Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0011/00116.txt

Text File | 1991-06-24 | 28KB | 454 lines

$Unique_ID{COW00116}
$Pretitle{259}
$Title{Angola
Chapter 1C.   Colonial Times.}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{H. Mark Roth}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{portuguese
trade
slave
angola
slaves
century
matamba
portugal
africans
dutch}
$Date{1978}
$Log{}
Country:     Angola
Book:        Angola, A Country Study
Author:      H. Mark Roth
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1978

Chapter 1C.   Colonial Times.

Slaving, Portuguese Penetration of the Interior, and the Dutch Interregnum,
1604-68

     The failure of the Portuguese to find silver mines in 1604 changed the
nature of their approach to the colony. Slave taking had been a by-product of
the quest for the mines: to get to the mines they had to fight, the fights
resulted in the taking of captives, and a profit could be turned by selling
the captives as slaves. Henceforth, however, slaving became the major economic
motivation for expansion and extension of Portuguese authority.

     In 1611 a former conquistador was appointed governor general, and he
pursued a more vigorous policy of expansion than had been practiced in the
past. His purpose was to obtain more slaves. The Portuguese pushed farther
into Ndongo country establishing and holding a fort a short way above
Massangano, on the Lukala River. The fighting that followed from the Mbundu
resistance supplied a stream of slaves to the coast. The Portuguese also
allied themselves with the Imbangala, who captured slaves for them.

     In an attempt to find an easy route to the interior, the Portuguese moved
southward. In 1617 they established a settlement at Benguela. This later
became an important slave port, but for most of the seventeenth century it
remained isolated and relatively independent of Luanda.

     The highland area east of Benguela was inhabited by the Ovimbundu who
may have moved there from the north and the east. Not until 1700, however, was
there some definition of which combination of polities constituted the
Ovimbundu. There were at that time twenty-two separate kingdoms. Their kings
combined political with religious and judicial authority. The king's council,
ordinarily comprising the group's elders, chose the successor to the throne.
The twenty-two states were never unified, but many became powerful on their
own. They became highly successful as traders in the late nineteenth century
and were not conquered by the Portuguese until the beginning of the twentieth
century.

     The Benguela settlement was not immediately used as a base from which to
launch further explorations until late in the century, when the Portuguese
founded two settlements on the plateau east of Benguela. Even then, however,
the combination of hostile climate, African opposition, and isolation caused
them to abandon the sites.

     From 1617 to 1621 the colony was governed by Luis Mendes de Vasconcelos.
Vasconcelos originally announced his intention of establishing friendly
commercial relations with the Mbundu but found this more difficult than he had
envisioned. He soon became persuaded that warfare was necessary if the slave
trade was to increase. Shortly thereafter he became embroiled in a war with
the new ngola a kiluanje over the movement of several Portuguese fortresses
without consultation. From 1617 to 1620 Vasconcelos led punitive expeditions
against the Ndongo and their allies, accompanied by a group of slave traders.
Large numbers of Africans were captured, converted en masse to Christianity,
branded, and shipped to the western hemisphere.

     The ngola a kiluanje attempted to make peace at the end of Vasconcelos'
governorship in 1621. His sister, Nzinga (called Queen Jinga by the
Portuguese), headed an embassy from her brother to Luanda. A woman of
remarkable ability, she persuaded the governor to recognize the Ndongo kingdom
of the ngola a kiluanje as an independent monarchy that owed no allegiance to
Portugal. She also convinced him to help the Ndongo expel the Imbangala from
their territory, but she could not get him to agree to pull down a Portuguese
fort at Mbaka, in Mbundu territory.

     Nzinga poisoned her brother and succeeded to his throne in 1624, the same
year that Fernao de Souza became governor general. After failing to get
support from Lisbon for the policy of making the Ndongo a partner in the slave
trade, he attempted to expel Nzinga and establish a monarchy that would be
subservient to Portugal. The result was continual war with the Ndongo until
1630. After a period of initial success-during which Nzinga was driven out and
a puppet king installed in her place-Nzinga's forces returned from the Mbundu
kingdom of Matamba where Nzinga had established her rule. Her reappearance
interfered with the network of trade routes and markets (called fairs) the
Portuguese had set up in her absence.

     Africans who had been drawn to the area between the Portuguese and the
Ndongo by the lure of commerce and who had populated it rather heavily, were
driven away by the constant warfare between the two. Meanwhile the Imbangala,
much changed by their long trek from Lunda country through a variety of
peoples from whom they acquired new symbols and forms of organization,
established themselves as important if volatile elements among various
sections of the Mbundu and neighboring peoples. Sometimes they were raiders,
sometimes rulers. In some contexts they were allied with Portuguese traders
against formal Portuguese authority. Later some sections, especially those in
Mbundu country, allied with Portuguese officials while others, farther south,
resisted Portuguese attempts to establish dominion. As a consequence of these
intricate and shifting alliances and conflicts, patterns of trade and
political organization in the interior shifted in the first half of the
seventeenth century.

     Before 1640 Portuguese territories had been subjected to the raids and
harassment of the Dutch, who were enemies of Spain, to which Portugal owed
allegiance. The link between Portugal and Spain was broken in 1640. The
Portuguese hoped for peace with the Netherlands, but it was to the advantage
of the Dutch to avoid peace, for they were the likely candidate to pick up
territories that the Portugueses could not properly defend. In August 1641
twenty-one Dutch ships captured Luanda. The Portuguese governor led his fellow
refugees inland to Massangano, which they decided to defend along with the
forts of Mbaka and Cambambe.

     The Portuguese also attempted to keep the Dutch from making alliances
with Africans, but the latter, alienated by the Portuguese, were only too glad
to have another European power in the area, and many, such as the king of
Kongo and Nzinga of Matamba, welcomed them. The Portuguese received support
only from their own puppet king of Ndongo, set up to oppose Nzinga, and from
an Imbangala leader. Some of these Africans were more eager to eliminate the
Portuguese presence than were the Dutch, who realized that Portugal could be
a useful partner in the slave trade.

     Within a short time, however, the Dutch realized that a continued
Portuguese presence was unworkable, even though the status of the Portuguese
was equivalent to that of African groups who acted as middlemen in the slave
trade. In 1647 and 1648 the Dutch and Nzinga made a final assault on the
Portuguese. Although they defeated the Portuguese, they were unable to capture
Massangano. In 1648 a Portuguese fleet arrived from Brazil and recaptured
Luanda.

The Defeat of Kongo and Ndongo, 1648-83

     Once again installed in Luanda, the Portuguese set about reconquering the
Ndongo territory they held before the Dutch interruption, with an eye set
particularly on punishing those who had helped the Dutch. They won several
concessions from the Kongo, including an indemnity and transfer of what the
Portuguese believed to be gold mines to their control. Portuguese influence
was extended up to the Dande River. Hostilities continued, however, until
1665, when Portuguese forces invaded Kongo territory. At t