Boxer_Race Relations in the Portuguese Colonial Empire

DOS FlLHOS DA JNDIA O.RIEN';r'Al.,

E DAPJ«lVlN<;lA-OOAPOSTOLO S .THOME

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The frontispiece of Fr. Miguel da Punficac;:ao, O.F.M, Relar5o Difensiva (Barcelona 164-o), pleading the cause of Creole friars m India.

,I .li !

l . I

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Race Relations in the

Portuguese Colonial Empire

1415-1825

BY

C. R. BOXER CAMOENS PROFESSOR OF PORTUGUESE

KING'S COLLEGE

UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

CLARENDON PRESS· OXFORD

1963

Ox;ord University Press, Amen House, London E.C.4 GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE WELUNGTON

BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS KARACIU LAHORE DACCA

CAPE TOWN SALISBURY NAIROBI lliADAN ACCRA

KUALA LUMPUR HONG KONG

©Oxford University Press, 1963

Printed ln Great Britain at the Pitma11 Press, Bath

PREFACE

I am grateful to the Richard Lectures Committee for inviting me to give these lectures at the University of Virginia in November, 1962; I would also like to express my thanks to the members of that University for making my stay in Charlottesville so pleasant.

The lectures are published exactly as they were delivered, but footnotes have been added to document the assertions in the text.

London May, 1963

v

C. R. B.

U4'/

CONTENTS

Frontispiece: The frontispiece of Fr. Miguel da Purificac;:ao, O.F.M., Relafiio Defensiva {Barcelona 1640), pleading the came of Creole friars in India.

I. MOROCCO AND WEST AFRICA

II. MO<;:AMBIQUE AND INDIA

III. BRAZIL AND THE MARANHAO

INDEX

VII

I

41

86

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I: MOROCCO AND WEST AFRICA

A most of you probably know, it is an article of faith with many Portuguese that their country has never tolerated a colour-bar in its overseas posses

sions and that their compatriots have always had a natural affinity for contacts with coloured peoples. In a recent interview with Life Magazine, Dr. Salazar affirmed: 'These contacts have never involved the slightest idea of superiority or racial discrimination . . . I think I can say that the distinguishing feature of Portuguese Africanotwithstanding the congregated efforts made in many quarters to attack it by word as well as by action-is the primacy which we have always attached and will continue to attach to the enhancement of the value and the dignity of man without distinction of colour or creed, in the light of the principles of the civilization we carried to the populations who were in every way distant from ourselves.'1

Similarly, the preamble of a recent governmental decree abolishing the former 'Statute of Portuguese Natives of the Provinces of Guine, Angola, and Mo,ambique', claims that 'The heterogeneous composition of the Portuguese People, their traditional community and patriarchal structure, and the Christian ideal of brother-

. hood which was always at the base of our overseas 1 Secretariado Nacional da Informa~ao, Salazar Says. Portuguese

problems in Africa. Complete version of the interview granted by the Portuguese prime minister to 'Life': The only version approved for publication (Lisbon, 1962), p. 6.

I

MOROCCO AND WEST AFRICA

expansion early defined our reaction to other societies and cultnres, and stamped it, from the beginning, with a marked respect for the manners and customs of the peoples we encountered.'' These beliefs are very sincerely and very deeply held, but it does not follow that they are always well grounded on historical fact. It is the object of these lectures to show that the truth was more

· complex, and that race relations in the old Portuguese colonial empire did not invariably present such a picture of harmonious integration as the foregoing quotations would imply.

The old Portuguese colonial empire was essentially a thalassocracy, a maritime and commercial empire, whether mainly concerned with the spices of the East, the slaves of West Africa, or the sugar, tobacco and gold of Brazil. It was, however, a seaborne empire cast in a military ·and ecclesiastical mould. For centuries the most common official term for the Portuguese overseas possessions was AsConquistos, 'The Conquests', irrespective of whether they had been acqtured by warlike or by peaceful mea1is. When in rsor King Manne! assumed the style and title of 'Lord of the conquest, navigation and commerce of Ethiopia,. India, Arabia and Persia,' the Portuguese had conquered none 6f these countries,; but their right to do so, in whole or in part,. was held to be implicit in a series of Papal bulls, briefs, and donations which had been granted to successive Kings of Portugal

2 Decreta-Lei No. 43893, dated 6 September 196r, in Boletim de Mofambique (Louren~o Marques, J96r). I se:rie num. ]6, pp. ragS-~. The decree was signed by Dr. Salazar and all the members of his government.

2


during the preceding eighty-three years. The sixteenthcentury Portuguese chronicler, Joao de Barros, in justifYing King Manuel's assumption of his grandiloquent title, explains that the Popes 'are universal lords, empowered to distribute among the faithful of the Catholic Church, the lands which are in the power of those who are not subjected to the yoke thereof'. Whatever the theological validity of this assertion, it certainly reflects the Portuguese conviction that they were primarily crusading conquistadores who were entitled to conquer or to dominate the lands of the Muslim and the Heathen from Morocco to Mindanao. The successor of Joao .de Barros, the soldier-chronicler Diogo do Couto, who spent most ofhis long life in the East, emphasized from personal

' experience the close connection between the Cross and the Crown when he wrote: 'The· kings of Portugal always aimed in their conquest of the East, at so uniting the two powers spiritual and temporal, that the one should never be exercised without the other.'3 •

Since Portuguese expansion overseas began with the ' ' capture of the Moorish stronghold at Ceuta in I4I5, and

since its further development was powerfully influenced by the ensuing struggle with the Moors, we can begin our survey with a brief consideration of Portuguese activities in Morocco. Whatever the motives which induced the Portuguese to undertake the conquest of

· Ceuta in I4I 5, and subsequent! y to occupy a chain of 3 Joao de Barros, Decada Prime ira da Asia, Livro VI, cap. i.,' first

published in 1552: Diogo do Couto, Decada VI, Livro IV, cap. 7, first published in r6u. For the relevant fifteenth-century Papal documents see Ch.-Martel de Witte, Les Bulles Pontfficales et 1' expansion portllgaise au XVe sihle (Louvain, !958).

3


fortresses down the Moroccan Atlantic Coast, their liuman and economic ~~souices-;,~r-efartoc; ll;:cite;Hor t!~~II1 t~ ~oillsll~~··th.~t in.astfaiiati~loL};!lisli~ .. ·i.n~s. ']:heir last offe.nsiYLe_~ total disaster on the ftt,Jd of Alcacer~Kc;\>ir JtAggt}st. 1.5is.Ly;:JieJi..tiJ£lr}tJi;lg Seh~_tian was slain and virtuallyallofhis army who were not kill;;(fwere faken.prl.soners. By the end of the six-

~..__,__ ?· ~-"·-- - -- -- -·- ---------

teenth century only Ceuta, Tangier, and Mazagao remained in Portuguese hands. Of these, Ceuta stayed loyal to Spain in 1640, Tangier was surrendered to the English in 1662, and Mazagao was evacuated in 1769.

The fighting in Morocco, which lasted with few intermissions from 1415 to 1769, partook of the character of a holy war-a jihad on the one side and a crusade on the other. For most of the time it was a war of petty raids and skirmishes, with cavalry detachments from the Portuguese garrisons making frequent forays into the surrounding countryside, and t!Je Moors trying to lure them into ambushes. Mutual religious intolerance exacerbated the bitterness on both sides. Muslims who became converts to Christianity, whether freely or under duress, and who were subsequently recaptured by their former correligionists, were martyred under the most excruciating circumstances by the Moors. The Portuguese on the other hand, often made no distinction between combatants and non-combatants when they got the upper hand. For instance, the captain of Safim, reporting to t!Je Crown on the result of a surprise attack made by t!Je garrison on two Moorish encampments in July 1541, wrote: 'We took them completely by surprise and killed about 400 persons, most of them women and children.

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' MOROCCO AND WEST AFRICA

The common soldiers gave quarter to nobody, and only after they were tired of killing, did we capture some eighty souls.'•

The lot of the 'Mouros de pazes', or Moors who submitted to the Portuguese, was usually a hard one. Their mosques and holy places were desecrated, their prayers were interrupted by cat-calls, jeering, and the throwing of stones, and sometimes t!Jeir women were violated as well. Some of their complaints were no doubt exaggerated, but there is ample evidence to prove that, wit!J very few exceptions, the Portugnese made no serious efforts to understand or to conciliate their Moorish subjects and regarded them as Camiies regarded t!Je torpe Ismaelita. When the Portuguese strongholds in Morocco were reduced to Ceuta, Tangier, and Mazagao, Moors were no longer allowed to live in these places, which were populated exclusively by Christians.

The intermittent warfare of raids, sieges, and reprisals in Morocco was punctuated by occasional truces, during which a barter-trade was carried out with Moorish and Jewish merchants. On such occasions, large caravans from up-country would enter the Portuguese strongholds under safe-conduct, or camp in the vicinity of the walls, while Christian, Muslim and Jews traded in relative amity. There were also instances when the leaders on bot!J sides exchanged courtesies and hospitality in the best traditions of mediaeval chivalry, but such instances were the

' D. Rodrigo de Castro to King Jolm III, Safim, 8 July 1541, apud Gulbenktana, As Gavetas da Torre do Tombo, I (Lisboa, r96o), p. 771. For the martyrdom of a Muslim Renegade turned Christian and Almocadem of Arzila in 1516, see D. Lopes, Hist6ria de Arzila durante o domfnio portugu8s (Coimbra, 1924), pp. 197-204.

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exception rather than the rule. Moorish influence was discernible in the Arabic titles of Adail, Almocadem, Anadel, etc., which the Portuguese used for their cavalry commanders, and the tactics in the way of tip-and-run raids were very similar on both sides. But if there was a sort of love-hate relationship between Portuguese and Moors, the hate certainly predominated. Three hundred and fifty-four years of virtually continuous frontier warfare on the Moroccan Atlantic seaboard kept alive the traditional Portuguese . hatred of the Muslim. 5 It also predisposed them to regard all the followers of the Prophet as mortal enemies, whether they were Moors, Arabs, Swahili, Persians, Indians, or Malays.

As has invariably been the case wherever Christianity and Islam have confronted each other in Africa and Asia, Portuguese efforts at proselytism among the Moors met with virtually no success in Morocco. Converts were confmed to individuals who had been captured or enslaved as children, or to adults who sought refuge in the Portnguese fortresses for personal reasons and who had no hope of returning to their kith and kin. When the Portuguese voyages of discovery and trade brought them into contact with the Negro peoples of Senegambia and Guinea their missionary efforts had more success with

6 Cf. D. Fernando de Menezes, Hist6ria de Tangere (Lisboa, 1732); J. -Goulven, La place de Mazagan sous ln. dominatiotl portugaise, 1502-1769 (Paris, 1917); Cenival, Ricard, et al. [eds.J, Sources inidites de I'histoire du Maroc. Portugal (5 vols., Paris, 1934-53); D. Lopes, Hist6ria de Arzila (Coirilbra, 1924); ibidem in Hist6ria de Portugal. Ediriio Monumental, vol. iii, pp. 429-544, and vol. iv, pp. 78-129 (Barcelos, 193 1-2); R. Ricard; Et11des sur l' histoire des Portugais au Maroc (Coimbra, 1955).

6


those who had not yet been influenced by Islam, though the long-term results did not come up to the original optimistic expectations. Manuel Severim de Faria, the scholarly canon of Evora Cathedral, who was a zealous supporter of the overseas missions, wrote of the situation as it was in 1655 as follows: 'The first place .that the Portuguese colonized on the coast of Guinea was the Mine [Sao Jorge da Mina, Elmina] in the year 1482 and the first preaching was made then, as Joao de Barros implies in his Decada I, Book 3, chapter ii. And although more than a hundred and fifty years passed until that stronghold was lost [in r637] there were never more native Christians than those in three or four villages adjoining the forts of St. George and Axim, although its jurisdiction was so large that it extended for over 200 leagues.''

Portuguese proselytism in the Congo and Angola had also lost its impetus by this time, despite a very promising start in the old kingdom of Congo in the early sixteenth century. This failure in West Africa, whether relative or complete was ascribed by Severim de Faria to three principal causes. First there was the lack or tmsuitability of missionary personnel. Bishops were usually reluctant to go to such unhealthy dioceses as Cape Verde, Sao Tome, and Congo, and when they did go they usually died of some tropical fever before they could do much good. The white clergy who could be induced to serve in West Africa were mostly of poor quality, and those few who survived the deadly tropical diseases were more

6 Manuel Severim de Faria, Notidas de Portugal (Lisboa, r6ss), pp. 224-40, 'Sobre a propagayam do Evangelho nas Provincias de Gu..ine'.

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active in 'the slave-trade, than in saying mass· or doing any priesHy office. Second, although there· were a few exepiplary Christians am.o!1g the Portugueseand.Mulatto laymen the majority wde exiled convicts or qnscrupu~ lous adventurers. The sole obj~c.t .ofthe latter was to get rich as quickly as possible,. and their unedifying lives and slave-trading activities were a great hindrance to the work of conversion. Third, the malignity of the climate and the heavy mortality among white men on the West coast formed an insuperable obstacle to any continuous and expanding missionary work.

The essential accuracy of Severim de Faria's observations is borne out by the history of the Portuguese missions on the Guinea coast. Only in the Itsekeri kingdom ofWarri did they succeed in establishing a Christian tradition that was to continue into the nineteenth century. Even there Christianity was only superficially accepted as a court religion in the capital, and it did not achieve this limited success in the rest of the country.' Commercial and missionary interests were seldom reconciled, and where they conflicted, as they did in the case of the slave-trade, it was usually the former which prevailed. 'I personally feel,' wrote a Portuguese Jesuit in r604, 'that the troubles which afflict Portugal are on account of the slaves we secure unjustly from our conquests and the lands where we, trade'. 8 This, however, was a minority view,

7 A. F. C. Ryder, 'Missionary activity in the kingdom ofWarri to the early nineteenth century' (journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, vol. ii, pp. 1-26).

8 Letter of Joao Alvarez S. ]. d. 24. vii. 1604, apud Francisco Rodrigues S.J., Hist6da da Companhia de Jesus na assistfncia de Portugal. vol. iii, (2) (Porto, 1944), p. 458.

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MOROCCO AND WEST. AFRICA

and most·ofhis contemporaries saw nothingincongruous or immoral in the fact that the ecclesiastical establishments in Sao .Tome, Congo, and Angola were maintained almost entirely from the profits of the slave-trade.

From the time of the first Portuguese voyages of discovery and trade along the Guinea coast, slaves, gold, and ivory were the principal commodities. sought by the white men. In Upper Guinea, which may be roughly defmed as the region between the River Senegal and Cape Palmas, Portuguese traders and exiled criminals frequented many of the rivers and creeks, often penetrating a considerable distance into the interior. Many of them settled in the Negro villages, where they and their Mulatto descendants functioned as principals or intermediaries in the barter-trade between Africans and Europeans. Those of them who went completely native, stripping off their clothes, tattoing their bodies, and speaking the local languages, and even joining in fetishistic rites and celebrations, were termed tangos-maos, or lan§ados. The kings of Portugal did not object to this miscegenation so much as they objected to these lan,ados evading the taxes which the Crown imposed on all overseas trade. For this reason the death penalty was enacted against them in rsrS, but although' this law remained on the statute book for many years, it was seldom if ever applied, since the Portuguese Crown exercised no effective jurisdiction in that region. Through the medimn of these lan§ados and tangos-maos, Portuguese became and for centuries remained the lingua:franca of the coastal region of Upper Guinea.

Portuguese relations with the different peoples of this

9

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part of West Africa naturally varied as between one tribe or area and another, but armed conflicts were relatively few and contacts on the whole remained friendly. Perhaps a Jesuit missionary's description of Portuguese relations with the Joloffs of Senegambia in r6r6 may be taken as fairly typical. 'To see a Joloff man,' he wrote, 'is to see a true portrait of idleness. As for the Joloff women, they are very good-natured and extremely fond of the Portuguese nation, which is not the case with the men.' He adds that the women often revealed secretly to the Portuguese plots which were being hatched by their menfolk, thns enabling the white men to escape nnharmed. 9 The lanfados and tangos-maos came in for much severe criticism, whether from Portuguese Crown officials, Jesuit missionaries, or the Dutch, French, and English traders who strove to supplant the Portuguese commercial hegemony in West Africa. But though their sins may have been scarlet, they acquired a special standing in the eyes of many of the Negro rulers and their peoples. Some of them were able to marry into the ruling families, while others made advant;ogeous agreements with local chiefs, either on their OWn acconnt, or on behalf of the European principals for whom they might

11 Manuel Alvarez S.J., •Etiopia Menor e descric;:io geografica da Provincia de Serra Leoa', unpublished ms. of r6r6, quoted by Luis de MatOs in Boletiin Internacional de Bibliogrtifia Luso-Brasileira, Torno I (Lisboa, rg6o), pp. 537-8. For other contemporary descriptions of tangos-maos and lanrados see Fernie Gue~reiro S.J., Relar5o Anual das cousas que fizeram os Padres;da Companhia de-jesu.s nas partes da India Oriental, e .no Brasil, Angola, Cabo-Verde e .Guini nos anos de 1602-3 (Lisboa, r6o5), fol. 130; OrdenacOes Manuelinas, Livro V, titulo II2, fol. xcv of the i565 edition;]. W. Blake, Europeans in West Africa, 145o-156o (z vols., London, 1942), vol. i, pp. 28-39·

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be working. Their iullnence was for long a source of envy and astonishment to other European traders who frequented Upper Guiuea.

On the Gold Coast of Lower Guiuea the Portuguese relied not only on peaceful contacts but on a display of power and force, as exemplified by the erection of the castles at Sao Jorge da Mina (r48~) and Axim (r503). Here there were no tangos-maos or lanfados who penetrated into the interior, but the Portuguese remained in their coastal forts, trading brass bowls, bracelets, beads, textiles, and other goods for gold, ivory, and slaves brought by African traders from the interior. Commnnication between the forts was by sea and not by land. There was, of course, a good deal of miscegenation with Negro women in the immediate neighbourhood of the forts; but the Mina Negresses pregnant by white men seem to have indulged iu abortion or infanticide, and Mulattoes were much less numerous than in Upper Guiuea.10

Nevertheless, the superficially Christianized Negroes of Mina town remained loyal to the Portuguese, as English and French intruders tmmd in the sixteenth century, and the Dutch in r625 and 1637. Even in the immediate

1o ' ••• porque entao amancebadOs muitos [brancosl com negras gentias, as quaes se tern par averiguado que esper~is:ao os partos, ou matandoos depois de nacidos ou fazendoos abortivoS, o qual se prova, porque estando amancebados, e crecendo bs ventres, nao hi nenhnm s6 mulato em toda a aldeia, havendo tantos, donde as negras parem a seu salvo' Cinform~ao da Mina') dated 29 Sept. 1572, apud AntOnio Bdsio C.S. Sp., Monumenta MissiotMria Ajricana. Africa Ocidental val. iii, 1570-1599, Lisboa, 1953, p. 90). For a discussion of Portuguese penetration and influence in lower Guinea at tills period see J. W. Blake, Europea11s in West Africa,: 1450-1560, vol. i, pp. 40-57.

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vicinity of the Castle of Sao Jorge da Mina only about half of the 8oo Negro inhabitauts were Christiaus, according to official reports of I6JI-2. This is certainly not a very impressive total after rso years of Portuguese occupation and missionary activity (or inactivity).

