Colonial History of Angola - 19th Century

19th Century

Portuguese possessed no fort or settlement on the coast to the north of Ambriz, which had been first occupied in 1855, until the "scramble for Africa" in 1884. Portuguese forces intervened in a civil war between 1855 and 1856, helping Pedro V Agua Rosda come to the throne of Kongo. They left a fort at São Salvador, which they maintained until 1866. Pedro V reigned over thirty years. In 1888 a Portuguese resident was stationed at Salvador, when Pedro agreed to become a Portuguese vassal. He hoped to use the Portuguese to assist in his attempt to rebuild royal authority in other parts of Kongo.

Full Portuguese administrative control of the interior did not occur until the beginning of the 20th century.

In 1884 Britain, which up to that time had steadily refused to acknowledge that Portugal possessed territorial rights north of Ambriz, concluded a treaty recognizing Portuguese sovereignty over both banks of the lower Congo, but the treaty, meeting with opposition in Britain and Germany, was not ratified. Agreements concluded with the Congo Free State, Germany and France in 1885-1886 (modified in details by subsequent arrangements) fixed the limits of the province, except in the south-east, where the frontier between Barotseland (Northern Rhodesia) and Angola was determined by an Anglo-Portuguese agreement of 1891 and the arbitration award of the king of Italy in 1905.

Up to the end of the 19th century the hold of Portugal over the interior of the province was slight, though its influence extended to the Congo and Zambezi basins. The abolition of the external slave trade proved very injurious to the trade of the seaports. From 1860 onward, the agricultural resources of the country were developed with increasing energy, a work in which Brazilian merchants took the lead. After the definite partition of Africa among the European powers, Portugal applied herself with some seriousness to exploit Angola and her other African possessions. Nevertheless, in comparison with its natural wealth, the development of the country had been slow.

Slavery and the slave trade continued to flourish in the interior in the early years of the 20th century, despite the prohibitions of the Portuguese government. The extension of authority over the inland tribes proceeded very slowly and was not accomplished without occasional reverses. In September 1904 a Portuguese column lost over 300 men, including 114 Europeans, in an encounter with the Kunahamas on the Kunene, not far from the German frontier. The Kunahamas are a wild, raiding tribe and were probably largely influenced by the revolt of their southern neighbours, the Hereros, against the Germans. In 1905 and again in 1907, there was renewed fighting in the same region.

Until the early 19th century, Portugal's primary interest in Angola was slavery. The slaving system began early in the 16th century with the purchase from African chiefs of people to work on sugar plantations in São Tomé, Príncipe, and Brazil. The Imbangala and the Mbundu tribes, active slave hunters, were for centuries the main providers of slaves to the market of Luanda. Those slaves were bought by Brazilian traders and shipped to America, including the Portuguese colony of Brazil.

Whilst the economic development of the country was not entirely neglected and many useful food products were introduced, the prosperity of the province was very largely dependent on the slave trade with the Portuguese colony of Brazil, which was not legally abolished until 1830 after Brazil's independence from Portugal (1822) and in fact continued for many years subsequently. Many scholars agree that by the 19th century, Angola was the largest source of slaves not only for Brazil, but for the Americas, including the United States. By the end of the 19th century, a massive forced labour system had replaced slavery and would continue until outlawed in 1961. Portuguese colonial rule in the twentieth century was characterized by rigid dictatorship and exploitation of African labor.

It was this forced labor that provided the basis for development of a plantation economy and, by the mid-20th century, a major mining sector. Forced labour combined with British financing to construct three railways from the coast to the interior. The most important of these was the transcontinental Benguela railroad that linked the port of Lobito with the copper zones of the Belgian Congo and what is now Zambia.

The strong colonial economic development did not transform into social development for a large majority of native Angolans. The Portuguese regime encouraged white immigration, especially after 1950, which intensified racial antagonism; many new Portuguese settlers arrived after World War II.