From 1683 to 1730 there was peace in Angola (Marques 1995: 435). However, the expansionist policy of the colony still focused on the slave trade rather than the effective settlement of the territory. With the exception of the few forts along the Rivers Kwanza and Cunene, the effective Portuguese hold on the colony was restricted to Luanda. In fact, with the intensification of the slave trade throughout the 18th century, Luanda was all that mattered. The city, whose population is estimated at 7204 inhabitants in 1796, was divided into two main parts: the center and the periphery. The former was also divided into two parts: (i) the Cidade Alta, which was the political, military and religious center of the city, and (ii) the Cidade Baixa or commercial zone (Venâncio 1996: 32).
According to Venâncio (ibid. 36), in 1793 the population of the Cidade Alta included 210 Europeans, 114 Euro-Africans, 96 free Africans and 848 slaves. Only three years later, in 1796, the population was distributed as follows: 85 Europeans, 109 Euro-
9 Notice that the meaning of the word creole is not that of contemporary contact linguistics. Rather, the word is used here to
Africans and 708 Africans. Venâncio’s account is interesting in two more ways. First, the use of terms Europeans and Euro-Africans as opposed to Portuguese and Afro-Portuguese suggests the presence of Europeans other than Portuguese. In fact, Venâncio acknowledges that the term European refers to the whites “com origem próxima e remota naquele continente” (ibid. 47), and includes Portuguese whites, Angolan whites and Brazilian whites. Second, his data show that only a small part of the existing social groups in Luanda lived in the Cidade Alta, i.e. 15,1% of whites, 8,6% of Afro-Portuguese and 13,1% of Africans10, suggesting a greater concentration of all social classes on the periphery.
In fact, the periphery, which included most of the poor houses of the Africans who worked in the Cidade Alta and the yards where the slaves brought from the interior awaited shipment to Brazil and other parts of the Americas11, had a larger representation of all the social groups in the city. Hence, the ethnic composition of this part of Luanda in 1796 was as follows: 196 Europeans (i.e. 34,5% of them), 470 Afro-Portuguese (i.e. 37,7%) and 1810 Africans (i.e. 33,6%).
The exact percentage of Africans living in Luanda was constrained by the dynamics of the slave trade. For example, from 1781 onwards their number decreased, to a large extent due to the reduction in the number of slaves brought to Luanda (ibid. 47). Nonetheless, Africans always made up the majority of the city’s population. The languages spoken by this group are likely to have been related to the area of the city they occupied. In fact, those living in the Cidade Alta are likely to have spoken Portuguese, despite the fact that their mother tongue was probably African. Those living on the periphery were most likely to have spoken Kimbundu12.
10 The majority of this African population were women who worked as mocambas ‘domestic slaves’ (Venâncio 1996: 46). In
fact, a census of the population of Angola in 1777-1778 showed that there were twice as women as there were men (Iliffe 1999: 191).
11 According to Klein (2002: 129) “a maioria dos escravos passava um mínimo de seis meses a um ano desde a captura ao
embarque nos navios europeus, sendo que o tempo passado na costa à espera do embarque era em média de três meses”. It is not likely that slaves acquired any proficiency in Portuguese during their stay in Luanda, not only because three months was a too short period, but above all because most of the time waiting for embarkation was spent in the interior, where traders kept slaves for as long as it took to Europeans raise their bids (ibid. 90). During this period, slaves were used as carriers or farmers and are likely to have acquired at least basic proficiency in the African languages spoken by slaves working in those communities in the interior. This hypothesis is supported by Klein’s following statement (ibid. 155 – my emphasis):
Assim, um dos poucos relatos de testemunha presencial da captura e transporte de escravo, feito pelo Igbo Olaudah Equiano, feito escravo em 1750, ressalva com evidência que este rapaz passou pelas mãos de vários vendedores antes de chegar à costa. Além disso, passou determinada altura um mês inteiro a viver uma vida relativamente normal, tendo mesmo trabalhado como aprendiz de ourives. Passou metade do tempo com povos que falavam línguas parecidas com a sua, várias das quais aprendeu, e participou na economia local.