Portuguese influence on the mainland of Lower Guinea from the Rio Volta to Cape St. Catherine was for long exercised mainly through traders from the islaud of Sao Tome after its colonization at the end of the sixteenth century. At one time aud auother the Portuguese had high hopes of converting the Oba of Benin and his subjects, but the efforts of their sixteenth-century missionaries were no more successful in the long run than were those of the Spanish and Italiau Capuchins who attempted the same task at intervals between r648 aud I7IJ. But if efforts to evangelize Benin more often aroused deep suspicion of Christianity thau auy interest in its beliefs, the missionaries aud the slave-traders from Sao Tome spread the use of the Portuguese language widely in this kingdom, where a knowledge of spoken aud written Portuguese lasted for centuries. If William Bosmau, writing at the turn of the seventeenth century is to be trusted, Portuguese relations with the people of Benin afforded a curious contrast to those they had with the Joloffs at the other end of Guinea. 'The women of Benin,' wrote the Dutchmau, 'behave themselves very obligingly to all; but more especially to the Europeaus, except the Portuguese which they don't like very well; but our nation is very much in their favour.' 11

11 W. Bosman, A New and Accurate description of the coast of Guinea { ed. 1721), pp. 430-1. Cf. Pt. n, p. 252 of the original Dutch edition,

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Uninhibited sexual intercourse between Black and White did result in the creation of a thoroughly Portuguese Mulatto population, on the Cape Verde Islands aud on those of Sao Tome and Principe in the Gulf of Guinea. Whereas on the mainland it was more a matter of the Portuguese traders and adventurers becoming Africanized thau of the Negroes becoming Europeanized, the racial fusion in the islands resulted in the dominauce ofEuropean cultural traits. Both these islands were uninhabited when they were first discovered, and they were both mainly colonized by a mixture of whites sent from Portugal, Spain and Italy, and of slaves imported from a wide variety of tribes on the mainland, mauy of whom subsequently secured their freedom. First the Cape Verde Island of Santiago and then Sao Tome became slaving depots, where slaves from Upper and Lower Guinea, respectively, were collected and housed pending their dispatch to the plantations and mines of Spanish America and Brazil. Conversely, from the Cape Verdes and Sao Tome, white Portuguese and Mulattoes sailed to Upper and Lower Guinea, respectively, to trade for slaves,

1704. For a well documented survey of R.C. missions in Benin, see A. F. C. Ryder, jThe Benin Missions' in Journal of the Histor~cal Society .of Nigeria, vol. 2 (December, 1961), pp. 231-59, to whtch may be added Mateo Aguiano O.F.M. Cap., Misiones Capuchinas en Africa, II, Misiones al reino de Zinga, Benin, Arda, Guinea y Sierra Leone (Madrid, 1957), and Fr. FrancisCo Leite de Faria, O.F.M., Cap.'s lengthy review of this work in StuJia. Revista Semestral, III (Lisboa, 1959}, pp. 289-308, and his own numerpus articles on Capuchin missions in West Africa published in the review Portugal em Africa, 1950-1960. The figure for the number of native Christians at Mina in 1631, is taken from an M.S. report dated Lisbon 17 January 1632 by the ex-governor, Manuel da Cunha, in the writer's collection.

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gold, and ivory. Over succeeding centuries the racial amalgam in the islands was complete, the Negro element predominating in the physical make-up and the Portuguese in the cultural faqade.

The prosperity of the Cape Verde Islands was shortlived, and their slave-trade shifted to other centres during the seventeenth century. In r627 the governor described Santiago as the 'charnel-house and dungheap' of the Portuguese empire, and its Mulatto inhabitants were characterized as being the most vicious and immoral on the face of the earth. The numerous foreign seafarers who called briefly at the islands were usually most uncomplimentary about their inhabitants, and it is therefore refreshing to find a warm defence of them by the celebrated Jesuit Padre Antonio Vieira. 'They are all black,' he wrote from Santiago on Christmas Day 1652, 'but it is only in this respect that they differ from Europeans. They have great intelligence and ability, and all the polity of people without religion and without great wealth, which amounts to the light ofN ature. There are here clergy and canons as black as jet, but so well-bred, SO authoritative, SO learned, such great lllUSicians, SO

discreet and so accomplished that they may be envied by those in our own cathedrals at home.' Evidently Vieira's exuberant pen was running away with him, but his eulogy of the Cape Verde Islanders was probably not more exaggerated than the bitter denunciation of their failings penned by his predecessors twenty-five years earlier."

The island of Sao Tome was originally colonized in the 12 Jesuit reports on the Cape Verde Islands and mission, 1627-9,

apud Francisco Rodrigues S.J., Hist6ria da Companhia de Jesus na

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last decade of the fifteenth century by levies of white families sent out from Portugal, by forcibly baptized Jewish children of both sexes, and, above all, by banished criminals and convicts. Those of the deported Jewish children who survived were married off as they grew up, but an observer in rso6 claimed that 'few of the women bore children of the white men; very many more bore children of the Negroes, while the Negresses bore children of the white men.'13 All the unmarried men were provided by the Crown with a Negress, avowedly for breeding purposes, and a marriage ceremony seems to have been optional. A Portuguese pilot who knew the island well in the second quarter of the sixteenth century tells us that in his day people of any European nationality were welcome to settle there. 'They all have wives and children, and some of the children who are born there are as white as ours. It sometimes happens that, when the wife of a merchant dies, he takes a Negress, and this is an accepted practice, as the Negro population is both intelligent and rich, bringing up their daughters in our way of life, both as regards custom and dress. Children born of these unions are of a dark complexion and called Mulattoes, and they are mischievous and difficult to n1anage.' 14

assist§ncia de Portugal, Torno III. vol. 2, (Porto, 1944), pp. 448-70; Letter of AntOnio Vieira S.J., d. Cape Verde, 25 Dec. 1652, apud]. L. d'Azevedo (ed.) Cartas do Padre Ant6nio Vieira S.J., val. i, p. 29·5.

13 Apud, A. F. C. Ryder, 'An Early Portuguese trading voyage to the Forcados River' (journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria), vol. i; p. 298 n.

14 S. F. de- Mendo Trigoso (ed.), Viagem de Lisboa {; ilha de Siio Tom! escrita por hum piloto Portugues (Lisboa, n.d.), pp. 51-52.

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The seamen who manned the ships trading from Sao Tome to Lower Guinea, the Congo and Angola for 'black ivory' were almost all Mulattoes, and thus related by blood to the slaves they exported. As in Cape Verde, the bulk of the clergy in Sao Tome soon came to be constituted of Mulattoes and free Negros, since their mixed blood gave them a better resistance to tropical diseases, and white clergy were loath to leave Portugal for such a notoriously unhealthy place. The local authorities, as distinct from the colonists, sometimes gave eyjdence of colour-prejudice. A royal decree of 1528 reprimanded the governor for opposing the election of Mulattoes to the town council, declaring they were perfectly eligible so long as they were married men of substance. Two years earlier, the Crown had granted a petition of the local Negro freemen to found a branch of the lay brotherhood of Our Lady of the Rosary. They received privileges which were in some respects superior to those enjoyed by the same confraternity at Lisbon.15

For some fifty years after the Dutch took Axim in 1642, Portuguese contacts with Lower Guinea were few, fleeting, and tenuous. The slave trade was concentrated in Angola, Benguela, and, to a much smaller extent, the area in Upper Guinea around Cacheu and Bissau. With the discovery of gold in Minas Gerais in the last decade of the seventeenth century it became urgently necessary to fmd Negro slaves who were stronger and more fitted

15 A. Er:isio, S.C.Sp., Monumenta Missionaria Africana. Africa Ocidental, val. i (Lisboa, 1952), pp. 331, 376, 391,472-4, SOD-I. Cf. also A. F. C. Ryder's article cited in Note (n), and A. Teixeira da Mota, 'Notas sabre a hist6ria dos Portugueses na Africa Negra', in Baletim Ja Sociedade de Geografia JeLisboa,Jan.-March, 1959, pp. 27-55.

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for work in the mines than the Bantu from Angola and the Congo. This led to the reopening of the slave-trade between the Brazilian ports-Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, and Recife-and the 'Costa da Mina' as the Portuguese called Lower Guinea. Despite the intense opposition of the Dutch at Elmina, who claimed the right to force all Luso-Brazilian ships trading on the coast to call there and pay a tax of 10 per cent on their tobacco cargoes, the Portuguese succeeded in establishing themselves at Whydah in 172r. After the conquest of this place by Dahomey seven years later, an average of about 6,ooo slaves was exported to Brazil from this port annually. The Brazilian demand for slaves of Sudanese origin was counterbalanced by the Dahomians' preference for Brazilian tobacco, rum, and sugar above all other. Hence, despite periodic disputes between the two parties which involved occasional interruptions in the trade, it continued to flourish tmtil well into the nineteenth century. The LusoBrazilian slavers at times enjoyed a more favourable position in Dahomey than any of their European rivals.1 '

In surveying the relations of the Portuguese with the Africans of the Guinea coast in the widest sense of the term, it can be said that, apart from the immediate vicinity of the forts at Mina and Axim, these relations were characterized by peaceful commercial penetration and by mutual interest in the slave-trade. Missionary activities took a very secondary place, and nowhere did they meet with any lasting or impressive success on the

18 A. F. C. Ryder, 'The re-establishment of Portuguese factories on the Costa da Mina to the mid-eighteenth century', in Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, vol. i (Dec. 1958), pp. 157-83.

17


mainland. While the prestige of the Portuguese traders was greater than that of their European rivals in some regions and at certain times, the reverse was the case on other occasions. A Frenchman who attended the coronation of the King ofWhydah in 1725 reported that while the French, English, and Dutch Directors and their respective suites were allowed to remain seated with their hats on, the Portuguese Director and his subordinates were forced to stand bareheaded behind the other Europeans. He also alleged that no Portuguese would dare to strike a Negro who insulted him, 'for fear he might promptly receive twice as many blows, and perhaps something worse', whereas a Frenchman might even kill a Negro in such circumstances without incurring the wrath of the King." At a later date the rulers of Dahomey did not hesitate to remove, imprison, or deport to Brazil those of the Portuguese Directors at Sao Joao Baptista de Ajuda (Whydah) who displeased them. Nor were the authorities at Lisbon and Bahia able to take reprisals for such despotic treatment, as this wo~d have involved the cessation of the profitable slave-trade.18 But whether the Portuguese were treated by the Africans better or worse than the other Europeans who traded for slaves, gold, and

17 Voyage du chevalier Des Marchais en Guine (1730) quoted by Clado Ribeiro de Lessa, Viagem de Africa em o reino de Dahome escrito pelo Padre Vicente Ferreira Pires no anode 1800 (Sao Paulo, 1957), pp. 189--90. For an instillce of where the Portuguese were better treated than other Europeans in Guinea, see Villante de Bellefond apud A. Teixeira da Mota, Notas sabre a historia dos Portugueses na Africa Negra (Lisboa, 1959), p. JJ.

u Clado Ribeiro Lessa, op. cit., pp. 200-2; A. F. C. Ryder, 'The re-establishment,' op. et loc. cit.

!8


ivory along the coast, it was the Portuguese language which was most widely spoken and which formed the basis of several creole dialects, some of which survive to this day.

The Portuguese discovered the old kingdom of Congo in the same year that they built Sao Jorge da Mina on the Gold Coast (1482). The core of this Bantu kingdom lay in what is now Northern Angola, between the river Dande and the river Zaire (Congo). King John II of Portugal (in whose reign the great river was discovered) and his successors of the House of A viz did not attempt to secure political control of this kingdom, nor did they try to conquer it by force of arms. They were content to recognize the kings of Congo as their brothers-in-arms; to treat them as allies and not as vassals; and to convert them and their subjects to Christianity by the dispatch of missionaries to the Congo and by educating selected Congolese youths at the monastery of St. Eloi and elsewhere at Lisbon. Nor were their efforts limited to propagating Christianity. The early Portuguese embassies and missions included not only priests and friars, but skilled workers and artisans, such as bricklayers, blacksmiths, masons, and agricultural labourers. Even two German printers emigrated voluntarily with their press to the island of Sao Tome in 1492, presumably with a view to working in or for the Congo kingdom; and several white women were sent out to teach the local ladies the arts of domestic economy as practised in Portugal. One of the Congolese princes sent to Europe for his education was later consecrated titular Bishop of Utica by a rather reluctant Pope, at the King ofPortugal' s insistence in rsr8.

19


The most ardent advocate of Western religion and civilization in the sixteenth-century Congo was King Dom Affonso I, who ruled from 1506 to 1543. This monarch was a gennine, fervent, and intelligent convert to Christianity who did his utmost to implant the new religion by precept and example. Portuguese traders, workers, and missionaries were warmly welcomed, and, for a time at least, the Congolese showed an enthusiastic willingness to adopt the ways of Western life which anticipated that of the Japanese three htmdred and fifty years later. The kings of Congo modelled their court at Mbanza Congo-now renamed Sao Salvador-on that of Lisbon; the principal chiefs were given the European titles of Duke, Marqnis, and Count; and schools were opened for the teaching of the Portuguese language and the Christian religion. Unfortuuately, this promising experiment broke down after Dom Affonso I' s death, partly because of Portugal's rapidly growing commitments in Asia and South America, but mainly owing to the spread and intensification of the slave-trade.19

19 The history of Portuguese relations with the kingdom of Congo in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is relatively well documented. In addition to Father A. Bdsio C.S.Sp., ro-volume Monumenta Missionaria Africana. Africa Ocidental, which has now reached the year 1646 and is still in progress, see Visconde de Paiva Manso, Hist6ria do Congo. Documentos (Lisboa, 1877); J. Cuvelier, L'Ancien royaume de Congo (Brussels, 1946); J. Cuvelier and L. Jadin, L'Ancien Congo d'apres les archives Romaines, 1518-1640 {Brussels, 1954); L. Jadin, Le Congo et Ia secte des Antoniens. Restauration du royaume sous Pedro IV et la 'saint Antoine' Congolaise, 1694-1718 (Brussels, 1961). For succinct surveys in English cf. Basil Davidson, Black Mother. Africa: The years of trial (London, I96I), pp. II5-50; James Duffy, Portuguese Africa (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), pp. 5-23; ibid., Portugal in Africa (London, I962), pp. 37-46.

20


Clerical morality was at a low ebb all over early sixteenth century Europe, and several of the pioneer missionaries to the Congo led anything but edifying lives, if they were lucky enough to survive the malaria and other tropical diseases which qttickly killed their colleagues. Although the majority of the Portuguese commuuity, whether clerical or lay, for some decades mixed amicably with the Congolese in general and mated freely with the women in particular, a bad impression was made by the race-prejudice displayed by certain individuals. On one occasion, the resident Portuguese judge in the Congolese capital, when invited by Dom Affonso I to reside in his place, rudely replied that he wonld not live with the Congolese monarch nor with any other Negro for all the wealth in Portugal. Fernao de Mello, who was governor of Sao Tome for much of Dom Alfonso's reign, also systematically sabotaged all the efforts of the Portuguese and Congolese kings to achieve the results which they both desired. He did not hesitate to incite the Portuguese missionaries and merchants in the Congo to neglect their work of conversion and education in favour of intensifying the slave-trade, and it must be admitted that many of them did not need much urging. A considerable Mulatto commuuity grew up at Sao Salvador, and it was from this element that the local clergy were mainly recruited. In due course, they became bitterly anti-Portuguese, as visiting Jesnit and Capuchin missionaries fouud in their turn. In 164r-48, the Cathedral Chapter of Sao Salvador and the King of Congo, while remaining loyal Catholics in communion with Rome, warmly supported the Calvinist Dutch

2I


invaders of Angola, and even placed images of heretic Dutchmen on their altars.

By the end of the sixteenth century the principal West African slave-markets, which had originally been in Guinea and then in Congo, were located in Angola and Benguela. The attitude of the Portuguese towards the peoples south of the river Bengo forms a curious contrast with the efforts so persistently made to convert and Europeanize the Congoleoe by peaceful means. The inhabitants of the country south of this river were admittedly rather less advanced than those of the old kingdom of Congo when the Portuguese first made enduring contacts with the former; but this does not entirely explain the summary way in which for the most part they were treated. Disillusionment at the meagre results obtained in the Congo after such a promising start, evidently had a good deal to do with it. As early as 1563, a pioneer Jesuit missionary in Angola advocated what one of his colleagues in Brazil termed 'preaching with the sword and the rod of iron'. 20 Padre Francisco de Gouveia S.J., who was detained for many years at the

20 ' ••• para este g6nero de gente nao ha me1hor pregac;ao do que espada e vara de ferro' (letter of Fr. Jose de Anchieta S.J. d. r6 April 1563). Padre Garcia SimOes S.J., wrote from Luanda to the Jesuit Provincial, 20 October 1575, that nearly everyone with experience of the Congo and Angola agreed that the subjugation of theN egroes must precede their conversion: 'quasi todos tem por averiguado que a conversio destes Barbaros nao se alcanyad. por amor, senao depois que por armas for em sogeitos e vassallos del Rei N ossa Senhor'. For this and similar advocacy of forcible conversions cf. A. Bdsio, S.S.Sp., Mommwnta lv!issionaria Africana. Africa Ocidental, vol. ii, pp. 566-9; ibid., op. cit. vol. iii, pp. 142,205, 348, 375, 477, and for a solitary opinion in the contrary sense, pp. 279-80.

22


kraal of the N gola, or chief from whom Angola derives its name, and who then owed a shadowy allegiance to the Congo king, explained that these Bantu were barbarous savages who could not be converted by the methods of peaceful persuasion that were employed with such cultured Asian nations as the Japanese and Chinese. Christianity in Angola, he wrote, must be imposed by force, although, once the Bantu were converted, they would make excellent Christi"<'s. This was, and for long remained, the general view among Portuguese laymen and missionaries alike.

The advocacy of the Church militant fitted in well enough with the proposals of Paulo Dias de Novais, a grandson of the discoverer of the Cape of Good Hope, who was then pressing his scheme for the conquest and colonization of Angola upon a somewhat hesitant court. The charter that was finally given him by the Crown in 1571 envisaged the colonization of atleasta part of Angola by peasant families from Portugal, who were to be provided with 'all the seeds and plants which they can take from this kingdom and from the island of Sao Tome'. But when Paulo Dias' expedition arrived off Luanda in February r 575, the slave-trade was already in full swing; malaria and other tropical diseases proved an insuperable obstacle to white colonization for the next three centuries; and the high ideals of the royal charter were soon abandoned for the unrestrained procurement of pefas, 'pieces', as Negro slaves were termed.

This demand for slaves intensified and perpetuated the inter-tribal wars which raged in the interior, and in which the cannibal Jagas-ancestors of the modern Bayaka-

23


played such a prominent part. In earlier years, the Portuguese had aided successive kings of Congo against these barbarous invaders, who, at one time, had sacked the capital itself and who had only been driven off by timely assistance from Sao Tome. In Angola and Benguela, however, the Jagas were mostly on good terms with the white men. They formed the backbone of the guerra preta ('Black War') or native auxiliaries (also known as empacasseiros from a word meaning buffalo-hunters), with whose aid the Portuguese dominated the other tribes. 'Their chiefs pride themselves on being very loyal to us,' wrote a Portuguese chronicler at Luanda in r68r, 'for which reason they are hated by the other heathen of these kingdoms, and this warlike band terrorizes all this part ofEthiopia.' 21

At tllis period many of the Jagas were still caffilibals, eating human flesh not merely as a ritual sacrifice, but as a matter of habit, convenience, and conviction. They originally killed all their own offspring, and kept the choicest of the youtlls and maidens whom tlley captured in war, bringing tllem up in the 'law of the Jagas'. Unlike the other Bantu tribes, they kept no flocks and indulged in no agricnltural pursuits. They were primarily

21 '. • • se prczao de muito leaes, cauza porque se fia delles as couzas de mayor importancia, pella que sao odiados do gentio deste' reinos, e faz este corpo de guerra atemorizar a toda esta Ethiopia, (AntOnio de Oliviera Cadornega),Hist6riaGeral das GtlerrasAngolanass (ed. J vols., Lisboa, 1940-2), val. iii, p. 165. For the Jagas cf. M. Plancquaert, Les Jag a et les Bayaka du Kwango. Contribution HistoricoEtlmographiqHe (Brussels, 1932); Gladwyn Murray Childs, 'The peoples of Angola in the seventeenth century according to Cadornega', injoHrnal of African History, vol. i (1960), pp. 271-9.

