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From Europe to India
(NASA photography)
One kind of Portuguese caravel. It crossed the Atlantic and sailed around Africa. (A photo taken by the Portuguese Navy.)
Portugal was a small country, but its ships had big cannon of good quality, and Portuguese had trained gunners of German and Flemish descent. At sea, the Portuguese had to contend with the Egyptians and their Venetian allies, but they were intent on gaining a monopoly on the spice trade - largely pepper and ginger. To secure their ability to trade, the Portuguese seized ports and built fortifications on shore along their route to the East. These were men of daring who were led by the resourceful Afonso de Albuquerque, who was chivalrous, presented himself with dignity and believed in tearing down Mosques and cutting off the noses and ears as a way of punishing his enemies.
In 1507 the Portuguese captured the prosperous port city and trading center of Hormuz at the entrance to the Persian Gulf - a city that was partly Arab and mostly Persian. In 1509 they defeated a large Muslim fleet in a naval battle in the Arabian Sea off the northwest coast of India, near Diu. In 1510 Portugal established a port at Goa, on India's western coast, a place that had acquired wealth from trade in horses, the only port in Asia that had adequate dockyard facilities, which also had timber for ship building, and a point from which Muslims had been debarking for pilgrimages to Arabia. And in 1514 the Portuguese reached Indonesia, the center of spice production. While China's emperor did not care who dominated the seas of southeast Asia, the Portuguese captured a fort at Malacca, and this gave the Portuguese control over the narrow waterway that was the passage farther east.
The Portuguese benefited from a tenacity of purpose and from the warring of other powers. The Portuguese were hardly noticed in northern India while rival armies there were contending with each other for power. The king of Gujarat in northwestern India saw wars at sea as merchant affairs and of no concern of his. And the Ottoman Empire was busy expanding into the Balkans, against Belgrade, Hungary and Vienna and warring with Persia.
In 1519 a Portuguese expedition, led by Ferdinand Magellan, headed west for the spice islands of Indonesia, a voyage that in three years would circumnavigate the world, proving that the earth was bigger than Columbus had believed.
A Portuguese ship arrived at Canton (Guangzhou) in southern China in 1517, and other ships arrived in years that followed, and the Portuguese annoyed China's imperial authorities by not behaving with the proper deference. The Portuguese were seen as a crude, barbaric and as thieves. Contempt for trade as a profession and traders as people still dominated officialdom in China. The Portuguese were expelled from Canton. China's monarchy attempted to limit trade with foreigners, especially with Japan, which led to smuggling along China's southern coast, and there the Portuguese continued to trade, receiving silks, porcelain and other goods from Chinese who were willing to defy Chinese law and to bribe local authorities.
In 1542, a storm blew some Portuguese to an island in southern Japan. Not since Marco Polo had Europe heard anything about Japan, and to the Japanese the red hair and blue eyes of the Portuguese made them appear demonic. The Portuguese had a matchlock musket with them, and the Japanese were fascinated by it. They treated the Portuguese with hospitality. The Portuguese gave the musket to a prince as a gift, and soon the Japanese were making copies of the musket - Japan's first guns.
In 1549 three Catholic priests, Francis Xavier and two companions, arrived with the Portuguese, at Kagoshima in southern Japan. Frustrated at first, he thought of the Japanese language as having been invented by the devil to prevent him from preaching to the Japanese. He ventured out among the Japanese without success and learned that his humble dress made a bad impression on those Japanese who were benefiting from the prosperity that this part of Japan was enjoying. He dressed better and acquired a translator, but the translations were less than perfect and his listeners were inclined to believe he was preaching salvation through a brand of Buddhism. People patiently listened to the preaching of the Catholic priests. They were impressed by his remaining undisturbed by abuse hurled at him while he was preaching opposition to worship of gods that they knew. Enough of them were in search of salvation by whatever means, and around a hundred Japanese converted in the two years that Father Xavier remained in Japan.
To protect its trade, Portugal in the early 1500s built forts along Africa's coast. From their base on the island of São Tomé, the Portuguese set up a trading post at Gwato, enjoying successful diplomacy and trading for pepper and slaves with a small kingdom there called Benin. The Portuguese also brought with them to Gwato some missionaries, who baptized a small segment of the Benin population and taught a few people how to read and write.
The Portuguese also established a presence farther south, at São Salvador, in what was called the Kongo. The people in this area, the Bakongo, knew how to work metal, including iron, but their economy mostly involved the palm tree. From the fruit of the palm they made bread, and from the pulp of the fruit they derived oil for cooking and their skin. From the palm tree they also made wine and acquired fibers for mats, baskets, fishing snares, clothes, and the roofs of their homes.
