As shown in the previous section, the first fifty years of the colony of Angola were characterized by extensive wars with the neighboring African states for control of the slave trade and the silver mines which the Portuguese thought abounded in Angola. However, by the 1630s the Portuguese had managed to secure the area around Luanda, establishing peace agreements with most of the local chiefs. According to Vansina (2001: 270) “the settler community in Luanda was still small, but it was wealthy and thrived” like other centers in the interior:
Mas, também, o interior da colónia patenteia alterações significativas: aumento da população dos presídios e alastramento da mancha de povoamento. Nascerão, deste modo, outras pequenas povoações de colonizadores e Quionzo, Golungo, Bemba, Nambacalombe e Quilunda, como surgirão, ao longo dos rios Cuanza, Dande e Bengo, muitas “fazendas”, com as suas casas térreas, seus terreiros e outras dependências anexas, nomeadamente capelas (Santos 1998: 94).
However, the development of the colony suffered a setback in 1641, when the Dutch captured Luanda and Benguela with the help of King Garcia II of the Congo and Queen Nzinga of the Jagas. The Portuguese resisted the Dutch attacks on Luanda for three days, but they were finally forced to abandon the city, taking refuge near the River Bengo, where the Jesuits had their agricultural estates (Magalhães 1998-2000: 80-81).
The Dutch ruled Angola and Benguela for seven years, until 1648, when the Luso- Brazilian Salvador Correia de Sá e Benevides succeeded in recapturing the two cities with an expedition of two thousand men. From this date onwards Angola was ruled from Brazil rather than Portugal itself as the governors appointed by the Portuguese king came mostly from Pernambuco (Magalhães 1998-2000: 81) as did the first settlers in southern Angola in the 18th century. The precise linguistic consequences of this influx of Brazilians in the
colony are unknown, but it is significant that as late as the 19th century a number of travellers noted the similarity between Brazilian and Angolan Portuguese (cf. chapter 2, sections 2.1.2. and 2.1.3).
One would expect that in the years following the Portuguese recovery of Luanda and Benguela, the Portuguese crown would have invested in the effective settlement of Angola. However, this was not what happened. The nomination of Brazilian governors had the main purpose of speeding up the flow of slaves to Brazil and the Spanish American colonies. Hence, the thirty years that followed the defeat of the Dutch were characterized by consecutive wars against the Mbundu states of Matamba, Kissama and Kassange, which had not only helped the Dutch but now also imposed severe constraints on the access of the Portuguese to the potential slaves in the interior. Securing extensive supplies of slaves was, once again, the main concern of the Portuguese crown in Angola.
As far as the sociolinguistic setting is concerned, Vansina (2001) argues that in the interior the use of Portuguese as a lingua franca expanded among chiefs and traders essentially because “reading and writing was useful … to establish political rights, to secure inheritances by written wills, and to claim or object to claims concerning trading matters” (ibid. 272). However, it is likely that this expansion was also due to the fact that most of the few Portuguese whom the crown was able to draft to go to Angola were sent to the interior, where they were most needed to secure the presídios (i.e. forts) at a time of ongoing warfare with the Mbundu states. In fact, according to Boxer (1965: 133):
After the recovery of Luanda in 1648, it became customary to send out drafts of recruits for the garrison with the incoming governor every three years. The drafts were mainly raised from the overpopulated islands of Madeira and the Azores, particularly the former.
A significant number of these draftees came also from Pernambuco and Ceará in Brazil, as they were accustomed to the tropics and were more likely to survive in Angola (Boxer 1965: 134). Regardless of where they came from, these draftees were mostly degredados or convicts.
In contrast to this expansion of Portuguese as a lingua franca in the immediate vicinity of the forts in the interior, Kimbundu was the most widespread language in nearly all households in 17th century Luanda and in the daily life of the city. According to Vansina (2001: 271), the factor that contributed the most to this was the fact that, owing to the high rate of mortality among European settlers and the low influx of women into the colony, the large group of Afro-Portuguese “began to occupy more and more positions in the army and the local administration”. Hence:
As a result, Kimbundu, especially from the 1650’s onwards, gradually came to be as essential in administration, the army, the church as it was for inland commerce, despite the official status of Portuguese and despite the fact that high officials or bishops sent out from Lisbon only knew Portuguese (ibid).
Another important factor for the consolidation of Kimbundu’s position as the most widely spoken language in Angola was the fact that the majority of the slaves arriving in Luanda in the 17th century were Kimbundu speakers, as they were mainly drawn from the crumbling Mbundu states of Matamba, Kissama and Kassange. Consequently, Kimbundu was also the official language of missionary work, as shown by the fact that “slaves exported from Luanda, whatever their origins, learned some Kimbundu and were baptized in this language before their embarkation” (Vansina 2001: 273). The role of Kimbundu in missionary work is also shown by the publication of several catechisms in this language. These publications were of great importance in the standardization of the language. The exception that proves the rule appears to have been a closely-knit group of black, Portuguese-speaking, Roman Catholic families known in the history of Angola as the Old Creoles of Luanda (Birmingham 2002: 148)9.