Portuguese Empire, group of territories in South America, Africa, India, South East Asia, and elsewhere historically subject to the sovereignty of Portugal. The Portuguese can claim to have first introduced most of Africa and the East to the Europeans, founding, in the same period as the Spanish Empire in America, a multi-continental trading system somewhat in the manner of the Phoenicians or ancient Greeks. Portuguese imperialism, which began in 1415 with the seizure of Ceuta from the Moors, is divisible into three main phases: the focus on Africa and the Orient; the focus on Brazil; and the focus on Africa—even though these phases overlap.
The original impulse for Portuguese overseas expansion would seem to have been to carry the crusade against the Muslims on the Iberian Peninsula into North Africa—hence the capture of Ceuta in 1415 and Tangier in 1471. To the religious motive, including the quest for the legendary Christian kingdom of Prester John, were soon added the urge to explore (which gave the Portuguese a major role in European geographical exploration), the search for gold and spices, and the acquisition of slaves. Portuguese influence spread with the voyages of discovery down the western coast of Africa, with Cape Bojador in the Western Sahara coast rounded by Gil Eanes in 1434; the creation of a trading centre on Arguim Island (c.1448) for the Guinea trade; the establishment on the Gold Coast of São Jorge da Mina (1482) for the exploitation of the commerce in gold, ivory, and slaves; the alliance with the Kongo Empire (from 1490); and the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope by Bartolomeu Dias in 1488. With the voyage of Vasco da Gama to Kozhikode (Calicut) (reached in 1498), the Portuguese presence was also felt along the eastern coast of Africa and in India.
The objective of the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean was to monopolize the trade in spices, which the Arabs, who sold them on to the Venetians, then controlled. Maritime superiority in this vast area was assured with victory over an Egyptian-Gujarati fleet off Diu (near Goa) in 1509. Often playing off Hindu rulers against Muslim, the Portuguese set up forts and trading posts in Cannanore, Cochin, and Goa in the first decade of the 16th century. They sought to secure their dominance by subduing Hormuz (at the entrance to the Persian Gulf) and Socotra (near the entrance to the Red Sea) in 1507; and, in East Africa, by building forts at Kilwa (1505), Mozambique Island (1507), and Mombasa (1593). Their commercial empire extended eastward to Melaka in the kingdom of Malacca (taken in 1511) for the China and South East Asia trades, Sri Lanka (Colombo taken 1518), Ternate in the Moluccas (1521), Macassar (modern Ujung Pandang) in Celebes (1545), Timor (reached in 1511), and Macau, where the Portuguese were allowed to set up a trading centre in 1557. This network of trading and naval bases gave the Portuguese control of the valuable Eastern trades in pepper, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, precious stones, silk, and porcelain. Their trade reached out into China and Japan, as did missionary activity, of which the Portuguese had been given the monopoly by the papacy in 1455 (confirmed in 1514).
Portugal’s Afro-Oriental empire was essentially maritime and commercial, being confined to coastal regions. Trade was administered by the Portuguese Crown’s India Office (Casa da Índia). Settlement, which had begun with the colonization of the uninhabited Atlantic archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira islands in the 15th century, where territory was granted by the Crown to captains-donatory and municipalities were created, was notable only in the Cape Verde Islands (from the 1460s), São Tomé and Príncipe, and Goa. In the former, the Crown took back control through governors in the early 16th century, the better to benefit from the transatlantic slave trade. Given the scarcity of white women, the Portuguese took African wives and created mixed-race families. In Goa, centre of the eastern empire, a Luso-Indian community resulted from the policy of Governor-General Afonso de Albuquerque after 1510 of subsidizing marriages between Portuguese residents of Portuguese India and Hindu brides.
Despite the great material benefits that the eastern empire brought the Portuguese Crown, interest in Morocco never abated. Coastal forts were taken and sometimes lost during the 16th century before the childless King Sebastian (reigned 1557-1578) decided on the subjugation of the interior. He was killed, and almost his entire force of about 20,000 lost, at the battle of Alcázarquivir. The last outpost of Mazago was not abandoned until 1769.