24


nomadic robbers, and were, therefore, rather a collection of wandering hordes than an ethnic tribe. During the second half of the seventeenth century, they gradually became used to a more settled existence, and their women were allowed to give birth outside the quilombo, or warcamp, and could bring up their children instead of killing them. On the death of a Jaga chief, there was an interregnum during which all tile bush-paths were closed, the goods of itinerant traders were forfeited, and also the lives of any persons who might try to travel. A similar custom prevailed in tile so-called empire of the Monomotapa, or Ma-Karanga (Wa-Karanga) tribal confederacy in what is now called Southern Rhodesia and Mo<;ambique; and it was likewise carried on by the Ovimbundu of Benguela into tile present century.

hlter-tribal warfare undoubtedly existed in this part of Africa before the arrival of the Portuguese and of tile Jagas; but there is also no doubt tllat the slave-raiding wars and expeditions were subsequently intensified with a view to procuring slaves for tile Brazilian and Spanish-American plantations and mines. This dreary round of fighting, slave-raiding, and slave-trading continued in the hinterland of Angola with few intermissions for over two centuries. As Manuel Severim de Faria noted in r625: 'There has been no tiling but ftghting in Angola from the beginning of the conquest till now, and very little has been done for the conversion of the inhabitants of that great province, the majority of whom are in the same state as when we first entered therein, and more scandalized by our weapons than edified by our religion.' On another occasion, after receiving news of the devastation wrought

25


by a Portuguese punitive column in the interior, he commented sadly: "one cannot see any good effect resulting from so much butchery; for this is not the way in which commerce can flourish and the preaching of the gospel progress, which is what is needed in that State.' The Crown of Portugal sometimes tried to curb the bellic~se propensities of the governors and settlers, as instanced by King John IV in 1649, when he drastically modified the terms of the onerous treaty imposed by the governor of Angola on the King of Congo. He observed that the Portugnese had given the Bantn monarch needless provocation by their own misbehaviour, adding that in future the governor should 'treat those heathen and the King of Congo with greater clemency.'"

These views were not shared by most white men on the spot, whose opinion of the African is reflected in the pages of the Hist6ria Geral das Guerras Angolanas ('General History of the Angolan Wars'), compiled by Antonio de Oliveira Cadornega in 1681-3, after a residence of over forty years in Angola. Cadornega never tired of stressing that 'all these heathen people are not ruled nor do they obey through love, but only through brute force'. Drastic measures were needed to keep the Bantu in their p!.ce, he averred. 'For these heathen, more than those of any other nation, act on the principle of "long

:a:a Manuel Severim de Faria, Notidas de Portugal (Evora, 1655), pp. 225-7, 235-6; Cf. Ralph Delgado, Historia de Angola (4 vols., Benguela and Lobito, 1948-55), val. ii, pp. 58-59; Cadornega, Hist6ria Geral (ed. 1940), val. i, p. 90 n; For the treaty of 164-9 v.rith the King of Congo and King John IV's comments thereon, C. R. Boxer, Salvador de S& and the struggle for Brazil m1d Angola, 16oz-1686 (London, 1952), pp. 275-8.

26

! I

I I


live the winner", and as Negroes they fear nothing save only corporal pnnishment and the whip; as was the case with the Romans and the Libertines, when the former could not subdue the latter by force of arms but only by the lash with which they punished and whipped them. It is only in this way that former governors and conquerors have kept them in subjection, and only in this way can we keep what we have won by force of arms in these kingdoms.' After reconnting the mass execution of numerons chiefs who were suspected of plotting against Portngnese rule in 1624, he adds that this example 'remained unforgettable for fnture generations, and left all the heathen of these kingdoms frightened and terrorized, since it is only by force and fear that we can maintain our position over these indomitable heathen'. This viewpoint is likewise reflected in mnch of the official correspondence emanating from Lnanda for over two centuries. For instance, Joao Fernandes Vieira, Mulatto paladin of the Pernambnco campaigns against the Dutch in 1645-54, and governor of Angola in 1658-61, reminded the Crown that it was an 'old and approved usage' never to allow a Negro to lift his hand against a white man, 'because the preservation of the kingdom depends upon this obedience and fear.' 23

23 ' ••• do gentio da terra a quem por costume antigo e aprovado se lhe nega authoridade para poder ofender (ne111 ainda levemente) a homens brancos, porque nesta obediencia e temor consiste -a conservayio do Reina' (Joio Fernandes Vieira to the Crown, Luanda 15. ix. 1659, in Arquivo Historico Ultramarine, Lisboa, 'Angola, Papeis Avulsos de 1659''). For Cadornega's advocacy of wlut wmtld nowadays be termed 'Nigger bashing', cf. Hist6ria Gcral das Guerra.~ Angolanas, val. i, pp. 91-92,260-1; vol. ii, pp. 142-3; vol. iii, pp. 4.0, 165.

27


For over 250 years Angola was regarded as the principal slave market for Portugal's empire in the south Atlantic, apart from furnishing many slaves to Spanish America as well for most of that time. An enthusiastic official, writing of what seemed to be the limitless possibilities of this market for 'black ivory' in 1591, assured the Crown that the hinterland of Luanda was so thickly populated that it would furnish a copious supply of slaves 'until the end of the world'. Bento Banha Cardozo, one of the conquistadores of Angola, concluded his account of the natural resources of that kingdom in r622 with the words: 'very little attention is paid to these things there, because most people being employed in the slave-trade they neglect everything else.' By the end of the seventeenth-century various authorities were deploring the serious decline in the population of Angola, owing to the internecine wars, excessive forced labour and the ravages of smallpox. A report by Prince Pedro's Jesuit confessor stated that whereas formerly Angola 'did not have a span of land that was not inhabited', nowadays the slavetraders had to travel for three months into the interior before reaching the markets (pumbos) where slaves were sold.24

Most of the traders who went on these long journeys

24 Domingos de Abreu e Brito apud A. Albuquerque Feiner, Um inquCrito 4 vida administrativa e economica de Angola e do Brasil em fins do siculo XVI (Coimbra, 1931), p. 35; Bento Banha Cardozo apud Luciano Cordeiro, Viagens, explorafoCs e conquistas dos Portugueses, 162o-162g. Producfoes, comercio e govemo do Congo e Angola (Lisboa, r88r), p. rS. Manuel Fernandes, S.J., 'Voto sabre as vexac;:oins que se fazem aos negroes de Angola', Ms. of c. 1670 in BAL, Cod. so-V-39, Torno V, doc. 24, fls. 4o-4r.

28


were Mulattoes or Negroes, and individual whites who ventured beyond the furthermost Portuguese outposts naturally had to show respect and deference to the independent African chiefs through whose lands they passed. But this did not prevent the slave-traders in general from oppressing the sovas (chiefs) who owed allegiance to the Portuguese Crown, by demanding (unpaid) porters and carriers from them, despite frequent legislation against such abuses. The opinion of the average white Portuguese iu Angola of the Negroes whom they enslaved was reflected in a memorial of c. 1694 drawn up by all those engaged in this commerce at Luanda, and which described the slaves as being 'brutes without intelligent understanding', and 'almost, if one may say so, irrational beings' 25 This was an attitude which peristed for centuries, and which was based on the firm conviction that the Negro was f1tted only to be a slave or an indentured labourer. An Englishman with long experience of Portuguese Africa noted with warm approval that the Portuguese had never viewed the Negro 'in anything but a proper and practical light; for them he is first and last the mi'io d' obra ~abouring hand), and any proposition tending to lessen his value in that capacity would never, and will never be entertained by them'. 26

25 '. . . os ditos escravos como brutes e sem juizo discursive . . . para quem he brute e quasi (se assim se pode dizer) irracional . .. ('Copia de huma petiyam que o povo e mais moradores e forasteiros fizeriio ao Senado da Camara', s.d. but c. 1694-, in the archives of the Municipal Council of Luanda).

26 R. C. F. Maugham, Portuguese East Africa. The history, scenery and great game of Manica and Sofa/a (London, 1906), pp. JOI-J. Though written of Moc;:ambique, this observation is equally applicable to Angola.

29


The need for affirming white superiority by means of display as well as through force was adumbrated as follows by Cadornega in r68r: 'Every kind of display and power is necessary when dealing with this heathen, for this is what they respect. In the land and district of any one of these Savas, a noble Portuguese who does not take with him many Negroes and Negresses for the service of his household who are called Mocamas, and other outdoor servants, such as cooks, washerwomen, and others who get water and firewood from the bush, with many musical instruments such as marimbas, chucalhos, bagpipes, native viols, etc.,~if he does not have this train, even though he may be a great ftdalgo as we said, they do not respect him in the least, saying that he is a poor man, and poverty among them is a shame; whereas if any low-class white man appears with such a train and well dressed, that is the one they respect and admire as a lord.'"

Although Cadornega, like most of his com1trymen, was a convinced advocate of keeping the Negro in his place at the bottom of the social scale, he had a good word for the Mulatto, Mesti~o, or half-breed community, whose origin and development he described as follows: 'The soldiers of the garrison and other European individuals father many children on the black ladies, for want of white ladies, with the result that there are many Mulattoes and Coloureds (pardos). The sons of these unions make great soldiers, chiefly in the wars in the backlands against the heathen inhabitants. They can endure severe hardships and very short commons, and go

27 Cadornega, Hist6ria Geral das Guerras Angolanas (ed. 194.0), vol. i, p. 210.

30


without shoes. Many of them become great men. When this conquest began, all the most important conquerors, with the exception of a few who brought their families, accommodated themselves with Mulatas, daughters of respectable settlers and conquerors by their female slaves or free concubines.' Cadornega claimed that many of the descendants of these inter-racial unions became people of importance and could be compared with those resulting from racially mixed marriages in Portuguese India and Brazil. 28

Cadornega does not state whether Mulattoes or Octoroons were allowed to become members of the town councils in Luanda and other Angolan muuicipalities, as they were in Cape Verde and Sao Tome, but which was not allowed in eighteenth-century Brazil. In view of the extreme shortage of white women in Angola and Benguela and the large number of Mulattoes, it would seem that they must have been admitted in practice if not in theory. This is the more likely, as in r684 the Crown of Portugal had speciftcally ruled that no attention should be paid to a man's colour when military promotions and appointments were made in the Angola garrison and militia units. A petition of the Luanda mmncipal council to the Crown in I7IJ stated that the Luanda militia regiment was then organized on a basis of complete racial equality, though the petitioners requested that one of the companies should henceforth be recruited only from those citizens who were entitled to hold municipal offices and from their descendants-

118 Cadomega, Hist6ria Geral das Guerras Angolanas (ed. 1942), vol. iii, p. 30.

3I


in other words presumably from whites and nearwhites.29

I have not been able to ascertain the result of this petition, but in any case a prejudice against Mulattoes and Mestiyos certainly existed in Angola at this time and for long afterwards. A resident Italian Capuchin friar, Fr. Girolamo Merolla, wrote of these mixed breeds in r69r:

'They hate the Negroes mortally, even their own mothers that bore them, and do all they can to equal themselves with whites, which is not allowed them, they not being permitted to sit in their presence.'30 This statement would seem to be exaggerated, especially when we recall Cadornega' s contemporary testimony that many of the Mulattoes distinguished themselves in the wars in the backlands and became 'great men.' Perhaps Cadornega was thinking more particularly of the Angolanborn Luis Lopes de Sequeira, whose mother was evidently a coloured woman, and who commanded the Portuguese force which defeated and killed King Dom Antonio I of

29 'Senhor, o terc;:o da ordenanp desta Cidade corista de 4 companhias s6mente par nao haver gente de que se possio formar mais: nellas nao ha distin~ao de pessoas, porque todas servem difuzamente Nobres e Plebeos, de que se seguem bastantes inconvenientes que se poderao atalhar ordenando Vossa Magestade que se observa neste Reina o mesmo que no Estado do Brazil que he servirem em huma dellas os homens cidadoins que costumao servir na Republica e seas ftlhos somente' (Luanda Municipal Council to the Crown, 2 August ' I7IJ, in Archives of the Municipal Council, Luanda, Codex 483, fl. 100). For the carta-dgia of 24 March 1684, abolishing the colourbar in military promotions and postings, see Ralph Delgado, Hist6ria de Angola, vol. iv (1955), p. 58.

30 The author died at Luanda in 1697, and the quotation is from the first English edition of his Vioggio in Chmchill, Collection of Voyages, vol. i (1704), p. 739·

32


Congo at the battle of Ambnila (29 October r66s). h1 any event, by the last quarter of the eighteenth century the Mulatto militia officers were allowed to frequent the governor-general's official reception on the same footing as whites-a practice which a Luso-Brazilian officer contrasted with that obtaining in Rio de Janeiro, where the viceroy would ouly allow coloured militia officers to make their bows to him from the doorway, after their white colleagues had kissed his hand."

The ambivalent attitude of the white Portuguese towards their Mulatto kith and kin, comes out very clearly in the discussions which lasted intermittently for the best part of three centuries on the formation of a native clergy. We have seen that the Pope, at Portuguese prompting, consecrated a Congolese as titular Bishop of Utica in rsr8. This particular precedent was not followed for several centuries, but a Papal brief of the same year authorized Portuguese bishops to ordain 'Ethiopians, Indians, and Africans', who might reach the educational and moral standards required for the priesthood. 32 I have said that this was done from the early sixteenth century in the Cape Verde Islands and Sao Tome, and it was likewise practised in Angola, but the Negro, Mulatto and Mestis:o clergy were subjected to a continual flow of criticism. The Italian Capuchin missionaries who worked

31 ·E. A. da Silva Correa, Hist6ria de Angola, 1792 (ed. 2 vols., Lisboa, 1937), vol. i, p. 84. For the career of Luis Lopes de Sequeira, the victor of Ambuila (1665) and Ptmgo-Andongo (167r), killed in action in r68r, see Ralph Delgado, Hist6ria de Angola, vols. iii, iv passim.

az Brief of Leo X dated 12 June 1518 apud A. Bd.sio, C.S.Sp., Monumenta Missionaria Africana, vol. i, pp. 421-2.

33


in the Congo and Angola for most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were particularly scathing in their denunciations of the coloured secular clergy ordained by successive bishops of Luanda, stigmatizing them as concupiscent, simoniacal, aud actively engaged in the slave-trade. Their scandalous way of life largely nullified the Capuchins' work of conversion in the interior and led to widespread relaxation of ecclesiastical discipline. 33

On the other hand, the Bishop of Luanda stated in r689, that it was virtually impossible to train pureblooded Negroes for the priesthood, although Cadomega · tells us that the Jesuits did train some at d1eir college. The Bishop further alleged that there were not nearly enough white clergy. to staff the missions in the interior, and that the annual death-rate among the few white clergy available was exceedingly high. This meant that recourse had to be had to the Mulattoes and Mestiqos, who enjoyed the additional advantages of being better acclimatized and fmding it easier to learn the indigenous languages. 34 From time to time, suggestions were made

an For some typical examples of the continuous and scathing criticism of the white, Negro and Mestir;o secular clergy cf. A. Bd.sio. C.S.Sp., Monurnenta Missionaria Africana, val. iii, 297, 4-93 ; ibid, op, cit., val. v, pp. 51-52, 56, 285, 288, 312-13, 590, 613; val. vi, pp. 283-5, 366-74, 342,' 415; val. vii, pp. 64-65, 255, 274-5, 360, 522, 562, 564; val. viii, pp. 95, 175-6,242-3, 343, 464--5; vol. ix, pp. 14, 106,146; Ralph Delgado, Hist6ria de Angola, val. iv, pp. 54-55, r66-7I, 237-8,-299-301, 365-78; Gastio de Sousa Dias, Os Portugueses em Angola (Lisboa, 1959), pp. 173-6; L. Jadin. Le Congo et Ia secte des Antoniens. Restauration du royaume sous Pedro IV et la 'saint Antoine' congolaise, 1694-1718, pp. 430-r, 467, 487, 578, 592, 6oo-r. ,

34 L. Jadin, op. cit., p. 430, summarizing the Bishop's letter to the Congregation of the Propaganda, d. Luanda, 25 February r689.

34


both at Lisbon and Luanda, that it would be better to educate Negroes and Mulattoes for the priesthood m Europe rather than in the demoralizing environments of Cape Verde, Sao Tome, and Angola. None of these schemes came to anything concrete, unless we except the preliminary experiment with the Congolese youths at the convent of St. Eloi in the early sixteenth century. The situation continued to deteriorate throughout the eighteenth century, and Dom Francisco Inocencio de Sousa Coutinho, by common consent one of the best governors that Angola ever had, spoke for many besides himself when he denigrated the coloured clergy on the grotmds that 'whiteness of skin and purity of soul' were usually interdependent. 35 It may be added that the Mulatto and Mestiqo secular clergy of Angola, though, ofteh criticized by their white contemporaries, never became anti-Portuguese as did the coloured clergy of the old kingdom of Congo.

In strong contrast to the criticisms continually voiced of the coloured secular clergy, and fairly frequently of the Jesuits and Carmelites who worked in Angola, was the high praise bestowed by successive governors and bishops, as well as by Portuguese and African laymen, on the self-sacrificing labours of the Italian Capuchin missionaries. From the time of their establishment ar Luanda in 1649, they were by far the most exemplary of all the religious orders, and the only missionaries who worked for many years on end in the fever-stricken interior. Cadornega testifies to the high esteem in which

35 AntOnio da Silva Rego, Curso de Missionologia (Lisboa, 1956) p. 297-

35


they were held, and the Municipal CoUllcillors of Luanda informed the Cardinals of the Sacred College of the Propaganda Fide in r678 that they rendered 'innumerable services' to Black and White alike. Nor was this an exaggeration. Long after they had disappeared from the scene, an English traveller of the r86os commented on the fruits, vegetables, and plants which they had introduced, on the arts and crafts they had taught, and on the veneration in which the Bantu held their memory 'everywhere in Angola'.36

One region which was more than superficially affected by Portuguese cultural influences was the area between the rivers Bengo and Loge, inhabited by the Dembos. Most of their chiefs were baptized Christians and used the title of Dom, while some of them had their own household chaplains. In Cadornega' s day they had many Portuguese traders living more or less under their jurisdiction, and other Portuguese who were employed by them in various capacities. These white men would accompany the Dembo chief in whose lands they lived when he went to hear Mass or left his banza (kraal) on special occasions. Use of the Portuguese language was widespread and many of the leading men could read and

36 Letter of the Municipal Council of Luanda to the Cardinals of the Propaganda Fide, d. II November 1676, in the Archives of the Municipal Council at Luanda, Codex 482, fls. 18-ig; Arquivos de Angola, 2a. serie, vol. vii {Jan.-June 1950), dedicated to the missionary action of the Capuchins in the Congo. and Angola, especially pp. 59-64; Cadornega, Hist6ria Cera[ das Guerras Angolanas, vol. ii (ed. 1940), pp. 49-52, 485-93; Paiva Manso, Hist6ria do Congo. Documentos (Lisboa, 1877), pp. zro--64, 289-369; J. Monteiro, Angola and the River Congo (2 vols., London, 1875), val. ii, pp. 96-98.


write it. At one time firm allies of the Portuguese, they subsequently fell out with them and became virtually mdependent.37 The Dembos region was in a state of revolt for most of the nineteenth century, and was the scene of many of the sanguinary events enacted on Angolan soil in I96I. It is rather curious that the two regions where the Portuguese cultural influence was most enduring-the old kingdom of Congo and the Dembosshould be the two which subsequently became the most bitterly opposed to Portuguese rule and which formed the centres of revolt in our own day.

