Slave trade in Portuguese colony of Angola
Slave trade in Portuguese colony of Angola
Although the Portuguese authorities in Lisbon initially sent to Angola teachers to educate and priests to proselytize, Portugal eventually came to view the territory mainly as a source for slaves, especially for Brazil, its colony across the Atlantic Ocean. According to historian C.R. Boxer, African slaves were more valued in the Americas than were American Indian slaves because Africans tended to adjust more easily to slavery and because they were less vulnerable to the diseases of Europeans. Boxer also suggests that Jesuits in the New World opposed the notion of using Indians as slaves, whereas they were less resistant to the use of Africans as slaves. Many of these African slaves were sent to Spanish colonies, where they brought a higher price than they would have if sold in Brazil.
In 1570s the Portuguese conquistadores launched slave raids in Angola after the Kongo wars had been quelled. The Portuguese expected conquered tribes and their kingdoms to pay them a tribute in form of slaves. In 1580 the port of Luanda was taken over by the Spanish habsburgs who launched a series of armed assaults on the Mbundu and other interior tribes.
The slavery tribute was officially set up by a Portuguese official, Bento Cardoso, in 1608, which required the supply of slaves to the Portuguese through the Mbundu people or pombeiros . Around 1615, the Portuguese established a trading post at Benguela which was known locally as Mbaka, and later in 1617 it become a town.
In 1624, Queen Nzinga (Njinga) Mbande of the Mbundu (Kimundu) people took over power after the death of Ngola Mbande. She ruled during a period of the transatlantic slave trade. When the Portuguese detained her sister, they demanded the delivery of about 125 slaves before she could be set free.
Later Queen Nzinga went into an alliance with the Portuguese military governors of Luanda who launched armed incursions against the tribes of the interior, as they demanded slaves rather than tropical products such as beeswax and rubber in exchange for their manufactured goods. Slaves were obtained by agents, called pombeiros, who roamed the interior, generally following established routes along rivers. They bought slaves, called peças (pieces), from local chiefs in exchange for commodities such as cloth and wine. The pombeiros returned to Luanda or Benguela with chain gangs of several hundred captives, most of whom were malnourished and in poor condition from the arduous trip on foot. On the coast, they were better fed and readied for their sea crossing. Before embarking, they were baptized en masse by Roman Catholic priests. The Atlantic crossing in the overcrowded, unsanitary vessels lasted from five weeks to two months. Many captives died en route. Queen Nzinga died in 1663. (source: library of Congress: Angola country study).
By mid-17th century, the Dutch joined in the scramble for slaves. They began to sell guns to their trading partners to facilitate the destruction of old powerful communities and the capture of slaves. This was devastating to the inland tribes. In 1641 the Dutch captured Luanda and Benguela, forcing the Portuguese governor and his officials to flee inland to Massangano. The Portuguese were unable to dislodge the Dutch from Luanda and Benguela. The Dutch occupation effectively cut off the supply of slaves to Brazil, and this negatively affected that colony's economy. In response, Brazilian Portuguese colonists raised money and organized forces to launch an expedition aimed at dislodging the Dutch from Angola. In May 1648, the Dutch garrison in Luanda surrendered to the Brazilian detachment, and the Dutch eventually relinquished their other Angolan conquests.
During the sixteenth century and most of the seventeenth century, Luanda had been the main slave port of the Portuguese, but toward the end of the 1600s they turned their attention to Benguela. Although the first efforts at inland expansion from Benguela failed, the Portuguese eventually penetrated the Ovimbundu kingdoms and subjected their people to the same treatment that had earlier befallen the Mbundu and other tribes. By the end of the eighteenth century, Benguela rivaled Luanda as a slave port.
Ecovongo, the capital of Viye (Bié), became a major inland hub for slave trade. A nineteenth century slave and ivory trader by the name of Antonio Ferreira da Silva made Ecovongo his home because of its location between west and central African commerce.
According to Hungarian explorer László Magyar, a Hungarian who spent 30 years living in Viye, these caravans included hired carriers and slaves. The hired carriers received payment in cloth which served as a unit of currency along the coast and in the interior. Those who carried a bundle of fine cloth called kupa were well paid than the hired carriers who carried coarse cloth called covados.
According to oral tradition, there was a Ovimbundu chief by the name of Ndumba ya Chilombo at Kuandulu who used to send his subjects into Muangana Mueni Chikungulu's area to capture slaves. Another Ovimbundu chief by the name of Ndunduma from Bailundu also used to carry out raids to capture slaves in Luchazi territories.
Although the indigenous people were often responsible for enslaving other Africans, Portuguese traders provided the impetus and the market for slaving. By raising small armies, Portuguese military colonialists fought their way into Angola's interior, disrupting as they went into kingdoms having sophisticated civilizations (source: Angola: country study).
The conflict between the interior tribes and the Portuguese soon turned into slave-raiding wars. Slave raids by the Portuguese and their African soldiers tore apart the Ngangela and Luchazi families and villages. Genealogies or some family trees were lost. The slave raids destroyed communities, and many left their settlements, but the Portuguese recruited the Ovimbundu and Kimbundu people as spies (vandondzi) and used them to trace where the Ngangela and Luchazi had moved. To warn each other, the Luchazi coined the saying, "Kua ambulula Cimbali, muongua", meaning to identify a Portuguese commercial agent, it is salt. These Ovimbundu or Mbundu spies used to disguise themselves as salt traders.
Portuguese settlers in colony of Angola
The main objective of the first Portuguese settlers in Angola, and the motive behind most of their explorations, was the establishment of slave trade. Because Brazil was the jewel of Portugal's overseas territories, Portuguese who immigrated to Angola were frequently deserters, degredados, peasants, and others who had been unable to succeed in Portugal or elsewhere in the Portuguese-speaking world. Owing principally to the African colony's unsavory reputation in Portugal and the high regard in which Brazil was held, there was little emigration to Angola in the 1600s and 1700s. Thus, the white population of Angola in 1777 was less than 1,600.
Between 1830 and 1840 the Portuguese curved out plantations for coffee, cotton, and sugarcane. And other coastal towns were established such as Catumbela das Ostras (now Lobito) in 1843. In the 1880s Portuguese small farmers were settled in the highlands of Kunene.
According to historical records, most of the Portuguese who settled in Angola through the nineteenth century were exiled criminals, called degredados, who were actively involved in the slave trade and spread disorder and corruption throughout the colony. Because of the unscrupulous behaviour of the degredados, most Angolan Africans soon came to despise and distrust their Portuguese colonizers. Those Portuguese who settled in Angola in the early twentieth century were peasants who had fled the poverty of their homeland and who intended to establish themselves in Angolan towns in search of a means of livelihood other than agriculture. In general, these later settlers lacked capital, education, and commitment to their new homelands (source. Angola: country study).
The Portuguese traders and government officials, began to recruit local males supposedly to take them and work on the Portuguese settler’s farms which produced coffee, tea, fruits, wheat, and rice. It was later discovered, however, that the local people so recruited under the guise of hired labour were eventually sold as slaves (vandungo) and shipped to Brazil and other Latin American colonies such as Cuba.
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