Portugal and Jesuit missionaries developed friendly relations with the Bakongo, especially its kings. The king of the Bakongo from 1506 to 1540 was Mbemba-a-Nzinga, also known as Afonso I. When a youth he had ten years of clerical instruction and had become a devout Christian. He had acquired an admiration for Christian values and European culture, and like European Christians he believed that slavery was a normal part of world affairs. Slave traders from São Tomé had followed the missionaries into Kongo, searching for slaves for Portuguese sugar plantations on São Tomé. King Afonso participated in the slave trade for the sake of revenue, but he was angered by the rapacity of the Portuguese slavers and their taking profits that he believed should be his.
Portuguese slave traders were devious in creating a greater supply of slaves. They convinced communities to rebel against Afonso's rule and then they used the rebellion as an excuse to make war against them, which created prisoners of war as a supply of slaves. And by the 1520s, slave trading had left Afonso's kingdom in turmoil, his authority undercut and some areas depopulated.
In 1522, the Portuguese took over the administration of Afonso's kingdom, while Afonso remained nominal king of the Bakongo. About 200 Portuguese were residing in São Salvador, and mixed Portuguese and Bakongo were increasing in number, some of them to fill government positions.
Afonso sent friendly letters to the king of Portugal, Manoel, complaining of the immorality and of the depredations created by Portuguese slave traders from São Tomé - letters that were confiscated in São Tomé. Afonso pleaded for more teachers, doctors and priests. He was a zealous Catholic and destroyed paganism where he could. He supplied his subjects with images of saints and crucifixes, and he built churches. His son was a bishop and was sneered at by Portuguese missionaries. Afonso's requests that reached Portugal were ignored. Manoel was more interested in developing his colony in Brazil.
Some among the Portuguese disliked the polygamy of the Bakongo, and they viewed the Bakongo as shameless regarding sins of the senses. They saw the Bakongo as uninhibited and lustful, the result, some of them thought, not only of the Bakongo's paganism but also of their eating food that was too spicy. And this criticism of the Bakongo was aimed at their fellow Portuguese - some of them clergy - who were taking black mistresses.
Critics of the Bakongo missed the self-imposed harsh controls on sexuality of the Bakongo. Boys and girls were kept apart from infancy, and both were instructed in self-control. In later adolescence they danced, and their dancing was symbolic of procreation. Their dancing shocked the missionaries, one of whom writing that one did not describe "such things on paper."
Bakongo law concerning sexual misconduct was harsh. Adultery was considered a transgression against taboos and a tearing of the fabric of society. Those judged guilty of sexual promiscuity could be sold into slavery or wrapped in dried palm leaves and burned alive. There were incidents of adolescent boys and girls hiding together and experimenting, but defloration of a girl was considered harm done to the girl's family, and that family was allowed restitution or revenge of some sort. And the Bakongo considered homosexuality a transgression and punished it.
The attitude of Portuguese toward Bakongo morality gave them a rationale for making slaves of blacks in general. They believed that blacks were better off as slaves under the control of morally superior Europeans than left to run free - similar to Aristotle's claim concerning Greeks and their slaves.
In 1518, English traders began sailing south along the Atlantic coast of Africa, seeking gold, ivory, camwood, pepper and wax, and in the 1530s French, Flemish and Dutch traders followed the English. In mid-century, English trading companies sent several expeditions to Africa's Atlantic coast. The leader of one such expedition was John Hawkins, who tried stealing slaves rather than trading for them, but this proved too much trouble. He acquired slaves from trade, as planned, and in the Americas he sailed into Spanish ports and applied an aggressive sales technique: he threatened to burn the town down if it refused to buy his slaves.
The French arrived along Africa's Atlantic coast not long after the English, hoping to trade textiles, alcoholic drink and metal goods for pepper, hides, palm oil, gold and ivory - the French less interested in selling slaves in the Americas. The French may also have brought guns for trade, in conflict with Portugal's desire to keep guns out of the hands of Africans. The French were not as interested as the Portuguese in controlling the Africans. They were at war with the Portuguese. They looted Portuguese ships and drove the Portuguese from their position at the mouth of the Senegal River.
In the 1530s, Afonso grew old and tired, and in 1540 he died. A struggle for succession and bloodshed followed, with Afonso's nephew, Diogo, emerging triumphant over one of Afonso's sons: Pedro. A party of three Jesuit priests and a lay preacher arrived in 1548 and tried to put matters straight in São Salvador, without success. Diogo reverted to animist and other cultural traditions including keeping an entourage of concubines. And he forbade his subjects to attend missionary schools.