The Overseas Collllcillors at Lisbon, when discussing the advisibility of introducing a copper coinage into Angola in r688, reminded King Pedro II that the preservation of Brazil depended on the continuous supply of slaves from Angola, which was then rllllning at the rate of about six or seven thousand a year. They added that the Negroes 'loathed our rule and fervently desired to throw us out of that conquest; and only out of fear aud respect for our arms did they allow the preaching of the gospel and the admission of our trade'. 38 By and large, this state of affairs remained the same for the rest

37 Cadomega, Hist6ria Geral das Guerras Angolanas, vol. iii (ed. 1942)? pp. 20o-:!. The standard mo~ern work on the Dembos is by Hennque _Galvao, De':"bos (2 vols, L1sboa, n.d.). The Dembos region was eff<:!Ctlvely occup1ed by Joio de Almeida in 1907

38 'porque os Negros aborreciam o nosso dornmio e desejavam com excesso lanc;ar-nos ~aquela conquista e s6 pelo temor e respeito das nossas ~a; permet1am a pregas=ao do evangelho e admitiam o nosso comhcm ( Consulta of the Conselho Ultramarine, d. 3 r March r688, apud Cadornega, Hist6ria Geral das Guerras Angolanas, val. ii, PP· 536-7). C£ Cadornega, Hist6ria Geral das Guerras Angolanas val. iii, pp. 381-2. '

37


of the period with which we arc concerned; and it helps to explain why Angola never became a second Braziland, perhaps, why it is hardly likely to become one now.

There were, of course, other reasons for the failure of the Portuguese to develop in the Congo and Angola a multi-racial but white-dominated type of society such as ultimately emerged in Brazil. The African tribal societies which they encountered, primitive in some respects as they 1nay have been, were n1uch stronger, more numerous and better able to resist European penetration than were the thinly scattered Stone-Age Amerindians of Brazil. The South American geographical environment, with all its tropical hazards, was less of an obstacle than were the fever-ridden valleys of the Zaire, Cuanza, and Bengo rivers. The annual mortality among the whites in Angola and Benguela was always far higher than among those in Brazil. Very few white women ever went to Angola, and none at all to Benguela for the best part of two hundred years. White women were admittedly in short supply in colonial Brazil, but far more went there than ever went to West Africa-or, for that matter, than to East Africa or to India. Miscegenation was, of course, the general rule on both sides of the South Atlantic; but given the fact that West Africa was then literally as well as figuratively the 'white man's grave', far fewer Mulattoes were born and bred in Angola than in Brazil. A Capuchin friar who visited both Luanda and Bahia at the turn of the seventeenth century estin1ated that the population of the former city comprised 40,000 Blacks, 4,ooo Whites, and 6,ooo Mulattoes, and that of the latter city 20,000

38


Whites, 50,000 Blacks, and 8,ooo or ro,ooo Mulattoes. These figures were only rough calculations, but they probably reflect fairly accurately the relative proportion between white and coloured at one to three in Bahia and one to ten in Luanda. For the rest, even in Cadornega' s day Luanda was becoming an Africanized city, and this was still more so a century later, as can be seen from the classic account of Elias da Silva Correia."

The result of concentrating virtually all efforts on the slave-trade in Angola for over two centuries, was the formation of a powerful slave-owning and slave-trading white class, the growth of a detribalized class of Negroes who co-operated in this trade with the Portuguese, and the appearance of a Mulatto and Mesti<;o class, some of whom attained important positions in the militia, in the slave-trade, and in the Church ... These three classes were virtually limited to the coastal towns, of which Luanda was the only one of any size, and to the vicinity of a few strong-points (presidios) in the interior, none of which were more than two hundred miles from the coast. In the rest of the country, the tribal organization and way of life remained basically unaffected by Portuguese cultural

89 Antonio Zucchelli, O.F.M.Cap., Relazioni del viaggio e missione di Congo nelt.F:thi~p.ia ItifCrio~e Occidentale (Venice, I7I2), pp. 70-7I, 102. Zucchelh vmted ~ahu and Luanda in r698-I703; Cadorneg~, HistOria Geral das. Guerras Angolanas, vo1. iii, pp. z8-JI, 38r-6; Ehas Alexandre da Silva Correia, Hi.st6ria de Angola (ed. 2 vols., Lisboa, I9J7), vol. i, pp. 77-84.

40 III Co!Oquio Internacional de E.studos Luso-Brasileiros 1957, Aetas, vol.i (Lisboo, I959), p. rSS. Cf. ibid, pp. Iji-J, I92-8, for diffe~ent VIews on why Angola did not develop in the same way as Braz1l. C£ also Jose Hon6rio Rodrigues, Brazil e Africa: ol/fro horizonte (Rio de Janeiro, I96r).

39


influence, with the partial exception of the Dembos, and the Ambaquistas or itinerant traders of Ambaca.

Another result of Portuguese concentration on the slave-trade was the rooted conviction that the Negro could legitimately be enslaved and hence was indisputably an inferior being to the white man. The Portuguese male might and did mate freely with the Negress, whether bond or free; and, given the extreme scarcity of white women in Angola, he was almost bound to marry, if he married at all, with a Mulata or (more rarely) with a Negress. But it did not follow from this readiness to mate with coloured women, that the Portuguese male had no racial prejudice, as is often asserted by modern apologists. There were, of course, some exceptions, but the prevailing social pattern was (and is) one of conscious white superiority. Captain Antonio de Oliveira Cadornega, who lived for over forty years in Angola, is a safer guide in this respect than Dr. Antonio de Oliveira Salazar who has never set foot in Africa.

40

II: MOCAMBIQUE AND INDIA ' 'THE State of India', 0 Estado da India, was the

name given by the Portuguese to all their possessions and trading-posts between Sofala and Macao,

or, in a looser sense, to the whole of maritime East Mrica and Asia from the Cape of Good Hope to Japan. Portuguese relations with the many and varied peoples bordering on the Indian Ocean and the shores of Monsoon Asia naturally differed a good deal, but I shall have to confme myself to surveying some apects of those relations in Moyambique and India proper.

Vasco da Gama and his successors found the east coast of Africa from Sofala to Somalia occupied by a chain of Arab-Swahili settlements, strongly Africanized by centuries of contact and concubinage with the Bantu, but proudly conscious of their Islamic heritage. The Swahili traded with the Negroes of the hinterland for gold, ivory, and to a lesser degree, slaves, giving them in exchange chiefly beads and cotton textiles, both of Indian origin. The Portuguese almost at once identified Sofala with the Biblical Ophir, and they endeavoured to monopolize the gold trade of that place by building a fort there in rsos. King Manuel's instructions for D. Francisco de Almeida, the first viceroy of Portuguese India, enjoined him to seize and enslave all Muslim merchants at Sofala, but not to do any harm to the local Negroes. He was to tell the latter that: 'We have ordered the said Moors to be enslaved and all their property confiscated, because they

4I 4

MOyAMBIQUE AND INDIA

are enemies of our holy catholic faith and we have continual war with them.'1 In other words, the Portuguese crusade against the Muslims of Morocco was to be continued against their co-religionists in the Indian Ocean, and this was the keynote of Portuguese policy in that region for the next hundred years.

By fair means and by foul, the Portuguese first tried to displace the Swahili traders along the coast and to deal with the Negroes who brought the gold from the interior, but their efforts met with only partial success. The Swahili had been established along the East African coast for several hundred years, they had intermarried to a great extent with the Bantu, and consequently they were far better integrated than the new arrivals from Europe. The itinerant Swahili traders were familiar with the bush paths and river routes for hundreds of miles into the interior; and, apart from anything else, they were far too numerous to be driven away by such scanty forces as the Portuguese could muster. The Swahili merchants on the offshore islands maintained their centuries-old connections with Arabia, the Persian Gulf and India, despite the efforts of the Portuguese to supplant them. A Portnguese official writing to the King from Mo~ambique

1 '. • • e os ditos mouros catyvares e aos naturaes da terra nam fares dano asy em suas pesoas como em suas fazendas, porque todo queremos que seja gardado, dezendolhe que os ditos mouros que mandamos catyuar e tamar todo ho seu o mandamos asy fazer par serem imiguos da nasa samta fee catholica e com eles teermos contynuadamente guerra' (Regimento for D. Francisco de Almeida, d. 5 March 1505 apud Cartas de Affonso de Albuquerque, 7 vols., Lis boa, r884-1935, val. ii, p. 282. C£ also Alexandre Lobato, A Expa11siio Portuguesa em Mofambique de 1488 a 1530, 3- vols., Lisboa, 1954-60, val. i, pp. 75, Sr.

42

MO<;AMBIQUE AND INDIA

island in 1508 advised his master to kill or expel all the 'respectable Moors' from the coast below that place, since they were dangerous commercial competitors. The low-class Swahili of Mo~ambique could be allowed to remain 'since they are like animals, and satisfied with gaining a handful of maize, nor can they harm us, and they can be used for any kind of work and treated like slaves'.'

Whether by forceful for by friendly means, the Portuguese had established their control over the East African coast south of Somalia within a decade of their first appearance in the Indian Ocean. Their success was greatly facilitated by the peremlial rivalry between the various Swahili city-states north of Cape Delgado, which could never combine for any length of time against them, and Malindi remained their faithful vassal state or satellite for over a hundred years. Wherever the Portuguese encotmtered opposition to their pretensions to dominate the seaborne trade of the coast, they dealt with it in a manner which was deliberately calculated to inspire terror. Fr. Joao dos Santos O.P., who was for some years a parish priest in the Querimba Islands towards the end of the sixteenth century, tells us in his classic Ethiopia Oriental: 'In the time that I lived here, there were still some Moors who remembered the first Portuguese who had passed along this coast, and of the cruelty with which they used

2 ' ••• porque os daqt~ da terra de Mo~ambique sam bystiaes, e comtemtamse com guanharem hum alquere de milho, e nam podem danar em maijs, e servem nestas obras e em tudo, como escpravos' (Duarte de Lemos to the Crown, Moyambique, 30 September 1508, apud Arquivo Portugu£s Oriental. Nova Ediflio, II vols., Basted-Goa, 1936-40, Torno IV, vol. i, Parte Ia, p. 287.)

43


the natives of the region who did not want peace and friendship with them, and whom they punished so severely that they spared the lives of none, not even women and children.''

Despite the cruelty with which they acted towards the Muslims on many occasions, and despite the fact that they systematically deprived the Swahili of the best part of their trade in gold, ivory, and slaves, the Portuguese eventually reached a more or less amicable relationship with those who remained south of Cape Delgado. North of this point, the Portuguese position was never very secure, and they were driven from this region by d1e Omani Arabs at the end of the seventeenth century. In Zambesia and the offshore islands of Mo~ambique they allowed the Swahili to remain on sufference, more or less in the manner envisaged by Duarte de Lemos in 1508. Their sheikhs, headmen, and merchants were kept in strictly subordinate positions and prevented from amassing great wealth, but were employed as intermediaries in the trade with the Bantu. The humbler Muslims served as sailors, casual labourers, and in various menial capacities. Social relations between Christians and Muslims became quite friendly in some of the remoter regions, though the more zealous Roman Catholic clergy prevented any

s Fr. Joao dos Santos, O.P., Ethiopia Oriental e varia historia de cousas notaveis do Oriente (Evora, r6o9), Pt. I, Livro 3, ch. 5· An almost identical observation was made by the Spanish ambassador to Persia, D. Garcia de Silva y Figueroa, in 1621. Cf. C. R. Boxer and Carlos de Azevedo, Fort Jesus and the Portuguese in Mombasa, 1593-1729 (London, 1959), p. 33. The Portuguese punitive expedition against the Querimba Islands took place in 1522. Cf. E. Axelson, South-East Africa, 1488-1530 (London, 1940), pp. 151-4.

44


genuine rapprochement between the two groups, in so far as they could. Fr. Joao dos Santos O.P., relates with pride how he forcibly prevented a Swahili headman in Querimba from circnmcising his own Muslim sons, although the friar owed his life to the headman's sister, who had nursed him through a dangerous illness, and although the wretched man offered to give one hundred cruzados in alms to the Christian church if he was allowed to celebrate this rite. The Dominican friar also put a stop to the existing practice of Muslim women visiting their Christian female friends on Sundays and Saints' days, 'when they all sang, danced, and feasted together as friendly as if they were all Muslims'. He adds that he abolished this 'pernicious practice' despite much local resentment and opposition on the part of both Muslims and Christians.•

Fr. Joao dos Santos O.P., was convinced that he had put an end to this amicable mixture of Christian, Muslim, and Pagan practices among the population of the Querimba islands, but in point of fact the mixture continued much as before, both there and in Zambesia. Apart from anything else, there were relatively few missionaries and priests available for work in East Africa, and the majority of those who did work in that missionfield were of very inferior calibre. An edict promulgated by the Inquisition at Goa in r 771, denounced many 'rites, ceremonies, and superstitious abuses', which were widely prevalent among the Christians of Mo~ambique. They included the Islamic custom of publicly exhibiting

4 Fr. Joao dos Santos, O.P., Ethiopia Oriental (Evora, r6o9), Pt. II, Livro 2, ch. IJ.

45

MO<;:AMBIQUE AND INDIA

to friends, relations, and neighbours, the piece of cloth or linen stained with the evidence of the ftrSt coitus between a newly married pair. Other abuses denounced by the Inquisition included the festive celebration of a girl's first menstruation by invoking the 'Most Holy Name of Jesus'; superstitious rites connected with the, baptism of newly-born babes, and the health of expectant mothers; funeral customs which involved a female slave sleeping in the bed of a recently deceased master with a male slave of the same household; and the widespread use of the muave, the indigenous method of summary justice, by which an accused person who took the infusion of the bark of a certain tree without ill effects was adjudged innocent and thereby entitled to dispose of the life and property of his (or her) accuser. These and other similar rites were not limited to newly converted Negroes and Indians, but were practised by Whites and Mulattoes as well. 5

Although the general standard of the clergy in Moyambique was never very high, and that of the Dominican missionary friars during the eighteenth century was generally admitted to be deplorably low, the priests nevertheless exercised great influence through their

5 'Edital da Inquisir;ao de Goa contra certos costumes e ritos da Africa Oriental', 21 January 1771, in J. H. Cunha Rivara, 0 Chronista de Tiss11ary(4 vols., Nova Goa, r866-9), vol. ii, pp. 273-5. C£ Concgo Aldntara Guerreiro, Q11adro,s da hist6ria de Motambique (z vok, Lourenyo Marques, 1954), vol. ii, pp. 301-12, JZS-33. 342-5; Alexandre Lobato, Evolufii'O admiuistrativa e econ6mica de Motambique, 1752-1763 (Lisboa, 1957), pp. 129-54; Antonio Alberto Banha de Andrade, RelarOes de Motambique Setecentista (Lisboa, 1955), pp. 67-105, for the decadence of the missionaries and clergy of Mo'fambiq11e.


· sacerdotal-status.~exander Hamilton, writing about the Bantu of Zimbesia and the Mos:ambique littoral in I700,

observed: 'They have large strong bodies and limbs, and are very bold in war. They'll have commerce with none but the Portuguese, who keep a few priests along the sea-coasts, that overawe the silly Natives and get their teeth [i.e. elephant tusks] and gold for trifles, and send what they get to Moyambique.'6 Some seventy years later, a Portuguese who knew Zambesia well, noted: 'In general, all the Kaflirs of Sena, who are either slaves of the settlers or else tributary vassals of the State [of India], are docile aud friendly to the Portuguese, whom they call Muzungos. They dislike anyone who is not a Portuguese, calling all foreigners mafutos. This dislike derives from a superstitious fear that the Portuguese have spread among them, telling them that all the mafutos eat the Negroes, and other absurd tales which they implicitly believe, and this is one of the chief reasons why they are so friendly to us, for they say that only the Muzungos are good, and that all others are bad. It is to be hoped that this conviction will endure in the minds of the said Kaflirs, for in this way we will always be able to dominate them and to live undisturbed. They are most obedient and submissive to their masters and to all the Muzungos in general.' After giving an instance of the loyalty of the Negroes in foiling an attempt of the Dutch to establish themselves at Quelimane, Joao Baptista de Montaury sounded a warning note: 'On this occasion, the loyalty of the Kaflirs saved that State, because the port

6 A. Hamilton, A New Accou11t of the East Indies, 1727 (ed. W. Foster, 2 vols., London, 1930), vol. i, pp. r6-r7.

47


of Quelimane did not have then (nor has it got now) any fortification whatsoever. Still, who can be certain that this friendship will last for ever, and that it will never change; the more so, since these same Kaffrrs are treated with excessive harshness by their masters? May not this affection be changed into hatred, owing to the ill treatment they receive? May they not do in future to the Muzungos what they formerly did to the Majutos? This is worth thinking about, and it is not very sound that we should continue to rely solely on the good faith of these Kaffrrs.' 7

Two outstanding Dominican friars who exercised great and in some respects lasting influence over the regions they controlled for about forty years, were Fr. Joao de Menezes in the Querimba islands, and Fr. Pedro da Trindade in the Zumbo district beyond Tete. The former, who died in 1749, was the virtual ruler of the northerly Querimba islands, and he ignored all the orders of his ecclesiastical and secular superiors to leave his ftef and return to Goa. He carried on an active contraband trade with the French and English, and died surrounded by a numerous progeny of sons and grandsons. His colleague of Zumbo, who died in 1751, apparently led a celibate life, but he was the owner of vast landed estates, and he traded for gold, ivory, and slaves with native chiefs in what is now Matabele- and Mashonaland. His memory was for long revered among the Bantu, to whom he taught various arts and crafts, including

' Jolo Baptista de Montaury apud A. A. de Andrade, ~elafOes de Mofamhique Setecentista, pp: 365-7. Montaury's report lS dated c. 1778.


the use of some European agricultural implements. Both these friars maintained their own private armies of enslaved and free Negroes who iulrabited their lands, this being a characteristic of the celebrated prazo-holders of Zambesia, to whom I must now devote a few words.