In 1580 the crown passed to the Spanish Habsburgs, until a revolt restored independence in 1640. This period coincided with the decline of the eastern empire, as the Portuguese ran short of skilled manpower to crew their vessels and the rising sea powers of the Dutch Empire and British Empire challenged their position. Following the Portuguese mercantile example, and often allying with local rulers against them, the Dutch, in their superior ships, progressively wrested trade and bases from Portuguese hands in the east during the 17th century. Malacca, Ceylon, and Cochin fell to the Dutch in 1641, 1658, and 1662 respectively, while the Persians, with English help, ousted the Portuguese from Hormuz in 1622. Ceuta remained Spanish after 1640, but Tangier and Bombay passed to England by marriage treaty in the 1660s. The great days of the first European empire in the East, whose profits had enriched the increasingly profligate Portuguese Crown, were over, leaving only the State of India (essentially Goa), Macau, and part of Timor as lasting mementos.
During the 17th century Brazil, discovered by Pedro Álvares Cabral in 1500, overtook the eastern empire in importance. The territory fell, at least partly, into the Portuguese sector assigned by the Treaty of Tordesillas with Spain (1494), which modified Pope Alexander VI’s division of the world between the two countries established in 1493 by his Line of Demarcation, giving Portugal discoveries up to a line 100 leagues (about 483 km/300 mi) east of the Cape Verde Islands. Brazil at first developed slowly as a source of dyewood, while coastal exploration continued. In 1534 the land was divided among 12 captains-donatory, in part the better to defend it from French penetration and settlement. Sugar cultivation was introduced in 1516, flourishing in the favourable soil and climate of the north-east. Large plantations around Bahia and Pernambuco (modern Recife) drew in increasing numbers of slaves from Guinea, Benin, and Angola, stimulating the brutal traffic in the latter regions.
Under the influence of Spanish practice a Spanish viceroy was installed in Bahia in 1604, with administration shared between the Portuguese Council of the Indies and the Council of Finance, though in reality the captaincies retained their separateness, as governors-general had found since 1548. Portuguese colonial administration was less coherent than the Spanish example, but Portugal was more mercantilist, forbidding manufacture for export, olive-growing, winemaking, and the printing of books in Brazil. Dutch attacks on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean from the end of the 16th century seriously threatened Portuguese rule. The Dutch took Recife in 1630 and São Jorge da Mina, Arguim, and São Tomé in 1637, 1638, and 1641 respectively. However, between 1645 and 1654, Portuguese settlers led by Salvador Correia da Sã threw off Dutch rule in Brazil, finally recovering Recife, and won back for Portugal São Tomé and Angola, the sources for the supply of slaves.
The vital importance of Brazil for the empire was assured by the discovery of gold in large quantities from the 1690s, most notably in Minas Gerais. This commodity overshadowed sugar, diamonds, cattle-ranching, and tobacco cultivation economically, boosting the fortunes of Rio de Janeiro in relation to northern Bahia. Gold output rose from 2,000 kg (4,410 lb) a year in 1701 to 14,000 to 16,000 kg (30,870 to 35,280 lb) a year in the 1750s, after which it declined significantly. The gold rush boosted the revenues of the Crown through taxation, and drew in free immigrants and slaves. The population grew from under 200,000 in 1650 to 1.5 million in 1770, of whom half were African slaves and many others were of mixed race.
By the Treaty of Madrid (1750) the boundaries of Brazil were agreed with Spain, although disputes over the colony of Sacramento, on River Plate, continued until its renunciation by Portugal in the Treaty of San Ildefonso (1777). As in the Spanish Empire, the late 18th century was a time of centralization and increased royal power for the Portuguese Empire. The power of municipalities decreased, while that of the Jesuits, who protected Indians from slavery and settlers in vast semi-autonomous tracts of territory, was smashed by the Marques de Pombal, who dissolved the order on Portuguese soil in 1759 and confiscated its lands. The two States of Brazil and of the Maranhão e Grão Pará were merged in 1774 into one administrative unit, with nine captaincies-general (or provinces) ruled from Rio de Janeiro. There were some signs of settler discontent with rule from Lisbon but the situation was transformed by the arrival of the Portuguese court in Rio de Janeiro in 1808, in flight from the armies of Napoleon I. Brazil now got its own institutions, and Portugal almost became its junior partner in the united kingdom of 1815, while the treaty of 1810 opened up the country to British commerce. When the Portuguese liberal revolutionaries of 1820 sought to reassert the predominance of Portugal, Brazil seceded in 1822 under Crown Prince Pedro, who as Pedro I became emperor of a nation recognized as fully independent in 1825.