12 In the 18th century most slaves came from the region of the Lunda, in the northeast (Iliffe 1999:199), but they were likely
to speak Kimbundu also, not only because this was the mother tongue of the majority of Africans and Afro-Portuguese who lived with them in the periphery of Luanda but also because they were brought from the interior to Luanda by Kimbundu-speaking Africans who worked as intermediaries between the Portuguese and the Lunda chiefs. Hence, it is
While the Afro-Portuguese, i.e. mixed-race, ranked third in the population of the Cidade Alta they were in fact the second largest social group in Luanda. Their reduced numbers in the wealthier parts of the city is probably due to the fact that most of them were degredados who worked as slave traders and hence stayed with their property on the periphery. Nonetheless, regardless of the area of the city they lived in, they also occupied the majority of public offices in Luanda (ibid. 50) and their mother tongue was mostly Kimbundu (ibid. 53), despite their bilingualism in Portuguese.
The white population in Luanda was still small but it was much more representative than in previous periods in the city’s history. The growth of the white population in Angola led to the emergence of the first conflicts between the Portuguese and the Afro-Portuguese, mostly as a consequence of the nationalist policies enforced by the governors appointed by the Marquês de Pombal. In fact, throughout the 18th century, the Portuguese resisted the growing Africanization of the Afro-Portuguese elite in Angola. For example, in 1760, the Marquês de Pombal ordered the closing of the Jesuit school, as he considered them responsible for the diffusion of Kimbundu rather than Portuguese. This measure was reinforced by Sousa Coutinho’s decree in 1765 compelling all heads of households to enforce the use of Portuguese in the home, in the education of their children and in contacts with slaves. However, while better represented, the Portuguese were still too few to enforce the imposition of their language. The situation remained unaltered until the mid-19th century. Only after this period did Portuguese gradually become more widely spoken in the colony (Vansina 2001: 274-275).
It is unknown whether the sociolinguistic composition in the settlements in the interior was similar to those in Luanda, but in the latter native speakers of Kimbundu clearly outnumbered those of Portuguese.
3.5.2. T
HE EXPLORATION OF THES
OUTHAnother important feature of 18th century Angola was the attempt to explore the southern part of the colony. In the late 16th century, when Paulo Dias de Novais founded Luanda and the colony of Angola, the River Kwanza had been a key factor in the Portuguese penetration of the interior. In the late 17th century and early 18th century the Cunene River served the same purpose in their exploration of the Benguela region (cf. Map 7). In fact, this was the main area of intervention of the Portuguese during this period,
unlikely that a Portuguese-based pidgin or creole was spoken by these slaves as they could use Kimbundu, which was the lingua franca used in slave trade in the interior.
largely due to the need to find further supplies of slaves but also due to the Portuguese wish to find a direct route to connect Angola and Mozambique by land (Santos 1988: 135- 141).
The Benguela region had been known to the Portuguese since the first journey of Diogo Cão to the Congo and part of it was included in the founding charter given to Paulo Dias de Novais. In fact, the exploration of Benguela’s hinterland began in 1578 when Benguela-a-Velha was founded. In 1592, Domingos de Abreu Pinto, in his detailed report on the colony of Angola, noted the importance of the permanent settlement of that area as a means of connecting Angola and Mozambique by land and suggested that Filipe I assign a governor to the region. Of course, Pinto’s recommendation was based on an assumption that the Cunene was connected to Zambezi River, which was disproved in the 19th century. Still, in 1617 Manuel Cerveira Pereira was appointed governor of Benguela and ordered the exploration of its hinterland. The harsh tropical climate, the lack of food, the mutiny of the degredados who accompanied him and the threat of a Dutch attack led him to abandon the enterprise. Nonetheless, in 1638 the settlement of Caconda was founded and in 1694 a fort was built on the beach in Benguela (Santos 1988: 139) as a consequence of the revived interest in the River Cunene in 1664 (Padrão 1998: 30).
These explorations of the hinterland of Benguela did not result in any consequent policy of settlement. In fact, were it were not for the fact that from the late 18th century onwards it received most of the slaves that were shipped from Angola to Brazil, the region would have remained in almost total abandonment until the early 20th century. Nonetheless, these exploratory journeys provided the Portuguese with important geographical information and the will to develop that region. As in most of Angola, the first attempts at settlement occurred only in the mid-nineteenth century, when the specter of the Berlin Treaty already loomed over Portuguese interests in the colony and Brazil had already become independent.
MAP 7
Portuguese exploration journeys in Central Africa in late 18th century