The prazos were entailed estates which had their origin in the Portuguese penetration up the Zambesi valley in the period 1575-1640, when isolated individuals may have reached as far as the Kariba gorge. Portuguese -and later Goan-:-adventurers took advantage of the crumbling power of the Monomotapa, or paramount chief of the Makalanga (Wakarnaga, vaKaranga) tribal confederacy, to occupy by force or by agreement, the lands of various sub-chiefs, whose powers and jurisdiction they assumed. The Jesuit Padre Manuel Barreto, writing in 1667, described the position as follows: 'The [Portuguese ]lords of the lands have in their lands that same power and jurisdiction as had the Kaffir chiefs [Fumos J from whom they were conquered, because the terms of the quit-rent were made on that condition. For this reason they are like German potentates since they can lay down the law in everything, put to death, declare war, impose taxes. Perhaps they sometimes commit great barbarities in all this; but they would not be respected as they should be by their vassals if they did not enjoy the same powers as the chiefs whom they succeeded.' Padre Barreto added that these adventurers did not limit themselves to inspiring fear and terror, but were likewise famous for their prodigal hospitality and princely generosity. He instanced as an example Manuel Pais de Pinho, whose 'conduct of his household and person was

49

MOC:,:AMBIQUE AND INDIA

that of a prince'. He maintained his prestige and reputation, by being 'very lavish in giving, and very fierce, even cruel, in chastising, which are two qualities that will make any man adored by the Kaffirs'. 8

Originally, as described by Barreto, the prazos were virtually private principalities, founded by White, Mulatto, or Goan adventurers, who became completely integrated in the Bantu tribal system and took over the rights and duties of the indigenous chiefs they displaced. They often intrigued, and occasionally fought one another with their private armies of free and enslaved Negroes, some of which were ten, twenty, or thirty thousand strong. These feuds and the involvement of the prazo-holders in frequent warfare with unsubdued and hostile tribes, led to these estates changing hands and in extent with great rapidity, and the owners tended to become completely Africanized. With the object of averting this, and in order to bring lands under the control of the Crown, the prazos were transformed into entailed estates which were granted by the Crown for three snccessive lines on payment of an annual quit-rent in gold dust. They were granted to white women born of Portuguese parents, on condition that these women married with white Portuguese men. Male children of these unions were excluded from the succession, the prazos descending only in the female line, with the same proviso that the he¥ess must marry a white man. A

8 Manuel Barreto, S.J., 'Informa'rao do Estado e Conquista dos Rios da Cuama', d. Goa, II Dec. r667; text with English translation in G. McCall Theal, Records of So 11th East Africa, vol. iii, pp. 406-soS. The wording of my translation differs slightly from that of Theal in a few places.

so

MOC:,:AMBIQUE AND INDIA

prazo was granted to a family on these conditions for three lives only, after which it was supposed to revert to the Crown. Failure to cultivate the land properly, the marriage of the lady owner with a coloured man, or her failure to reside upon the property, likewise carried the penalty of the prazo reverting to the Crown. Endeavours were also made to limit the size of the prazos.

In course of time, all of these conditions were increasingly disregarded. Prazos swelled to enormous proportions, rivalling those of the largest jazendas in colonial Brazil. The obligation to cultivate the land properly was generally ignored, as there was no market for a large exportable surplus and the prazo-holders therefore contented themselves with growing enough crops for their households and slaves. White men were so few in the Zambesi river valley, and their expectation of life so short, that the prazo-heircsscs usually married with the better acclimatized Mulattoes or with Indo-Portuguese from Goa. Nevertheless, many of the prazos flourished for a time, and many tales are told of the wealth and generosity of their owners in the eighteenth century, and of the vast fortunes in gold, ivory, and slaves that some of them accumulated. The system also helped to maintain Portuguese influence in Zambesia, in however tenuous a form. It was on the private armies of the prazo-holders that the Crown depended to fight its native wars, since the regular garrisons of Sena, Tete, Sofala and Quelimane seldom amounted to more than fifty or sixty fever-stricken convict-soldiers deported from Portugal and India.'

11 The best discussion of the evolution and development of the pra.:zo system is by A. Lobato, Evolufii'O administrativa e ecou6mica de

SI

"'

MOt;:AMBIQUE AND INDIA

The prazo-system, as developed in the eighteenth century, failed to increase substantially the white population of Zambesia, or to fix European newcomers to the soil. Deadly tropical diseases, and the self-indulgent way oflife which derived from the possession of hundreds of slaves, combined to make Zambesia, like West Africa, a white man's grave. In the first two or three decades of the sixteenth century there were apparently several hundred white adventurers who spent their lives in the hinterland of Sofala and Manica, trading for gold and ivory with the Bantu, in much the same way as did the lan,ados and tangomaos in Guinea and Senegambia. But tropical fevers and the competition of the Swahili itinerant traders eventually proved too much for most of them, although one of their number, Antonio Fernandes, penetrated deep into what is now Southern Rhodesia, and was regarded by the warring Bantu tribes as being semidivine. At the tum of the seventeenth century, when the power of the prazo-holders was still great and the Monomotapa was a Portuguese puppet, individual Portuguese traders also frequented the periodic trading fairs in the hinterland of Zambesia and Manica, where they bartered for gold, ivory, and slaves with the Bantu. Most of these feiras were destroyed in the incessant wars attending the rise of Changamira and the Rozvi (Wa-Rozvi, vaRozvi) clan about that time, and the white traders

_...Mofambique, 1752-1763, pp. 209-33. Cf. also Sebastiiio Xavier Botelho, Memoria Estatistica sobre os dominios Portugueses na Africa Oriental (Lisboa, 1835), pp. 262-71. For a succinct survey in English cf. ]. Duffy, Portuguese Africa (1959), pp. 82-89; ibid., Portugal in Africa 1962), pp. 92-95·

52


were replaced by Mulattoes, Banians, and IndoPortuguese.10

Before taking leave of Mo;:ambique, a few words may be said about the Banian or Indian-trader problem, which already existed there in the late seventeenth century. Then, as now, Europeans were deeply divided in their views over these people, who rurned out to be far more ubiquitous and pertinacious competitors than the Swahili. Most of the Porruguese denounced the Banians as unscrupulous monopolists and engrossers, or as parasitic middlemen who waxed fat by exploiting both the European settler and the African peasant. Some of the Jesuits, however, took a very different viewpoint, and claimed that the frugal and hard-working Indians made much better colonists and traders than the Portuguese. The Indian trading community from Diu at Moyambique island was under the protection of the local Jesuit College. Some of the governors were severely critical of the Banians, but others stated that they formed the economic

10 H. Tracey, AntOnio Fernandes, descobridor do Monomotapa, 1514-1515 (ed. and trans. Caetano Montez, Lourenyo Marques, 1940); W. A. Godlonton, 'The journeys of Antonio Fernandes, the first known European to find the Monomotapa and to enter Southern Rhodesia', in Transactions of the Rhodesia Scientific Association, vol. xl (April, 1945), pp. 71-103. For the declioe of the Monomotapa and the rise of the Changamire, cf. the previous works of Alexandre Lobato and A. A. Banha de Andrade, passim, and two excellent articles by D. P. Abraham which make use of regional Bantu oral traditions as well as the Portuguese written sources, 'The Monomotapa Dynasty' in Nada. The Southern Rhodesian Native AjJairs Department Annual No. 36 (Salisbury, 1959), pp. 59-84, and 'Maramuca: an exercise in the combined use of Portuguese records and oral tradition', in the oumal of African History, vol. ii (Lonqon, 1961 ), pp. 2II-2j.

53


mainstay of the colony and were a hard-working and inoffensive con1mtmity .11

Among those officials who were most critical of the Indians was a visiting Portuguese judge, Dr. Duarte Salter de Mendon1:a, who travelled widely in Moqambique during the years 1723-26. He considered that neither the Portuguese nor the Indians made good

·. colonists. The former he described as being proud and work-shy, 'for as soon as they have rounded the Cape of Good Hope, they all want to become captains and commanders'. As for the latter, they were all secretly hostile to the Portuguese, stirring up the Negroes against them and indulging in contraband trade with the Swahili of Angoche and Mombasa, His suggested solution of the problem was to encourage tl1e large-scale immigration of Roman Catlwlic Irish families, so as to colonize the healthy upland country between Moqambique -:tnd Angola (the actual Southern Rhodesia). He pointed out that their loyalty could be relied on, and their daughters

, could marry white Portuguese who would occupy the _,military and government posts and no longer be obliged

to mate with Negresses in default of white women. The two white nations would thus become fused into one, in ilie same way as the Sabines and the Romans, or the

n The Banians were Hindu traders from Gujerat, but the term was sometimes extended to include Muslim merchants from the same region, and I have so used it here. For ~ypical criticisms of the Indian and Indo-Portuguese traders from Gujcrat and Goa cf. A. A. Banha de Andrade, RelafOes de Morambique setecentista, pp. 93-105, and A. Lobato, Eyohtfii'O Administrativa e econ6mica de lv!ofambique, pp. 255-6,299, and for a defence of them by the Jesuit Padre AntOnio Gomes in 1648, Studia, val. iii, pp. 240-2.

54


German and English colonists in Pennsylvania, or the Dutch and the French Huguenots at the Cape of Good Hope. Nothing came of this interesting suggestion, and the Indians stayed in Portuguese East Africa, where they remained as indispensable-and as unpopular wiili some sections of the community-as were the Chinese in the Philippines and in the (then) Dutch East Indies.12

In contrast to what was happening oft the west coast of Africa, the Portugnese were not primarily interested in the slave-trade on the east coast until the eighteenth centnry, when this branch of commerce became more important than the gold and ivory trades. They always did trade in slaves, of course, as ilie Arabs and Swahili had done before them, but these East African Negro slaves were required only as domestic servants and bodyguards. The numbers involved in the export trade were therefore nothing like so large as those e:iported from Guinea and Angola to satisfy the voracious demands of, the plantations and mines of America. Alexander Hamilton wrote in 1727= 'Jhe inhabitants of Moqam~ bique, as well as those on the continent, are all Negroes,

12 Cf. the stm1ffiary of Dr. Duarte Salter de Mendon'ra;'s project apud A. LobatoEvolu_r5o administrativa e ecoti6mica de Mo.rambique, pp. 297-307. It was probably Salter de Mendon<;a who inspired the Lisbon journalist, Jose Freire Monterroio Mascarenhas, to make an identical suggestion to his friend the viceroy of India, D. Pedro de Almeida Marquis of Castella-Novo, in 1744 (apud Arquivo das Colonias, val. i, Lisboa 1917, pp. 152-7). Curiously enough, a similar plan for colonising the district of Louren<;o Marques by ro,ooo Irish was suggested by Admiral Augusto de Castilho in r883, but this was evidently made without knowledge of the prior_projects of Salter de Mendonc;:a and Monterioio Mascarenhas (J. Andrada Corvo,.Estudos sobre as pro1Jincias ultramarinas, 4 vols., Lisboa, r883-7, vol. ii, p. 267).

55


of a large size, handsome, and very well limbed, and make good slaves. The King's ships, as well as private traders, bring good store of them to India, both sexes being in high esteem with the Indian Portuguese, both having services, proper to their sex, allotted them.'13 The slave export-trade greatly increased in the second half of the eighteenth and in the early nineteenth century, and by r8r2 the common term throughout the East for an African slave was a 'Mosambiquer'. Modern Portuguese writers who claim that their compatriots never had any feeling of colour prejudice or of discrimination against the African Negro, unaccountably ignore the obvious fact that one race cannot systematicaiiy enslave members of another on a large scale for over three centuries without acquiring a conscious or unconscious feeling of racial superiority. This was just as true in East Afi:ica as in West, and if the words Negro and Cafre did not invariably have a pejorative implication they certainly very often did so, 'ust as 'Nigger' and 'Kaffir' did (and do) in English.

The relative frequency with which Negroes and Mulattoes were ordained as priests in Portuguese West Africa from early times constrasts curiously with the extreme reluctance which the ecclesiastical authorities displayed to act in the same way on the east coast. We have seen that seminaries for the education of the indigenous clergy were established during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the Cape Verde Islands, Sao Tome, and Angola; but not until 1761 did the Lisbon government order the establishment of a seminary at Mo('ambique

13 A. Hamilton, A Netv Account of the East Indies, 1727 (ed. 1930), vol. i, p. 17.


island. The terms of this decree expressly envisaged the ordination of Mulattoes and free Negroes as well as whites, quoting the precedent of the 'kingdom of Angola and the islands of Sao Tome and Principe, where the parish priests, canons, and other dignitaries are usuaiiy the black clergy who are natives of that region'. Although tins measure was originated by the dreaded dictator of Portugal, who is best known to us by his later title of Marquis of Pombal, it was never implemented in East Africa. Canon Alcantara Guerreiro, the historian of Mo,ambique, observed sadly in 1954 that 'although nearly two centuries have passed since this edict was promulgated, the first native priest has yet to be ordained in Mo('ambique' .14 It is true that some Negroes of East African origin were ordained at Goa during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including a son of the Monomotapa, who died as vicar of the Dominican monastery of Santa Barbara in r67?, but these priests remained in Portuguese India and did not return to the land of their birth. Whether this was done as a matter of deliberate policy, I cannot say; but the fact remains that the coloured clergy and friars of Mo,ambique, who were the target of so much criticism by governors and Crown officials, were exclusively Goans or IndoPortuguese.

I mentioned previously that the Estado da India was a commercial and maritime empire cast in a military and

14 Conego Alcantara Guerreiro, Quadros Ja hist6ria de Morambique, vol. ii, pp. 331-2. The text of the abortive decree for the establishment of a seminary for the training of secular clergy in Mo~?mbique Island, dated Lisbon, 29 May 1761, is printed by A. A. de Andrade, RelafOes de Mofambique Setccentista, pp. 599-601.

57

'

I

MOC::AMBIQUE AND INDIA

ecclesiastical mould. Every male Portuguese who went out to the East did so in the service of the Crown or of the Church. Laymen who married after reaching India were allowed to leave the royal service aud settle down as citizens or traders, being then termed casados or married men. The remainder were classified as soldiers (soldados) and were liable for military service until they died, married, deserted, or were incapacitated by wounds or disease. 'This is a frontier laud of conquest', (pais he terra de conquista e Jronteira) wrote a Franciscan missionary friar at. Goa in 1587, and this is a theme which repeatedly recurred for the next two hundred years. 'Tell me Sirs; is there today in this world another laud which is more of a frontier, aud in which it is more necessary to go about with arms in the hand than in India? Most certainly not!' wrote Diogo do Couto in his So/dado Pratico. Over a century later, the Viceroy D. Pedro de Almeida reminded King John V: 'This state is a military republic, aud its preservation depends entirely on. our arms by land and sea.' Partly because of this frontier milieu of continuous warfare, which lasted with few intermissions until the end of the eighteenth century, very few white women went out to India in comparison with men. There wonld seldom be more thau a dozen or so women in a ship which might carry six or eight hundred males. Moreover, if the evidence of several contemporary chroniclers is to be trusted, few of those white women who reached India alive proved fecund in ~hildbearing."

15 A. C. Germano da Silva Correia, Hist6ria da colonizafa'O portuguesa na India (6 vols., Liboa, 1943-58), shows that more white women left Portugal for Goa than is generally realized, but he

58

MOC::AMBIQUE AND INDIA

Under the circumstances, miscegenation aud more of it was the general rnle with the Portuguese male in India, as in Africa aud in Brazil, with the results described by a scandalized Jesuit missionary in the year 1550 as follows: 'Your Reverence must know that it is f1fty years since the Portuguese begau to inhabit these regions of India. Whereas all those who came out here were soldiers, who went about conquering lands and enslaving people, these same soldiers began to baptize the said people whom they enslaved, without auy respect and reverence for the sacrament, aud without any catechizing or indoctrination. And since the inhabitants of these countries are very miserable, poor, aud cowardly, some were baptized through fear, others through worldy gain, and others for filthy and disgusting reasons which I need not mention. And not only was this (in my opinion) great abnse done in the begi1llling, but it continued even when India became full of Christian ecclesiastics, audit is still in vogue

misreads many of his own sources and hence makes unwarranted deductions. For example, in narrating the capture of the carrack Sa11ta Catarina by the Dutch in February 1603, he assumes that she was a ndo da carreira da India which had just left Lisbon vvith over 100

Portuguese women on board (op. cit., val. iii, p. so). In fact, she was bound from Macao to Malacca, and the women were all Eurasians and coloured girls, the majority being slaves. Yet on the basis of hiS erroneous assumption that the women were white, Dr.-GermanO da Silva Correia calculates that the total number-ofPortuguese women who emigrated to India in the period 1500--1700 may well have. been not far short of So,ooo( !) Actually, S,ooo worild be a very generous estimate, and Sao would prObably be much nearer the real :figure. For the frontier spirit quotations, see the text of Studia, val. ix, p. 106; Diogo do Couto, Soldado Prdtico (ed. Rodrigues Lapa, Lisboa, 1937), p. 144; dispatch of the viceroy D. Pedro de.Almeida, d. Goa, is January 1746, in Arquivo das Colo1lias, val. v, p. 109 ).

59


at the present day. I have frequently protested about this to persons whom I am bound to respect and obey in doctrinal matters. Some of them reprimanded me, asking who incited me to interfere in this business. Others

. replied that if Saint Thomas [Aquinas] and other saints who wrote treatises on the Sacraments and on Christian Doctrine had been in these regions and knew these peoples they would have done the same as we do, and perhaps they would have written in another way .... I confess that I originally baptized some people in this manner; but for a long time I have not baptized anyone except children, or adults whom I have catechized for three or four months. Many people come in order to be baptized, and I ask them why they want to become Christians? Some reply because the lord of the land tyrannizes and oppresses them, and others reply that they must become Christians because they have nothing to eat. I then make them a little speech, explaining briefly what it means to be a Christian and why they should become one, for which purpose they must come for fifteen or twenty days to the church for instruction in the Christian faith, after which I will baptize them. They usually answer that they will become Christians ifl ba prize them there and then, otherwise they will go away and not return, and this in fact is what they do.'

Padre Lancilotto likewise deplored the tmbridled sexual licence which was such a characteristic feature of Portuguese colonization according to him and to many other contemporary observers. 'Your Reverence must know that the sin of licentiousness is so widespread in these regions that no check is imposed on it, which leads

6o


to great inconveniences, and to great disrespect of the sacraments. I say this of the Portuguese, who have adopted the vices and customs of the land without reserve, including this evil custom of buying droves of slaves, male and female, just as if they were sheep, large and small. There are irmumerable Portuguese who buy droves of girls and sleep witlt all of them, and subsequently sell them. There are innumerable married settlers who have four, eight, or ten female slaves and sleep with all of them, and this is known publicly. This is carried to such excess that there was one man in Malacca who had twenty-four women of various races, all of whom were his slaves, and all of whom he enjoyed. I quote this city because it is a thing that everyone knows. Most other men, as soon as they can afford to buy a female slave ahnost always use her as a girl-friend (amiga) besides many other dishonesties in my poor understanding.'"

There may have been some exaggeration in Padre Lancilotto' s scandalized 'description of the excesses of the Lusitanianlibido in sixteenth-century Asia, but there was not much. The number of respectable Indo-Portuguese married families was undoubtedly greater than could be inferred from his account; but it is obvious that the system of household and domestic slavery which obtained in Golden Goa was not conducive to a wholesome fanllly life. We may guess, or at any rate hope, that Cam5es treated the slave-girl, Barbara, who held him enthralled,

16 Nicolas Lancilotto, S.J., to St. Ignatius Loyola, d. Coulao (Quilon), 5 December 1550, apud A. da Silva Rego [ed.J,. DocwnentafiiO para a hist6ria das missifes do padroado port~1gues do Onente. Indw (12 vols., Lisboa, 1947-58, in progress), vol. vii, pp. J2-J8.