IV
Third Empire: Africa and Decolonization (1822-1975)
After the loss of Brazil, Portugal continued to be dependent on Britain as the supreme maritime power for Portugal’s retention of the Cape Verde Islands and mainland Guinea (administered together until 1879); Sáo Tomé and Príncipe, where slavery gave way to contract labour on the cacao and coffee plantations; the State of India; Macau and Timor (administered together until 1896); Angola, where European settlement remained coastal; and Mozambique (also settled on the coast), which was ruled from Goa until 1752, but where the hinterland was leased out by the Crown to Afro-Portuguese or Goan tenants of huge estates (prazos, abolished in the 1930s). Under British pressure, Portugal agreed completely to abolish all forms of the slave trade in its possessions in 1842, and abolished slavery in 1869.
The extension of Portuguese authority inland in Angola and Mozambique was prompted by the other European powers’ Scramble for Africa in the 1880s. Portugal lost out to Leopold II of Belgium in the Congo in 1885, and then tried to link Angola and Mozambique, a scheme that was thwarted by an ultimatum from Lord Salisbury, the British prime minister, in 1890 forbidding this. Thereafter, the Portuguese undertook “pacification” campaigns to secure the hinterlands of Angola and Mozambique. Methods of indirect rule in the overseas possessions were borrowed from the British, while in Mozambique the example of British chartered companies was followed in setting up three such companies to exploit and develop regions of the territory.
Influenced by French colonial practice, the Portuguese Republicans in 1911 styled the overseas possessions “colonies”, and these were granted financial and some administrative autonomy, with mixed results. By the Colonial Act of 1930 centralization was revived, the colonies becoming “overseas provinces” again in 1951, in an effort to maintain that they were integral parts of a multi-continental Portugal. However, in 1972 a measure of autonomy for Angola and Mozambique within the Portuguese currency zone (created in 1961) was announced.
In the African possessions, the end of slavery was quickly followed by labour legislation stressing the need for the indigenous peoples to work, which meant that forced labour, whether for the cheap cultivation of cotton or for public works, remained a feature of the Portuguese colonial system and “civilizing mission” until the 1950s. Though made to work and pay tax, those with the legal status of “indigene” were excluded from the category of citizenship to which “assimilated” Africans and European settlers belonged. These distinctions were abolished in 1961.
Resistance to Portuguese rule was never entirely absent from the colonial territories in the 20th century, but the internal pressure for decolonization became strong only in the 1960s. Independent India forcibly incorporated the Portuguese State of India into its territory in December 1961, a fact recognized by Portugal only after the Portuguese revolution in 1974. Earlier, in 1961, anti-colonial violence came to Angola when the rival Marxist Angolan People’s Liberation Movement (MPLA) and Bakongo-based Union of the Populations of Angola (UPA) commenced hostilities, but owing to divisions and weakness among the anti-colonial forces the Portuguese hold was not seriously threatened before the coup d’état in Lisbon in April 1974. Thereafter, the situation rapidly deteriorated, with the Portuguese abandoning the territory in November 1975 while civil war among the anti-colonial groups pulled apart a rapidly developing economy growing rich on oil, diamonds, coffee, and iron.
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In Guinea, hostilities which Portuguese counter-insurgency strategy proved unable to control broke out in 1963, leading to independence separately for Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde in 1974 and 1975 respectively. In Mozambique, guerrilla operations began in 1964, leading to independence under the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) in 1975. São Tomé and Príncipe also gained independence in that year.
In Asia, East Timor was annexed by Indonesia in 1975, although this was never recognized by Portugal; about a third of its population (200,000 people) reportedly perished in the repression that followed. In 2002 it finally achieved full independence as Timor-Leste. Under a 1987 agreement, Macau was returned to China in December 1999 after 442 years of Portuguese rule. Previously, China had threatened to seize Macau in 1849, and in 1966 Red Guards had actually occupied it.
Contributed By: Richard Robinson, M.A., D.Phil., F.R.Hist.S. Reader in Iberian History, University of Birmingham. Author, The Origins of Franco's Spain; Contemporary Portugal: A History; and Fascism: The International Phenomenon.
