for the time being, as a result of defeats in Morocco and settlement setbacks in West Africa and Angola. The latter were partially offset, however, by the prosperity of the Cape Verde Islands and of São Tomé Island, as well as by commercial breakthroughs in West and East Africa. Subsequent economic stagnation, foreign competition, and the Dutch assaults and occupation of 1620–1648 helped to erode Portugal's African interests. New vigorous expansion followed, however, above all in Angola and Mozambique, from 1650 onward. Portuguese adventurers, entrepreneurs, and chartered companies maintained an important role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and in Indian Ocean commerce throughout the eighteenth century, and swings in the prosperity of Brazil and in the attendant demand for slaves visibly shaped the economic fortunes of the African colonies.

MOROCCO

Between 1415 and 1521, Portugal occupied six Moroccan coastal towns (Ceuta, 1415; Ksar as-Saghir, 1458; Arzilla and Tangier, 1471; Safi and Azemmur, 1507–1513), and built six new strategic forts along Morocco's Atlantic shore. Failing to tap into the trans-Saharan caravan trade, the outposts remained largely isolated, and maintaining them quickly became a serious burden. Following an era of neglect in the 1520s and 1530s, the outposts were repaired and new fortifications built by the early 1540s (particularly at Mazagan). A spirit of retrenchment nonetheless prevailed, and heavy losses between 1541 and 1550 reduced the Portuguese holdings to Ceuta, Tangier, and Mazagan. When Portugal reclaimed its independence from Spain in 1640, Ceuta pledged allegiance to Spain; Catherine of Bragança's marriage to Charles II gave Tangier to England in 1661; and Mazagan (modern El Jadida), a textbook early modern fortress town, surrendered to Morocco in 1769.

CAPE VERDE AND WEST AFRICA

Discovered around 1460, three of the Cape Verde Islands (Santiago, Fogo, and Maio) were quickly colonized and developed an economy buttressed by trade in slaves, cattle, salt, and dyestuffs. On the African mainland, a small fort was built at Arguim (Mauritania; c. 1450), but the key Portuguese footholds were the fort of São Jorge da Mina (Ghana; 1482), nearby Axim (1490s), and another outpost near Cabo das Redes (1500). A short-lived trading post was maintained at Ughoton (Benin) (1487–1507). An important seasonal station sprang up at the site of the native merchant fairs held at Kantor, on the upper Gambia River. Elsewhere, in Senegal, in Gambia, in the "Guinea Rivers" region, and farther on to Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Ivory Coast, as well as in the Bight of Benin, the Portuguese traded intermittently, often from shipboard. African gold, slaves, ivory, civet, wax, and spices—malaguetta (also known as "grains of paradise," the subtly pungent seeds of the West African plant Aframomum melegueta, belonging to the ginger family [Zingiberaceae]) and tailed pepper (the slightly bitter pungent seeds of so-called false cubeb pepper [Piper guinense or Piper clusii ])—were exchanged for horses, European cloth, North African fabrics, Indian cottons, salt, hats, iron, brass, copper, and tin articles, beads, and cowrie shells.

Mismanagement, foreign interlopers (Spanish, French, English, and then the Dutch), policy failures, and African politics eroded trade profits after 1525. By the 1530s Arguim was in decline, and Mina's gold exports tapered off after 1550. Military penetration into the hinterland of Mina failed, as did projects to establish a full-scale colony in the 1570s and 1590s. Cape Verde experienced some prosperity, but viable local export production was limited to horses, the violet dyestuff orchil (obtained from local lichens), salt, maize, and cotton. In the 1600s, mainland trading posts between Mauritania and Sierra Leone came to depend more heavily on Cape Verde, and the Portuguese asserted themselves between the Casamance and Geba rivers. The Mina gold trade recovered in the early 1600s, but after 1618–1619 its decline was precipitous. In 1620–1641, the Portuguese forts in West Africa fell to the Dutch, Mina capitulating in 1637 and Arguim in 1638. The losses were never recovered.

In 1680–1706, trade between Cape Verde and the African mainland was controlled by the Company of Cape Verde and Cachéu, a privileged exporter of slaves to Spanish America. The English, however, established a stake in the island trade after 1706. From 1757 to 1786, chartered companies, notably the Company of Grão-Pará and Maranhão, once again dominated Cape Verde and the Guinea coast. Reforms brought the demise of the last donatory privileges and the creation of a new Captaincy General of Cape Verde. The authority of the captains, however, was curtailed by the power of the companies, and new trading stations replaced only partially those lost by 1641. The most conspicuous addition was the fort of São João Baptista de Ajudá (1677–1680) in Dahomey, which became a hub of the slave and ivory trade. Subordinate to the Captaincy of São Tomé, Ajudá was controlled by the Company of Cape Verde and Cachéu until 1706. Subsequently, exports of slaves to Brazil secured maintenance subsidies from Bahia for the Ajudá fort.

SAÕ TOMÉ AND PRÍNCIPE

Following the discovery of the islands of São Tomé, Ano Bom, and Príncipe (originally Santo Antão) in 1470–1471, effective settlement was undertaken in 1486–1510. The already inhabited island of Fernão do Pó, by contrast, resisted colonization. São Tomé, populated by Portuguese, free Africans, and baptized Jews sent out by the crown, quickly became a slaveholding society geared toward sugar production and the reexport of African slaves. By 1529, there were some sixty sugar mills on the island, but the heyday of sugar production was over by 1600, and internal unrest, Brazilian competition, sugarcane blight, and the emigration of planters to Brazil reduced São Tomé to dire straits by 1615. The island's role as a transit point for slaves also declined, and Dutch raids (from 1612 onward) culminated in the occupation of the island's strategic port in 1641–1644. Although sugar continued to be produced and the cultivation of ginger was attempted, by the 1670s São Tomé was only a modest hub of regional trade. Administrative reforms in 1753–1770 helped to improve conditions, but maintaining Portuguese control over all four islands was a burden. The treaties of San Ildefonso and El Pardo (1777–1778) ceded Fernão do Pó (now Fernando Póo) and Ano Bom (now Annobón) to Spain.