6r


more as an amiga than as a cativa; but the cruel treatment which slaves of both sexes often received in Portuguese

'Asia is well attested by numerous witnesses, 17 It is also obvious that the children of tllis pronliscuity with slave mothers seldom had the chance of an adequate upbringing or education, and were apt to be despised by new arrivals from Europe, whether these were learned Jesuits or teen-age soldiers from the slums of Lisbon and Oporto,

Such in fact was usually though not invariably the case. Tllirty years after Padre Lancilotto penned his above quoted report, another Italian Jesuit, Padre Alexandre Valignano, celebrated reorgarlii!er of the Jesuit missions in Asia, classified the population of Portuguese India (in the narrower sense of the term) as divisible into the following categories. Firstly, the European-born Portuguese, or Reinol. Secondly, Portuguese born in India of pure European parentage, who were very few and far between. Thirdly, those born of a European father and a Eurasian mother, who were termed tastiros. Fourthly, the half-

--- -- I

breeds, or Mestiros. Fifth and last, the indigenous pure-bred Indians 'and those with hardly a drop of Enropean blood in their veins. He regarded all these elements as unsuitable candidates for adnlission into the Society of

17 Luis de CamOes, Redondilha 'Endcchas a Barbara escrava', beginning 'Aqnela cativa que me tem cativo', which has been the theme of voluminous discussions by Carri5es' commentators. For the cruel treatment of slaves in Portuguese Asia cf. J. H. Cunha Rivara (ed.), ArchiPo Portuguez Oriental (8 vols., Nova-Goa, I 857-75), vol. lv (r862), pp. 51-54, 186-7,267-70, and the accounts ofLinschoten (1596), Mocquet (r6r6), Pyrard de Laval (r6rg), and many other travellers in Portuguese India.

62


Jesus. The European-born Portuguese were mostly illiterate pages or soldiers who would have to be taught to read and write during their novitiate. Those born in India were vicious, weak, and idle, being brought up by slave women in every kind of vice. As for the Indians themselves, none of them should ever be admitted into the Society: 'both because all these dusky races are very stupid and vicious, and of the basest spirits, and likewise because the Portuguese treat them with the greatest contempt, and even among the inhabitants of the country they are little esteemed in comparison with the Portuguese. As for the mestiros and castiros, we should receive either very few or none at all; especially with regard to the mestiros, since the more native blood they have, the more they resemble the Indians and the less they are esteemed by the Portuguese.' 18

A few years after Valignano had penned \his scathing denunciation of half-castes and of coloured peoples (though he was careful to exempt the Japanese and Cllinese from his strictures) a Portuguese Franciscan friar at Goa gave a much kinder appreciation of the racial situation i,n a report to his superiors in Europe. 'Wherefore I inform Your Paternity', he wrote in December

(lBl Alexandre Valignano, 'Sumario de las casas gue pertenenyen a la provincia de Ia India Oriental y al govierno della', d. August 1580 (apud A. da Silva Rego, Dowmwta~Efo.India, vol. xii, pp. 577-8r. Cf. also C. R. Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 1549-1650 (University of California Press, 1951), pp. So-Sr. In the seventeenth century, the term castifO came to be applied to Portuguese bom in India without any infusion of Asian blood, and the term 1\1esti~o to anyone who had a European ancestor, however remote or diluted. Cf. R. Dalgado, Glossclrio Luso-Asirftico (z vols., Coimbra, 1919-21), in voce castiro and mestifo.

MOc;;AMBIQUE AND INDIA

1585, 'that in East India there are many generations of Gentiles [=Hindus] who in the course of time adopted the sect of the Moors [=Islam], from which generations descend on the maternal side many sons of India born here whose fathers, even though honourable Portuguese, married in these parts with Christian women of the land whose grandparents and great-parents were of those generations, that is, were originally Gentiles who had· become Moors. And this is so common here in these parts, that it is no reproach whatever to those sons' of India, nor to their Portuguese fathers however honourable they may be, nor is it regarded as a bar to any human honour and dignity, nor up to now has it been the cause of any danger to the faith.' 19

The Franciscan friar was obviously thinking of the mixed marriage policy inaugurated by Alfonso de

. Albuquerque, who encouraged his men to marry the 'white and beautiful' widows and daughters of the Muslim defenders of Goa whom they had killed in battle or subsequently burnt alive (algiias Mouras, mulheres alvas e de hom parecer). Albuquerque himself made it clear that he wished these marriages to be limited to women of Aryan origin who had been converted to Christianity, and he stressed that he did not want his men to marry the 'black women' of Malabar-in other words dark-skinned women of Dravidian origin, who were often termed

Ht Fr. Gaspar de Lisboa, O.F.M., letter d. I4 December 1585 in Studia, vol. ix, p. 83. Fr. Gaspar is quite wrong in alleging that converts from Hinduism and Islam were never suspect in their new faith. The published records of the Jesuits and of the Goa Inquisition contain ample proof to the contrary.

MOc;;AMBIQUE AND INDIA

'N egresses' by the Portuguese. 20 Many of his men did not share his racial prejudice in this respect, but many others certainly did. His policy, of creating a mixed but legitimate and Christian race through intermarriage with selected Indian women was widely criticized both then and for long afterwards. But the criti.cs of inter-racial marriages, who were more numerous ~nd more vocal than is generally acknowledged today, could never get over the awkward fact that not nearly enough white women came out to India to make white colonization possible. Inevitably, the average white Portuguese male, if he married at all, had to marry with a Eurasian, an Asian, or an African woman; though concubinage with slave-girls was usually more popular among the young and virile bachelors than was holy wedlock with a woman of any colour, tmless she happened to be an heiress .

That the majority of European-born Portuguese were convinced upholders of white superiority is shown by the history of the. Religious Orders and of the armed forces of the Crown in India. After some preliminary hesitation, and the admission of a few Indians or halfcastes to their ranks with disappointing results, all the Religious Orders refused to admit these categories by the end of the sixteenth century. They maintained their refusal for over a century, and even when they began to admit a few Japanese and Chinese, they still retained their

20 In 1524 the married white men of Goa were 'todos ou a mor parte, Casados com Negras que levam a igreja em cabello muy humtado' (letter of D. Henrique de Menezes, d. Goa, 27 October 1524, ap11d A. de Silva Carvalho, Garcia d'Ortn, Coimbra, 1934, p. 52 11).


ban on Indians and mesti~os. In this attitude they consciously or unconsciously followed the precedent of the same Religious Orders working in Spanish America and the Philippines, who took a similar line which they upheld for even longer. Like the Spaniards in the Philippines, the Portuguese in India were prepared to train Ihdian and mesti~o candidates for the secnlar priesthood, but they Kept them in strictly subordinate positions as a matter of ecclesiastical and colonial policy, and they flatly refused to let them become fully-fledged Jesnits, Dominicans, Franciscans, or Angustinians. A Portuguese Franciscan friar born (so he said) of white parents in India, complained in 1640 that even he and his like were called 'Niggers' by their Enropean born colleagues. These latter argued that although some of the Creole fri'lrs might be of pnrc European descent, yet the fact that in their infancy they had been suckled by Indian ayahs was sufficient to contaminate their blood and their character for the remainder of their lives. An Italian Theatine priest who lived at Goa from r64o to r6so, while recommending the local Brahmin Christian priests to the good graces of the Cardinals of the Propaganda Fide, added significantly: 'None of the Religious Orders here will allow these kind of people to take their holy habit. At first I thought this very blameworthy; but experience has made me realize that their refusal is fully justified.'

It may be added that Fr. Avitabile was as critical of the local Portuguese, Mesti~os and Indians, as Lancilotto and Valignano had been in the previous century. 'And to give a true account of the people who come here from

66


Portugal,' he wrote in r654, 'they are the scum of that kingdom, and the most unruly in it, and who carmot stay there. If some of them are jidalgos, CJ4:n they are mostly illegitimate. I do not deny that there may be an exceptional one who is well-behaved and of good parentage, but these are so few that they cannot be numbered on the fmgers of even one hand. If we speak of those who are born in India ofPortuguese parents, they are reckoned to be even worse. Those of the country, the blacks, are regarded as inadmissible or unsuitable for officiating in holy orders.'"

The first breach in the theory and practice of white superiority in the ecclesiastical hierarchy of Portuguese India was made when the Christian Brahmin, Mattheus de Castro, was consecrated Bishop of Chtysopolis, in partibus injidelium, at Rome in r635, and sent to India as Vicar-Apostolic of Bijapur three years later. He was not

21 Letter of Fr. Pietro Avitabile, d. Goa, 31 December 1645, apud Carlos Merces de Melo, S.J., The recruitment and formation ~f the uatiue cle~'!Y in India, 16th-1gth cent11ry. An historico-canonical Jtudy (Lisboa, 1955), pp. 247-8. Miguel da Purificacao, O.F.M., RelacJo Defensiva dos filhos da lt1dia Oriental e da Provincia do -Apostolo S. Thome dos frades menores da regular observanfia da Jncsma India (Barcelona, 1640), a book whose exceeding rarity is probably due to its publication in a limited edition at Barcelona in the year of the Catalan and Portuguese revolutions. For the adamant refusal of the Spanish regular clergy in the Philippines to admit Indios and 1Vfestizos to their ranks and their determination to keep the native secular clergy in a strictly subordinate position c£ J. L. Phelan, The Hispanizatio11 of the Philippines. Spanish aims and Filipino responses (Madison, 1959), pp. 85-89; Domingo Abella, The See of Nueva Cdceres (Manila, 1954), pp. 56-58, 69, 78-79, 87-93, 104, 122 ff., 168, 269-70; ibid., 'Eighteenth century documents on Bishop Miguel Lino de Espeleta of Cebu', 8-page reprint from The Philippine Historical B111letin, vol. iv, Nr. J (Manila, 1960).


allowed to function in Portuguese territory, and he revenged himself by inciting both the Muslim Sultan of Bijapur and the Calvinist Dutch East India Company to attack Goa. The Portuguese repaid his dislike with interest, the venerable Jesuit Patriarch of Ethiopia, Dom Affonso Mendes, terming the Brahmin bishop 'a barebottomed nigger'. More effective than the intrigues of this stormy petrel in breaking down the doctrine of white superiority in church and state, was the apostolic action of a group of Goan Oratorians headed by Fr. Joseph Vaz, whose devoted labours in Ceylon saved Roman Catholicism from extinction in this island at the end of the seventeenth century. 22

Despite the success achieved by these Indian-born friars, it was a long time before the other Orders followed the example of the Congregation of the Oratory in admitting Indians to their ranks. In 1736, the Viceroy Count of Sando mil informed his royal master: 'The difference that there is between the natives of this country and the vassals of Your Majesty who come from Portugal and are natives thereof, is obvious; and it has always been acknowledged to such an extent that when a post in the Inquisition of this ciry was bestowed on a secular Indian priest named Lucas de Lima, a man of great reputation in learning and behaviour, the ministers of the said Inquisition would not admit him; and it seems that

22 For Dom Mattheus de Castro, see Dom Theodore Ghesquiere, Matthieu de Castro, premier vicaire apostolique aux Indes (Louvain, 1937); Carlo Cavallera, Matteo de Castro, 1594-1677, Primo Vicario Apostollico dell' India (Rome, 1936). For Fr. Joseph Vaz and the labours of the Goan Oratorians in Ceylon see R. Boudens, The Catholic Church in Ceylon tmder Dutch mle (Rome, 1957), pp. 89-II5.

68


owing to the representations which they made to the General Council, this appointment was suspended in such wise that it was never implemented'. 23 Several Archbishops of Goa showed themselves strongly opposed to giving anything but very subordinate posts to the indigenous Indian clergy, particularly D. Fr. Christovao de Sa e Lisboa (1620-2) and D. Fr. Inacio de Santa Teresa (1721-40), both of whom were convinced upholders of white racial superiority. It was only in the second half of the eighteenth century that the Religious Orders relaxed their opposition to admitting Indians to their own ranks. This was partly the result of pressure from Rome exercised through the Propaganda Fide; partly the result ofthe grmving sc~rciry ()[vocations from Eurofe; but mainly. owing to the insistence of th~ Portuguese dictator, Sebastiao Joseph de Carvalho, Count of Oeiras and Marquis of Pombal, who, in this respect at any rate, showed that he was an enlightened despot. By the time that the Religious Orders were suppressed in Portugal and its overseas dominions in 1835, there were about three hundred Regulars in Goa, only sixteen of whom were Europeans, all the remainder being sons of the soil. ••

The policy of the Portuguese Crown towards the colour-bar in the Estado da India was not always clear and consistent, but on the whole the Portuguese kings took the line that religion and not colour should be the criterion

23 Viceroy Count of Sandomil to the Crown, Goa, 24- January 1736, apud J. H. Cunha Rivara, Archivo Portuguez Oriental, Torno VI, pp. 440-2. C£ also ibid., op.cit., pp. 455, 474.

24 Cf. Carlos Merces de Melo, S.J., The recruitment and formation of the native clergy in India, pp. 172-7.

MOc;:AMBIQUE AND INDIA

for Portuguese citizenship, and that all Asian converts to Christianity should be treated as the equals of their Portuguese co-religionists. Laws to this effect were passed in 1562 and 1572 but, as we have just seen, they were never fully implemented. The more enlightened viceroys realized that the servile character of the natives was largely due to the contemptuous way in which they were treated by the Portuguese. Antonio de Mello de Castro wrote in r664: 'our decay in these parts is entirely due to our treating the natives thereof as if they were slaves and worse than if we were Moors'. Nearly a century later the Viceroy Cotmt of Ega deplored the way in which the Indians were treated by the European Portuguese, 'who often insult them with iniquitous words and chastise them with cruelty'. On the other hand, early in the seventeenth century, the members of the Council of India at Lisbon :Jdvised the Crown that: 'India and the other overseas territories whose government is the concern of this council, are not distinct nor separate from this kingdom, nor even are they joined to it in a sort of union, but they are actual members of this same kingdom, just like the kingdom of the Algarve and any of the provinces of Alemtejo, Minho e Douro, etc., ... and thus anybody who is born and lives in Goa, or in Brasil, or in Angola, is just as Portuguese as is anyone who is born and lives in Lisbon' .25

It is not clear whether the Crown accepted this argnment, or whether the Councillors who advanced it were

25 ConsHlta of the Conselho da India, which functioned at Lisbon as an advisory cmmcil on colonial affairs to the Crown from 1604 to r6q, apud Francisco Paulo Mendes da Luz, 0 CoiiScllw da India (Lisboa, 1952), pp. 173-4.


thinking only of white Portuguese born in the overseas territories, or of Asian, African, and Amerindian Christian converts as well. What is certain, is d1at racial discrimination in favour of the European-born Portuguese, if not always accepted in theory, was widely and continuously exercised in practice by the great majority of overseas viceroys and governors. The correspondence of successive viceroys of Goa is full of complaints against the real or alleged physical and moral inferiority of mestifDS as compared with European-hom and bred Portuguese. Whenever possible, white Portuguese were placed in the chief military and government posts, jnst as they were in high ecclesiastical office, and mestifDS and mixed-bloods had to play second ftddle. There were some exceptions, of course, such as Gaspar Figueira da Serpa in Ceylon. This fidalgo was the son of a Portuguese father and a Sinhalese mother, and his outstanding military prowess led to his eventually being given the chief command in the field against the Dutch and Siultalese in 1655-8. But such instances remained exceptions. Even those European-born fidalgos who had married Eurasian women and made their homes in the East, complained that they were passed over for promotion after years of arduous service in favour of beardless striplings who had just arrived from Portugal and who had every intention of returning thither. Most viceroys and governors. were even more uncomplimentary about the indigenous iul1abitants of Portuguese India, frequently stigmatizing them, as Lancilotto had done in 1550, as base, cowardly, and tmreliable.26

26 For the career of Gaspar Figueira da Serpa, who died at Goa 'amidst poverty and ingratitude', according to the Jesuit chronicler

71


The gap between theory and practice in the matter of racial equality narrowed in the fmt half of the eighteenth century, when the Crown accepted the viceroys' view that the principle of white supremacy mnst be maintained both in church and state. The theory that Indian Christians were treated on a footil1g of perfect equality with the Portuguese moradores of Goa, was admitted by a

Fern:io de Queiroz, see the latter's Temporal and Spiritual Conquest oJ Ceylon (3 vols., ed. and trailS. S. G. Pereira, S.J., Colombo, 1930), index, pp. I229-30, in voce 'Figncyra de Serpe'. For a typical complaint by a Portuguese-born fidalgo married in India at the way he and his like were passed over in favour of those who returned to Portugal with the money they had amassed in the East, see AntOnio de Sousa Coutinho's comments to the Council of State at Goa in r663, apud P. Pissurlencar (ed.) Assentos do Conselho do Estado da India, 1618-1750 (5 vols., Goa-Bastori, 1953-7), vol. iii, p. 134-· For a typical assessment of a MestifO by a Reinol. c£ the Viceroy D. Pedro de Almeida's violent denunciation of the character of D. Luis Caetano de Almeida Pimentel (the :first mestito to fill the post of governor-general ofPortuguese India) in 1746, inArquivo das Colonias, vol. v (Lis boa, 1930), pp. IIO, II 8-19. The same viceroy was even more tmcomplimentary about the Hindu subjects of the Portuguese Crown, whom he described as follows in 1750: 'EXperience has shown that anyone who with a sincere and open heart has dealings with Gentiles of any caste, especially Brahmins, can give himself up for lost. He -will fmd himself inevitably deceived if he does not resist the softness, submission, and the outwardly good manners which they use. There is not one who has any faith or loyalty in his dealings with anybody else, and they are by nature lying and fraudulent' (Instruct5o do Exmo Vice-Rei Marquez de Aloma ao seu s11ccessor o Exmo ViceRei Marquez de Tavora, ed. Filippe Nery Xavier, Nova Goa, 1856, pp. ror, roS--9). Nothing would be easier than to multiply ~uch derogatory quotations from the correspondence of viceroys and governors over the centuries. Cf. J. H. Cunha Rivara, Archi(}O Oriental Portugts~z. Fasc. VI (r878), pp. 477-8, and A India Portuguesa (2 vols., Nova Goa, 1923), vol. ii, p. 433, for the quotations from AntOnio de Mello de Castro and the Cmmt of Ega.


commission which reported on this problem at Goa in 1715, never to have been fully implemented in practice. In the same year, the Crown informed the viceroy Count of Ericeira that in filling military and government posts he must take especial care that the Indians 'should on no account be preferred to nor equalled in any way with the Portuguese, because such is convenient for my service, ond the authority and prestige of our nation' .27 Moreover, Kanarese were to serve for at least twelve years before they could become qualified to hold office, whereas a Portuguese need only serve for eight. The Cotmt of Ericeira needed no promptmg on this point, as he always acted on the principle of giving European-born Portuguese preference and promotion over all others.

The first serious attempt (since 1572} to abolish the colour-bar in Portuguese Asia and East Africa was made by Pombal through the medium of the celebrated decree of 2 April 1761. This edict informed the viceroy of India and the governor-general of Mo~ambique that henceforth the Asian subjects of the Portuguese Crown who were baptized Christians must be given the same legal and social status as white persons who were born in

27 'attendendo muito a que os Canarins nao sejio antepostos, nem igua1ados por algum modo aos Portuguezes, porque assim convem a men serviyo, e authoridade e respeito da Nayao, e do contrario me darei por muito mal servido; e que estes tks Canar.ins n[o possao habilitarem-se para os officios, que couberem nelles, menos que com doze annes, porque he resao haja differenp dos Portuguezes a elles, que s6 necessitao de oito annos para serem despachados' {Crown to Viceroy, 19 February 1718, in Archivo Portuguez Oriental, VI (r876), p. !02. For admissions that Indian Christians had seldom or never been treated on a footing of equality with white Portuguese see ibid, pp. 8j, 193. 445-9.