In the 1540s, an inland kingdom to the south of Kongo, Ndongo, was providing slaves to traders from trading from São Tomé. Ndongo was subservient to the king of the Kongo, and king Diogo went to war against Ndongo to protect what he believed was the Kongo's monopoly on trade with the Portuguese. Ndongo's army routed the Kongo's army, and in 1556 established independence. Soon after, Ndongo's king welcomed the arrival of a group of Jesuits, the king hoping to improve relations with the Portuguese.
After the death of Diogo in 1561, a civil war erupted over who was to succeed him, which killed whites as well as blacks. The victor in the civil war among the Bakongo was Afonso II, but he was murdered by his brother, Bernardi, while at mass. Bernardi died in battle against a neighboring king and was succeeded by Alvaro I, who ruled for the next twenty years.
In 1568 the Bakongo were invaded by Jaga tribesmen. Alvaro fled, accompanied by Bakongo princes and others. The Jaga seized São Salvador and burned villages and churches. The Portuguese at São Tomé sent a force of 600 men to the Kongo, and after eighteen months they drove the Jaga from Bakongo lands. The Portuguese reinstalled Alvaro as king, and Alvaro's power declined as he became linked in the minds of dissatisfied Bakongo with the Portuguese.
Unable to do business safely in Kongo, traders from São Tomé transferred their slave prospecting farther south, to Luanda, on the coast, west of Ndongo. Rumors of great deposits of gold and silver inland from Luanda inspired greater attention by Portugal to its activities in that part of the world. Portugal sent a force inland to conquer, Christianize and acquire access to the wealth of great mineral deposits. Prolonged guerrilla warfare began between the Portuguese and the Ndongo kingdom. Defeated by tropical diseases and stiff resistance by Ndongo, the invasion came to a halt in the late 1580s.
From Luanda, remnants of Portugal's army took up slave-trading, making forays into the interior. Local kings there were drawn into the slave trade with the Portuguese, and at times they were destroyed by it. Inland from Luanda a greater instability had arisen. New warlords led bands of starving refugees which fought one another and devastated settled communities.
Back in Kongo in the 1590s, rebellious Bakongo allied themselves with the Dutch against the Portuguese. Many Portuguese withdrew from the Kongo region, leaving behind some missionaries, and in São Salvador a Jesuit college remained, but with little influence.
Luanda became a Portuguese colony, and Portugal sought white settlers for its new colony. Portuguese from the Kongo, along with exiles and convicts from Portugal, and criminals from Brazil, gathered south of Luanda, at Benguela. Frustrated in their search for silver and gold, and unable to compete in slave trading, some of these settlers turned to fishing and farming. Some others returned to the Kongo where they took concubines and joined slave trading communities along Kongo trade routes.
Involved in the slave trade, Portuguese governors at Luanda allied themselves with roving African bands known as the Imbangala, who appeared along the coast. The Imbangala were led by warlords and participated in the taking of slaves. Then they settled inland, creating the kingdom of Kasanje, which became a slave-trading center between points east and the Atlantic coast.
More attempts at expanding inland had been urged by Jesuit missionaries, the Jesuits looking for souls to save. Portugal lost more than 2000 soldiers from diseases and enemy attacks and again gave up its push inland. Portuguese who attempted to settle in the interior were frequently harassed or caught in the turmoil of local conflicts and intertribal warfare.
In Luanda, Jesuits quarreled among themselves but united against those colonial governors who attempted to interfere with their activities. The Jesuits were responsible for education. They trained blacks and mulattos for the clergy and for lower administrative positions in the colony's bureaucracy - to the annoyance of Portuguese settlers who blamed the trained Africans for all of what they saw as the colony's problems.
While participating in the slave trade, the Jesuits took on the role of protector of the Africans, the Jesuits believing that the best way to convert Africans was to sell them, in order to introduce them to Christianity through the dignity of labor on plantations in the Americas. Ships owned by the Jesuits were engaged in the shipment of slaves from Luanda to Brazil. And before departing, slaves were baptized en masse. Although wishing to protect the Africans, the Jesuits sanctioned the use of force against them, claiming that Africans were an unreasonable people who responded only to corporal punishment, such as use of the whip.
Recommended Books
Portugal in Africa, by James Duffy, Penguin African Library, 1963
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Copyright © 2001 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.
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