ANGOLA

Following a haphazard expansion of trade in the 1540s–1560s, a doação, 'crown donation', of land south of the Kwanza River was made in 1571 to Paulo Dias de Novais. The first settlement was organized in Luanda Bay in 1575, and the colony quickly became involved in slaving (exporting c. 10,000 slaves in the 1570s). The failure to extract concessions from the kingdom of Ndongo led to a series of wars (1579–1590), which the colonists at first fought in alliance with King António I of Kongo. Demographic losses to disease and warfare were severe, however, and by 1590 exhaustion and defeats stalled the inland expansion. The crown assumed direct control of the colony.

In the 1600s, commerce replaced raids and warfare as a source of captives in the Luanda hinterland. As Portuguese military influence revived, permanent slave market networks stretched eastward (to the Kwango and the middle Kwanza rivers) and, in 1617, fresh conquests were launched from the new coastal outpost of Benguela in central Angola. Raids yielded cattle, sheep, and cheaper slaves than those exported through Luanda. The Dutch occupation of Luanda (1641–1648) partly isolated the colony from the remaining Portuguese Atlantic networks, but slaving continued, based on the (Portuguese) loyalist refuge of Massangano. The liberation of Luanda by the Brazilian fleet of Salvador Correia de Sá reaffirmed the ties between Angola and its main outlet for slaves, Brazil.

Thrusting from Benguela into central Angola's highlands, dominated by the recently formed Ovimbundu kingdoms of Imbangala warlords, the Portuguese reached the upper Katumbela River by the 1650s, and the Kunene River by c. 1720. Here too, raiding gradually yielded to organized trade in slaves, and in the 1770s many of the Ovimbundu warlords were replaced with merchant rulers. In the north, campaigns were fought in 1744 against the kingdom of Matamba. The liberalization of trade in 1755–1758 could not halt a relative decline during the Brazilian depression of the 1760s–1770s, and attempts to stimulate settlement, agriculture, and manufacturing failed. The revival of Brazilian plantations in the 1780s and 1790s, however, brought the trade in slaves to a new high, and fresh sources of slaves were tapped by Portuguese, Luso-African, and Ovimbundu traders as far east as the sources of the Zambezi River.

MOZAMBIQUE

Initial cautious contacts with the Muslim seaside towns of Sofala (Mozambique), Mozambique, and Malindi (Kenya), were followed in 1505 by conquest, in spite of the hostility of Mombasa (Kenya) and Kilwa (Tanzania). The Portuguese then penetrated up the Zambezi River, establishing a trading post at Sena in 1531, and reaching Tete shortly thereafter. The magnet that drew them was the gold and imaginary silver of the Karanga empire of Mwene Matapa (south of the middle and upper Zambezi River) and of its southern outliers (Manica and Butua), as well as the ivory traded in these areas and in the Malawian realm of Kalonga. The military expeditions up the Zambezi and into Manica in the 1570s secured only mixed results, but by then tiny, yet tenacious, groups of Portuguese, Luso-African, and East Indian merchants had already scattered inland. Commerce shifted from Arab networks to Portuguese-dominated ones, with Portuguese India as the focal point and Goa as the administrative pivot.

At first hampered by ill-suited policies, the crown trade failed to prosper. Subsequently, corruption, smuggling, and lack of control over private traders made the Portuguese crown oscillate between direct administration and farming out all commerce to the entrepreneur Captains of Mozambique. Monopoly companies asserted themselves later on. By the 1650s, the inability of Mwene Matapa and Malawi to control dissident regions enticed Portuguese and other adventurers to become overlords or local protectors of large territories (prazos). At the same time, however, Arab resurgence in the north led to the loss of Mombasa and its dependencies, Pate (Kenya) and Zanzibar (lost in 1698, and then briefly recaptured and definitively lost in 1728–1729).

The heyday of the large prazos was over by c. 1730. Internecine warfare, the twists of African politics, and low production levels spelled their doom. Trade, tribute, and surface mining of gold, iron, and copper were by far the most lucrative activities. Despite state inducements and liberal reforms in 1755–1761, the much smaller, successor prazo estates of 1750–1800 never became effective producers of cash crops. The growth of the trade in slaves during the last decades of the eighteenth century, fueled by economic pressures, resurgent Brazilian demand, and the famines of 1792–1796 led to abuses that undermined the legitimacy and political stability of the prazos, initiating their decline.

See also Slavery and the Slave Trade .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Birmingham, David. Central Africa to 1870: Zambezia, Zaire and the South Atlantic. Cambridge, U.K., 1981.

Cook, Weston F. The Hundred Years War for Morocco: Gunpowder and the Military Revolution in the Early Modern Muslim World. Boulder, Colo., 1994.

Garfield, Robert. A History of São Tomé Island, 1470–1655: The Key to Guinea. San Francisco, 1992.

Isaacman, Allen F. Mozambique: The Africanization of a European Institution: The Zambezi Prazos, 1750–1902. Madison, Wis., 1972.

Newitt, Malyn. A History of Mozambique. London, 1995.

Parreira, Adriano T. The Kingdom of Angola and Iberian Interference, 1483–1643. Uppsala, 1985.

Vogt, John. Portuguese Rule on the Gold Coast, 1469–1682. Athens, Ga., 1979.

Martin Malcolm Elbl