73 6


. Portugal, since 'His Majesty does not distinguish between his vassals by their colour but by their merits'. Moreover, it was made a penal offence for white Portuguese to call their Indian fellow-subjects 'Niggers, half-castes, and other insulting and opprobrious terms', as they were in the habit of doing. This decree was repeated in even more categorical terms two years later, but it was not promulgated by the authorities at Goa Ulltil 1774. The dreaded dictator of Portugal was not a man to be trifled . with, as his savage treatment of the Jesuits and of the. Tavoras proved; and the fact that this decree was not implemented for thirteen years, shows clearly how deeply the feeling of racial superiority was implanted in the · Portuguese colonial authorities. The slavish obedience with which Pombal's most iniquitous enactments were carried out on all other occasions contrasts most strongly with the conspiracy of silence by which the alvara of 2 April 1761 was .quietly shelved by those responsible for its implementation, just as was the complementary decree (29 May 1761) ordering the establishment of a seminary for the training of coloured clergy at Mo~ambique. 28 This attitude is especially. significant, as the Viceroy CoUllt of Ega (1756-65) had already promulgated an edict at Goa in July 1759, denoUllcing 'the contempt with which the natives of this State are treated by the Europeans who call them Niggers, curs and other

!!a. For the alvards of 14 July 1759 and 2 April 1761, the carlaregia of 10 April I76J, and their being pigeon-holed till '774. see Archivo Portuguez Oriental, Vl {1876), pp. 498-9. For the nonfulfilment of the-alvari.of 29 May 1761 enjoining the establishment of a· seminary for coloured clergy at Mos:ambique, seep. 57 above and note (14).

74

I


insulting names, for no other reason than the difference of colour'.

The Portuguese at first tried to abolish caste distinctions among their Indian converts, but they soon foUlld that this was impossible and they were forced, however reluctantly, to compromise with this immensely powerful and deep-rooted social and religious system. There is no need for me to go into the details of the castes and subcastes of Hindu India, but I would remind you that they are traditionally grouped in four main divisions: the Brahmins or the priestly caste, who could .and often did engage in other occupations; the Kshatriyas or the warrior caste; the Vaysias (Vanis) composed of merchants and peasants; and the Sudras or the menial class. In Hindu society the priesthood was reserved for the Brahmins, and the Portuguese had to follow this practice with their converts, only those of Brahmin stock being admitted to the Christian priesthood-with a few rare exceptionsprior to the nineteenth century. Those of the other castes who became converts were divided into the following four groups. The Chardos (Charodos), who claimed to be of Kshatriya or warrior origin, and a few of whom succeeded in getting ordained, though some authorities ranked them with the Vaysias. The Sudras, who not only performed menial offices in Portuguese territory, but were also peasants and artisans. The Corumbins (CurUlllbins) who were chiefly landless workers and peasants. The Farazes, who did the most menial jobs (sweepers, grooms, grave-diggers, etc.) and who more or less corresponded to the Hindu pariahs or Ulltouchables. These five Christian castes did not intermarry with each

75

MO<;;AMBIQUE AND INDIA

other, and the Brahmins (Brahmane, Bragmane, etc., in IndoPortuguese), enjoyed much of their former prestige, though some of the Chardos tried to claim equality with them. 29

It is often thought that the Portuguese married on a large scale with high-caste women who had been converted to Christianity from Hinduism, ever since Albuquerque initiated a policy of inter-racial marriage with light-skinned women of Aryan origin in rsro. Such marriages did indeed take place, but they were the exception rather than the rule, since the Brahmins and Chardos converted to Christianity kept their pride of caste and race, and they did not wish their daughters to marry with European or with Mesti(o men. The Portuguese authorities on their side did not encourage

29 For a curious work by a Christian Brahmin secular priest affirming the superiority of his caste over all other Asian races, and its inherent right to be treated on an equal footing by the Portuguese, see AntOnio Joao de Frias, Aureola dos Indios e Nobiliarchia Bracmana (Lisboa, 1702). A contemporary Chardo author, Leonardo Paes, one of the relatively few secular priests of chardo origin, in his Promptuario das di}finitoens Indicas deduziJas de varios chronistas da India, gra~Jes authores, e das historias gentilicas (Lisboa, 1713), claims this privilege for his caste, which he equates with the Rajputs, but most modern writers place the chardos lower than the Khsatriyas and with the Sudras. P. Pissurlencar argues that they were of Vani or Maratha origin in his 'Contribui~ao ao estudo etnologico da casta indoportuguesa denominada chardo, a luz de documentos ineditos encontrados no Arquivo Hist6rico da India', 7-page reprint from the Aetas do l Congresso Nadonal de Antropologia Colonial (Porto, 1934). For the Christian castes of Portuguese India cf. the entries under their respective categories in S. R. Dalgado, Glossdrio Luso-AsiJtico,- and Antonio Emilio d' Almeida Azevedo, As communidades de GoaHistoria das instituifOes antigas (Lisboa, r89o); A. B. de Branganp Pereira, Etnografia da India Portuguesa (2 vols., Goa-Bastora, 1940), val. ii, pp. 25-58.


the marriage of Portuguese men with the low-caste Sudra and Curumbin women; and their sporadic efforts to foster the remarriage of Christian Brahmin widows with white soldiers drafted from Portugal for service in Indiathe majority of whom were convicts. and exiles in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries-met with very little response from the caste-conscious Brahmins. In any event, as we have seen, many Portuguese males preferred to consort with their slave-girls rather than enter the bonds of holy matrimony. In the course of the eighteenth century the lasting connections which numerous Portuguese fidalgos and soldiers formed with Hindu Bailadeiras, or Nautch-girls, caused the viceroys and archbishops constant concern. Mnch futile legislation was enacted with a view to curbing the passion of the fidalgos for the bailadeiras; but in any case these illicit unions were often childless, as the women usually practised some form of birth-control or abortion in order to avoid having children by their European admirers. 30

We have seen that both the European-born Portuguese (the Reinols) and the Christian Brahmins tended to despise the Mesti(OS, or the true Indo-Portuguese of mixed blood, although this was precisely the class that Affonso de Albuquerque and those who thought like him regarded as the main support of the Portuguese power in

ao Cf. C. R. Boxer, 'Fidalgos Portugueses e Bailadeiras Indianas. Seculos XVII e XVIII', in the Revista de Historia, No. 56 (Sao Paulo, 1961), pp. 83-105. For the largely unsuccessful efforts made in 1644, r684, and 1745 to foster the marriage of white Portuguese soldiers with Christian Brahmin and Charod6 women, see P. Pissurlencar, Assentos do Conselho do Estado do India, 1618-1750, vol. v (r957), pp. 29]-j.

77

MOCAMBIQUE AND INDIA

Asia. In rs6r the Crown actually went so far as to prohibit the enrolment of meslifOS in the royal service, but this measure was certainly not enforced for long. 31 Even at the best of times there were seldom more than two or three thousand able-bodied men who emigrated from Portugal to India in a year, and the wastage among those who survived the voyage, from tropical diseases, battle, and desertion was exceedingly high. The MeslifOS had necessarily to be employed on an increasing scale, particularly when Brazil attracted the majority of emigrants from Portugal in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As early as r6ro the soldier-chronicler, Diogo do Couto, complained that most of the Portuguese in India 'had more relatives in Gujerat than in Tras-os Montes'. But although the MestifOS, with a greater or lesser mixture of Eurasian blood, were more numerous than the Reinols from Portugal, they likewise tended to become something of a caste, having no more wish to intermarry with the Christian Brahmins and other Indians than the latter had to marry with them. The main ambition of most MeslifO parents was to marry their daughters witl1 European-born Portuguese, failing which they would wed with men of their own kind-and the lighter the colour the better."

31 '0 capitulo 31, em que Vossa Al~eza manda que senao assentem os mistiyos, asi o guardo, mas parece que devia Vossa Alteza despemsar com alguns que o merecem' (Viceroy Count of Redondo to the Crown, Goa, 20 December, rs6r, apud Studia, val. ii, p. 59).

32 Diogo do Couto, Didlogo do soldado pratico portuguez {Lisboa, 1790), pp. 36, 109. For the desire of wealthy parents to marry their daughters to white Portuguese, however poor and lowly, cf. C. R. Boxer and Carlos de Azevedo, Fort Jesus and the PortugHese in Motitbasa, 1593-1729 (London, I96o), pp. 39-40, and the sources there quoted.

78

MO<;:AMB!QUE AND INDIA

Just as the Reinols were apt to despise the MeslifOS, so the latter were apt to despise the local Indians of whatever caste, whom they termed 'Canarins'. The MeslifOS remained intensely prond of their Portuguese ancestry and they even affected to regard themselves as superior to European-born jidalgos, boasting that their own aristocracy put that of Portugal in the shade. 33 The loss of Bac;aim and ilie fertile 'Province of the Nortl1' to the Marathas in the disastrous wars of 1737-40 was a blow from which iliey never recovered, as their wealthiest families depended on the income derived from the landed estates which they owned there. The emancipation of the local Hindus in the early nineteenth century, and the disbandment of the Indo-Portuguese standing army, which was largely oflicered by MeslifOS, or Descendentes as they are called nowadays, completed their ruin, and actually they form a very modest part of the population of Goa. There were still 2,500 of iliem in 1871, but in 1956 they numbered only a little over a thousand in a population totalling a bout half a million. Their decline in numbers was paralleled by their decline in social inlportance. Ont of 226 senior official posts in Portuguese India six years ago, 134 were occupied by Christian Indians (Goans), 49 by Portuguese born in Portugal or elsewhere than in India, and only nine by Descendentes.34

all C£ The Archbishop D. Fr. Inolcio de Santa Teresa's complaint 'dos fidalgos da India que dizem a boca cheya, que Fidalguia s6 ada India ... a que a do Reina he sombra a vista della' ('Estado do prezente Estado da India', MS. of I725 in the writer's collectlon, fl. 48 1Jerso).

34 Orlando Ribeiro, 'Originalidade de Goa', in Aetas do 111

Col6qt~io Intemacional de Estudos Luso-Brasileiros, Lisboa, 1957, vol. i (Lis boa, 1959), pp. 170-9, especially pp. 176-7.

79


The rivalry between Mesti§OS and Canarins, which was always latent, became embittered with the increasing impoverishment of the former class and the growth of the latter in bureaucratic power and influence during the nineteenth century. This feeling was recently expressed by a distinguished Descendente, Dr. Germano da Silva

. Correia, the historian and champion of his class, who quoted with approval the following observations of Marshal Gomes da Costa, the founder of the military dictatorship which led to the inauguration of Dr. Salazar's regime. 'The disbandment of the Indian Army in 1871 marks a glorious gain for the Cauarim, because the army had been the refuge of the Descendentes of the Europeans, who occupied all the senior ranks, and who systematically excluded therefrom their rivals for predominance. So long as the army existed, the Descendentes had a source of strength, and the Canarim could not get the upper hand. The great barrier which stood in the way of their achieving their ends now fell to the ground. And the Canarim triumphed, bursting with pride, seeing himself master of the destinies of India. One of them, Bernardo da Costa, in his newspaper 0 Ultramar, prophesied to the descendants of the heroes of · the conquest that their daughters would be the wet-nurses of his own grandchildren-he, a Canarim !'35

If the racial and social tension between the MeslifO and

35 Marechal Gomes da Costa, A Revolta de Goa e a Campanha de 1895-6 (Lisboa, I9J9), pp. IJ-!4; Germano da Silva Correia. Hist6ria da colonizafii'O portuguesa na India, vol. vi (r95-8), pp. 98-99, 6)0-47-

So


the Canarim (whether Christian or Hindu) has lasted down to the present day, it may easily be imagined that a similar feeling existed between the Portuguese ruling class and the original inhabitants of the soil, even after these had become converted to Christianity. Albuquerque had captured Goa from the Muslim Sultan of Bijapur, but the overwhelming mass of the population were Hindus, and for several decades the Portuguese made no serious efforts to interfere with their religious belief and way of life. The Joral or charter for the village community headmen, elaborated at Goa by the Comptroller of the Revenue, Alfonso Mexia, in 1526, is a striking example of this early toleration with due respect for existing Hindu social institutions. But in the second half of the sixteenth century, with the establishment of the Jesuits and the Inquisition, and as a reflex of the increase of religious bigotry in Europe, the heat was turned on the Hindus and Buddhists in Portuguese Asia, as it had previously been on the Muslims. With the notable exception of Diu, wherever else the Portuguese exercised effective power in India and Ceylon, they destroyed the Hindu and Buddhist temples, suppressed the public exercise of all religions other than the Roman Catholic form of Christianity as defined at the Council of Trent, banished or expelled the Asian priests, monks, yogis, fakirs and holy-men, destroyed their sacred books, and drastically pnmed, where they did not altogether forbid, the 'heathen' ritual observances connected with birth, marriage and death. From the year r684 onwards, the Portuguese secular and ecclesiastical authorities made sporadic attempts to suppress tlre use of the Konkani

8r


form of the Maratha language and to replace it by Portuguese." .

In conjunction with these repressive measures, which sometimes involved the use of force, they also tried to secure converts· for Christianity by a mixture of threats and blandishments in the spiritual void which they had created by banning the public exercise of the indigenous religions. In places where their power was strongest, such as in the immediate vicinity of Goa and Ba~aim, they met with a considerable degree of success over the years. The district of Bardez which adjoins the island of Goa on the north, and that of Salcete which adjoins it on the south, were two regions where the action of the Church Militant was most successful, the former being entrusted to the Franciscans and the latter to the Jesuits.

Even so, the whole-hearted acceptance by these Indian converts of their new religion sometimes took longer than is realized nowadays. A Franciscan chronicler at Goa in 1722 recalled how during the Sultan ofBijapur's attack on Bardez in 1654, some of the local Christians had plotted to kill their Franciscan parish priests, and how, on other occasions, they had helped Hindu families by hiding orphan children whom the Padres wished to bring up as Christians. The chronicler commented: 'All these trials were inflicted on the friars of St. Francis in those

a6 Cf. C. R. Boxer, 'A note on Portuguese missionary methods in the East, r6th-r8th centuries', in The Ceylon Hi$/Orical Journal, and the sources there quoted, most of which are taken from the two series of the Archivo Portug~1ez Oriental, the Asseutos do Conselho do Estado da India, and the DocumeH!afa'O para a hist6ria das missOes do padroado portuguEs dO Oriente. Cf. also ]. H. da Cunha Rivara, Ensaio Historico da Lingua Concani (Nova Goa, r858).

82


times, out of hatred for our religion and even for our King; for as the Portuguese were the conquerors and they were the conquered, they could not help hating them in general and our friars in particular, since they were the ones who had begun these holy evangelical deeds. I dare say that this feeling endures to this day, not out of hatred to our religion, for by the mercy of God they have become very good Christians, but withal they still have a certain antipathy for us, as is frequently seen. And when we try to ascertain tl1e reason for this, we cannot find any other canse but that it originated in the begitming of our missions.'37

During the Maratl1a invasions of Bardez and Sa Ieete in 1739-40, similar allegations were made that the native Christians secretly sympathized with the itwaders; bnt in actual fact they remained loyal to the Portuguese, and the bulk of the ransom money which was paid to prevent the victorious Marathas from occupying Goa itself was contributed by the Indian Christian and Hindu vassals of the Portuguese Crown.38 The dictatorship of Pombal,

37 Anon, 'Noticia do que obravao OS frades de sao Francisco ... no servi~o de Deos e de Sua Magestade', Goa, 1722, apud A. da Silva Rego (ed.) Documentaf50 para a hist6ria das missi"fes do padroado portllgues do Orie11te. India, vol. v (1951), pp. 44-0'-I. As noted above (pp. 67-8) theBijapurinvasion ofBardezin 1654 was instigated by the Brahmin Bishop of Chrysop'olis, Dam Mattheus de Castro, who told the local Christians they had nothing to fear from a Muslim conquest, since Christians were tolerated in such fanatically Muslim lands as Turkey and Persia (P. Pissurlencar, Assentos do Conselho do Estado, vol. iii, pp. 296, 374).

38 Most of the money was raised by forced loans from the Hindu section of the community, but this does not seem to have affected their loyalty to the Portuguese Crown. Cf. P. Pissunlencar, Assentos do


which was by no means an unmixed blessing for either Portugal or her overseas possessions, at least brought a far greater degree of toleration for the Hindus of Goa. The inhabitants of the 'New Conquests', which were acquired between 1763 and 1788, and which formed the larger part of the Estado da India extinguished by Krishna Menon in December I96I, were explicitly guaranteed complete freedom of worship and respect for their religion. Full toleration had to wait till the advent of Constitutionalism in Portugal in the eighteen-twenties and thirties, or even, in some minor matters, until the implantation of the Republic in 1910.39 But for practical purposes, it can be said that the racial toleration and (relative) absence of a colour-bar of which the present-day Portuguese so proudly boast, dates from the time of that Jekyll-andHyde character, Sebastiao Joseph de Carvalho, Marquis of Pombal. This in itself is no mean achievement; but it does not square in historical fact with the claim so often made by and. on behalf of the Portuguese that they never · had the slightest idea of racial superiority or of discrimination against their subjec.t peoples.

APPENDIX

A Note on the term 'Canarim'

As Yule and D.algado have pointed out in their respective glossaries, the term Canaritn should apply, strictly speaking, to the inhabitants

Conselho do Estado da India, V, 1696-1750, pp. 530-2; ibid., 'Portugueses eMaratas', inBoletim do Instituto Vasco de Gama, nr. XI, Nova Goa, 1932, pp. 69-86.

39 AntOnio de Noronha, 'Os indUs de Goa e a RepUblica Portuguesa', in A I11dia Portuguesa (z vols., Nova Goa, 1923), vol. ii, pp. 2II-J68.


of Canara, the old Carnatic region of the Deccan. But the Portuguese from their pioneer days mistakenly applied the term to the people of Goa, who, geographically are Konkani-Marathi ethnically are Tnrln-A rv<>n "-11..1 nln~nlnn;r,ll-u ,,.,.. r,.,rln-11'11rf"'MP'>n 'T'hP t"Pr't'YI r"'"''"';"'~

ERRATA

p. 85 line 3 read Konkani-Marathi, ethnically

p. 98 last line for 1775-8 read 1757-8

p. II5 line 12 read E a mulata

p. r21 note for Catons read Carma

85


which was by no means an unmixed blessing for either Portugal or her overseas possessions, at least brought a far greater degree of toleration for the Hindus of Goa. The

does not square in historical fact with the claim so often made by and on behalf of the Portuguese that they never · had the slightest idea of racial superiority or of discrimination against their subject peoples.

APPENDIX

A Note on the term 'Camrrim'

As Yule and Dalgado have pointed out in their respective glossaries, the term Canarim should apply, strictly speaking, to the inhabitants

Conselho do Estado da India, V, 16g6-1750, pp. 530-2; ibid., 'Portugueses e Maratas', in Boletim do Instituto Vasco de Gama, nr. XI, NOva Goa, 1932, pp. 69-86.

39 AntOnio de Noronha, 'Os indUs de Goa e a RepUblica Portuguesa', in A India Portuguesa (2 vols., Nova Goa, 1923), vol. ii, pp. 2II-J68.


of Canara, the old Camatic region of the Deccan. But the Portuguese from their pioneer days mistakenly applied the term to the people of Goa, who, geographically are Konkani-Marathi etlmically are Indo-Aryan, and glotologicallyare Indo-European. The term Canarins was sometimes used to designate those who became Christians, sometimes those who remained Hindus, and sometimes for both categories indiscriminately. During the eighteenth century, and perhaps earlier, the word Canarim acquired an offensive connotation, presumably because the Portuguese were apt to be so contemptuous of the native inhabitants of Goa. When discussing how to raise troops for the Anglo-Portuguese expedition against Kanhoji Angrja in 1721-22, D. Christov[o de Mello observed: 'No trust whatever can be placed in the Canarins as they are absolutely useless (unluckily or luckily for us, as the case may be) and they cannot even defend their own homes, still less attack and conquer fortresses' (c£ P. Pissurlencar, Assentos do Conselho do Estado da India, v, 1696-1750, pp. 340, 482). This is typical of many such snide remarks.

ss

-III: BRAZIL AND THE MARANHAO

MIGUEL DE CERVANTES described Spani;h America

· m h1s day and generation as bemg: The refuge and haven of all the poor devils of Spain, the

sanctuary of the bankrupt, the safeguard of murderers, the way out for gamblers, the promised land for ladies of easy virtue, and a lure and disillusionment for the many, and a personal remedy for the few.' Much the same could be said of Portuguese America in the same period and for long afterwards, as a Portuguese Jew, Gaspar Dias Ferreira, noted in very similar terms some thirty years after Cervantes' death: 'The Portuguese who has lost his money or who has come down in the world-it is to Brazil that he goes for refuge or to recoup his fortlme.'1 I propose briefly to consider some aspects of the reaction of the Portuguese who settled in Brazil and the Maranhao to the peoples whom they found there and to whom they had to adjust themselves as best they might. These peoples can be divided into three main groups: the aboriginal Amerindian inhabitants of the soil; the Negro slaves of West African origin, whom the Portuguese introdnced as a labour-force when they found they could not get satisfactory results from Amerindian labour, whether bond or free; and the mixed bloods, Mamelucos,

1 Miguel de Cervantes, in the opening lines of the 'Celoso extremeiio' (r6r3), one of the Nove/as eJemplares. Cf. HAHR, val. xxxv (1955), p. 514. Gaspar Dias Ferreira to the Crown, Amsterdam, 20 July 1645, Revista do InstitutoArqJ.Ieol~~ico e GeogrJfico Pernambucmw, vol. xxxii (Recite, 1887), p. 78.

86

BRAZIL AND THE MARANHAO

Mulattoes, Mestifos and Caboclos, who stemmed from the mixing of those three races in varying degrees. 2

The characterization of America which I have quoted from Cervantes omitted one important aspect ofEuropean interest in the New World. America was not only a promised land for ladies of easy virtue, but also for missionary priests and friars, among whom the Jesuits must take first place in so far as Portuguese America was concerned. 'This land is onr enterprise,' wrote Manuel de N6brega, leader of the pioneer Jesuits who landed at Bahia in Angnst 1549. This was no idle boast, any more than the proudly prophetic words which he wrote three years later: 'We are working to lay the foundations of houses which will last as long as the world endures.' There is no certainty abont the might-have-beens of history, but it is very likely that but for the work of the Jesuits in colonial days there would be no Brazilian nation as we know it today. N6brega and his pioneer companions. of r 549 began the triple task which their successors continued down to the suppression of the Portuguese branch of the Society of Jesus by Pombal in 1759. Domestication and conversion of the Amerindians; education of the male children, both white and coloured; reformation of the Portuguese colonists' morals and manners, which, like those of most European pioneers in the tropics were apt to be based on the theory that there were no Ten

2 · Mameluco, cross-breed between Amerindian mother and white facl1er; MestifO (a) male offspring of a black and white sexual union, (b) sometimes used for male offspring of an Amerindian and white sexual union; Caboclo, used variously for (a) cross-breed of white and Amerindian stock, (b) domesticated Amerindian, (c) any lowclass person, usually of colour.


Commandments south of the equator. With the passage of time and the growth of cities in Brazil, the last two functions came to occupy an increasingly important part of the Jesuits' work; but they never forgot that their original and principal reason for being in Brazil was the conversion and care of the Amerindians.3

It need hardly be said that this was an exceedingly difficult and often thankless task. The missionaries' ideal was to make 'savages into men, and men into Christians, and Christians persevering in the faith'. It was this last stage which inevitably proved the most difficult to attain with the nomadic food-gathering forest tribes whose cultural level was that of the Stone Age. Tl1e Jesuits soon realized that their best-some people would say their only-hope lay with the children, 'catching them young', and educating them in the way they should go; but time and again the missionaries saw their most devoted efforts turned to naught. They had to contend with the atavistic pull of thousands of years of savage life on the one hand, and with the bad example set by many of the moradores, or colonists, on the other. Indeed, the latter often deliberately tried to sabotage the work being done by the Jesuits among the Amerindiaru, whom they regarded primarily as an exploitable and expendable labour-force.

Nobrega wrote to King John Ill in September 1551: 'Converting these heathen is very easy, but maintaining

3 For the above and what follows cf. the standard history of the Jesuits in Brazil by Serafim Leite, S.J., Hist6ria da Companhia de Jesus no Brasil (ro vols., Lis boa and Rio de Janeiro, 193 8-50), and the works of the same author on NObrega reviewed in Archivwn Historicwn Societatis Jesu, vol. xxvi (Rome, 1957), pp. 3 r6-2r.

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them in the straight and narrow path is quite otherwise, and can only be done with many missionaries; for they believe in nothing, and are therefore like a sheet of paper on which we can write what we like, provided that they are sustained with continual example and precept.' Time and again we fmd the early missionaries giving glowing and optimistic reports on the encouraging progress being made by their neophytes, only to have their hopes dashed in the upshot by the reversion of so many of their charges to primitive savagery. fu Brazil, as in Africa and India, one of the major obstacles in the way of the Jesuits was the indigenous practice of polygamy. Their efforts to uproot this practice were not made any easier by the fact that the pioneer moradores, in the absence of enough women of their own race, tended to adopt this native custom in practice if not in theory. The Jesuits complained that many of the secular clergy were singularly complacent about such irregular unions and indeed often indulged in concubinage themselves.

Nevertheless, the Jesuits persevered. They tried to domesticate and christianize the wandering Amerindians by gathering them in village mission-settlements (aldeias), as their Spanish colleagues did with conspicuous success in the better-known Reductions of Paraguay.• They also took the line that their Amerindian converts to Christianity must be treated as adolescents and not as adults. Through force of circumstances they were reluctantly

4 Pablo Hernandez, S.J., Organizaci6n social de las doctrinas guaraniticas de Ia Comp5n{a de Jesus (z vols., Barcelona, 1913); Magnus MOrner, The political and economic activities of the Jesuits ill the La Plata regio11 (Stockholm, 1953), a:re two of the best books out of many on the Jesuit Reductions of Paraguay.

7


compelled to allow the inmates of the aldeias to perform manual labour for the Portuguese colonists, under certain conditions and safeguards. But they strove to limit their concession as far as possible, and to shield their neophytes from demoralizing contacts with whites and half-castes. For this reason they forbore, in some areas, to teach their converts the Portuguese language, and they themselves used only Tupi, the so-called lingua geral, in their missionvillages.

Although the Jesuits by and large were advocates of peaceful persuasion rather than of forceful methods in civilizing and converting the Amerindians, it must not be thought that they were invariably so. They sometimes began to despair of success in their uphill task, and then they were apt to champion the Church Militant with a vengeance. Nobrega, for instance, writing immediately after the murder of the first Bishop of Bahia, Dom Pedro Fernandes Sardinha, who was killed and eaten with most of his companions by the cannibal Caete Indians when shipwrecked on his voyage home, took a very different view to that which he usually held. Whereas previously he had ascribed the slow progress of conversion to the misbehaviour and immorality of the white and halfbreed colonists, on this occasion he placed the chief blame squarely on the ineradicably savage nature ofthe Amerindians. While not denying that the moradores had been guilty of blameworthy excesses at various times and places, he stated that even where the colonists had given no provocation whatsoever, the Amerindians had shown themselves to be utterly bestial and untrustworthy savages. He urged that the use of force was the only

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satisfactory way to compel them to settle in villages and to make them live 'as rational creatures'. Force was the only argument which they understood, and the Portuguese moradores were far too gentle and accommodating with them. They should follow the example of the Spanish conquistadores, penetrate deeply into the interior, and distribute the conquered Amerindians as serfs among those who opened up and exploited the land. 'I do not understand', he wrote, 'how the Portuguese race, which is the most feared and obeyed in all the world, is patiently enduring and almost subjecting itself along this coastal region to the most vile and miserable heathen in all mankind'. 5

As I said, this outburst was written in a moment of understandable anger at the news of the tragic loss of so many lives. It must be compared with Nobrega's more balanced and considered views as expressed in his famous 'Dialogue on the conversion of the heathen' which he wrote in r 5 56. It is true that in this Dialogo he like;vise envisages the use of force, but only in a moderate degree. While stressing that more promising and permanent results are likely to be obtained from the children and grandchildren of the original converts than from these latter themselves, he instances some model adult converts among the Amerindians of Sao Paulo. Moreover, he reverted to his original view that the indiscriminately hostile attitude of the moradores to the Amerindians was the main reason for the missionaries' difficulties with the latter; and he argued against the introduction of the

ii Serafim Leite, S.J., Monumenta Brasiliae, II, 1553-1558 (Rome, 1957), pp. 448-g.

9I

BRAZIL AND THEj_MARANHAO

Spanish system of the encomienda and the repartimiento which he had advocated after the murder of the Bishop of Bahia. Nobrega's advocacy of the use of force under certain circumstances was carried still further by his contemporary and successor, the saintly Anchieta. Writing of the results of a local war with the Amerindians of Piratininga in 1561-2, Anchieta observed: 'It seems to us that now the gates of this captaincy are opened for the conversion of the heathen, if God our Lord will give us some means of subjugating them and bringing them tmder our yoke; because for this kind of people there is no better way of preaching than with the sword and the rod of iron, and for them more than for any others it is necessary to "compel them to come in" (compelle eos intrare).'6

Despite this and a number of other similar passages which could be quoted to prove that the Jesuit missionaries in Brazil-as elsewhere for that matter-were not opposed to the use of forceful methods on occasion, I must reiterate that by and large they ouly envisaged the use of force as a last resort in their dealings with the Amerindians. They believed that the Amerindians had certain natural virtues, which they endeavoured to foster; and they were frrmly opposed to the enslavement of the Amerindians by the moradores, or to the unrestricted use of the former as indentured servants by the latter. The most famous champion of the freedom of the Amerindians was the celebrated Padre Antonio Vieira, S.J.,

& Letter of Anchieta, r6 April 1563, apud S. Leite, Hist6ria da Companhia de Jesus no Brasil, vol. i, p. 291. For the advocacy of the same methods in Angola by some of And1ieta' s colleagues on the other side of the Atlantic, see p. 22 above and note (zo). 'Compel them to come in', is from Luke, xiv, 23.

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who spent much of his long life battling and intriguing on their behalf, whether as a missionary in Brazil and the Maranhao, or as an advocate of their cause at Lisbon and Rome.7

The colonists looked at the Amerindians with very different eyes, being resolved to use the men for servile labour and the women as wives, concubines, or handmaidens. Even after experience had shown that theN egro was vastly superior both as a household servant and a fieldhand, enslavement of the Amerindians continued in regions .where the colonists could not afford to import Negro slaves, or where their way oflife was more suitable for the Red Man. Both these conditions applied in the southern region of Sao Paulo de Piratininga and in the northern State of Maranhao-Pari.' On the highland plateau of Piratininga, the colonists mated with Amerindian women to a greater extent than they did elsewhere, and they adopted much of the savages' jungle craft and forest lore. The Paulista, or Bandeirante as the Brazilian historian Taunay christened him, was the South American equivalent of the French-Canadian metis or coureur-dubois. More at home in the forest paths md bush trails of the remote backlands than in their own houses, the

7 AntOnio Sergio and Hemini Cidade ( eds.), Padre A11t6nio Vieira. Ohras Escolhidas (12 vols., Lisboa, 1951-4), vol. v, Em defeza dos Indios (Lisboa, 1951); Mathias Kiemen, O.FM., The Indian Policy of Portugal in the Amazon region, 1614-1693 (Washington, D.C., 1954); C. R. Boxer, A great Luso-Brazilian figure: Padre AntOnio Vieira, S.j., 1608-1697 (London, I957)·

8 The State of Maranhao, comprising Cead, Maranhao, and Gdo-Pad., was separated from the State of Brazil in r621-6. Ceara was rejoined to Brazil in 1656, but the Maranhao and Gdo-Pad remained a separately administered State until 1774.

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Paulistas penetrated hnndreds of miles inland in the course of their expeditions in search of Amerindian slaves and precious metals, eventually reaching the Andes to the West and the Amazon to the North'

The fact that the Paulistas had such a strong strain of Amerindian blood, and that for many generations they usually spoke Tupi among themselves in preference to Portuguese, did not prevent them from taking a much lower view of the Amerindians' capacities than did the Jesuit missionaries. They claimed, indeed, that their long-term objective was the same as that of tl1e Padres, namely to domesticate, convert, and eventually civilize the savages whom they captured. One of their leaders and foremost Indian-fighters, Domingos Jorge V elho, explained their standpoint to the Crown in r694 in the following terms:

'Firstly, our troops with whom we go to conquer the savage heathen of the remotest backlands are not soldiers enrolled in Your Majesty's muster-books nor do they receive pay or rations from the Crown. They are bands formed independently by some of us, each one providing his own armed servants, and together we penetrate the backlands of this continent, not in order to enslave (as some hypochondriacs would have Your Majesty believe) but to acquire the savage heathen Tapuias, eaters of human flesh, in order to reduce them to the knowledge of urbane humanity and human society and rational

' C. R. Boxer, The Goldm Age of Brazil, 1685-1750 (California University Press, 1962), p. 21. The standard work on the Paulistas is by A. de E. Taunay, Hist6ria Gcr_al das Bandeiras Paulista:s (w vols., Sao Paulo, 1942-8), of which an abridged edition in two volumes was published at Sao Paulo in 1951.

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dealings, so that by dris means they may come to have that knowledge of the light of God and of the mysteries of the Catholic faith which will suffice for their salvation -for he labours in vain who tries to make them angels before making them men. Having captured and tamed these savages, we reinforce our bands with them and make war upon the others who are still obstinate nntil they yield. And if we subsequently make use of them for our tillage and husbandry, we do them no injustice; for this is done as much to support them and their children as to support us and ours. This is so different from enslaving them that it is rather doing them a priceless service, since we teach them to till, to sow, to reap, and to work for their keep-something which they did not know how to do before the whites taught them.' Domingos Jorge further explained that the bulk of the Paulista bands (dignified by the title of terros, or regiments in his time) consisted of Amerindians, 'the whites who are added to them being only to lead and direct the said soldiers' .10

I-Ie instanced his own 'reginlent', which was composed at this date of over Sao Amerindians and rso whitesand the great majority of the so-called 'whites' probably had a strong strain of Amerindian blood.

Thirty years after Domingos Jorge V elho had explained the Paulista viewpoint to the Crown, Paulo da Silva Nunes, a European-born Portuguese, who had lived for sixteen years in the Maranhao-Pari, and who represented

10 ~omingos Jorge Velho to the Crown, 15 July 1694, apud Ant6mo Ennes, As guerrqs nos Palmares. Subsfdios para a sua historia. Domingos jorge Vellw e a 'Troia Negra', 1687-1700 (Sao Paulo, 1938), pp. 205-17.

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the colonists of that State at Lisbon, submitted ·to the Crown an even more trenchant denunciation of the Amerindians and a justification for their enslavement. He claimed, as had his Paulista predecessor, that the white settlers of the Maranhao-Para region did not want to enslave the Amerindians in the strict sense of the term, but merely to employ them as household and f1eld labourers, paying ·them, feeding them, clothing them, and teaching them the Christian religion and sound morals. To achieve this end, he stated, it was necessary to force them to work; and he cited many Biblical and Classical authorities in support of his opinion, including the Church Fathers, Plato, Virgil, Pliny, and the great Spanish Jurist, Juan de Solorzano y Pereira (1575-1654), author of the Politica Indiana.and De Indiarum Jure. Paulo da Silva Ntmes likewise discussed contemporary theories concerning the origin of the Amerindians, whether they were descended from the Jews captured and deported by the Assyrians in the time of King Hosea, or whether they were descended from Cain and involved in the curse laid on him.

Without deciding between these rival theories, the representative of the moradores of the Maranhao-Para declared that in any event he agreed with those authorities who considered the Amerindians to be 'not true hnman beings, but beasts of the forest incapable of understanding the Catholic faith'. He further stigmatized them as 'squalid savages, ferocious and most base, resembling wild animals in everything save human shape'. He then asked rhetorically: 'If African Negroes can be enslaved, why not the Indians of the Maranhao?' Discussing the

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different systems of slavery and servitude which prevailed in the world, he argued that the forced labour to which the Amerindians were subjected was nothing like as cruel as the fate suffered by Europeans who were condel1111ed to work in the mines and in the galleys. Finally, he asserted that the State of Maranhao-Para could not subsist without the servile labour of the Amerindians, even though many of these wretches 'killed themselves out of spite like barbarians !'11

I have summarized the views of Domingos Jorge Vellta and Paulo da Silva Nunes at some length, because they were typical of those held by many people in their respective day and generation, whether these were Brazilian-born and bred like the former, or Europeanborn and educated like the latter. They also show the difficulties with which the Jesuits had to contend in champiouing the freedom of the Amerindians, and the force of the public opinion against them on this matter, which led to their expulsion at varions times from Sao Paulo (r64o--53), Santos (r64o--2), and the MaranhaoPara (r66r-63), despite the fact that they could usually cotmt on the support of the Crown. It is significant that after nearly two centuries of royal edicts and Jesuit efforts on behalf of the Amerindians, that many-perhaps most -of the moradores could still regard them as little better than beasts in human form, tmworthy of serious consideration save as an expendable labour-force.

11 'Proposta da Camara do Pad. a S.M. appresentada pelo Procnrador do Estado, Paulo da Silva Nunes, em 1724', and supporting documents (Biblioteca Publica de Evora, Codex CXV), swnmarized by Joio Lucio de Azevedo, Os Je.suitas no Griio-Pard. Suas missiies e a colonizatiio (Coimbra, 1930), pp. 204-8.

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By the middle of the eighteenth century, the majority of the Amerindians who were in close contact with the white men of Brazil and the Maranhao-Pad., had either been gathered in the missionary aldeias, or else were being absorbed through concubinage rather than intermarriage with the moradores. Their definite emancipation was largely due to the dictatorial interference of Pombal, who in this respect carried on the Jesuits' work, while suppressing the Society in the Portuguese dominions and accusing the Padres of deliberately retarding their assimilation by Luso-Brazilian society. Pombal had never been in Brazil, but he was evidently influenced by contemporary French theories of Le bon sauvage, which he had, perhaps, absorbed during his stay as envoy at London. At any rate, he instigated the promulgation of a royal decree in April 1755, which stated that Portuguese colonists of either sex who intermarried with Brazilian Indians would not only lose nothing in the way of social status, but would improve their chances of official preferment and promotion. 'Moreover,' continues the wording of this decree, 'I forbid that my vassals who marry with Indian women, or their descendants, should be called Caboucolos, or any other name which might sound insulting'; persons who were guilty of this namecalling were threatened with deportation from their place of residence."

By a series of royal decrees promulgated in 1775-8,

12 The alvarJ de ley of 4 April 1755, together with an English translation, is reproduced in full by Ant6nio Alberto de Andrade, Jviany Races--:-On.e _Nation. The traditional anti-racialism of Portllgal' s civilizing methods (Lisboa, 1954), pp. 23~29.


Pombal decreed the secularization of all the nussronvillages, and ordered that they should be handed over to the Amerindians who inhabited them. At the same time, the white soldiers of the various garrisons in Brazil and the Maranhao-Pad. were urged to marry Amerindian women, but the response must have disappointed the imperious dictator who was so anxious for the fusion of the two races. Deprived of their Jesuit and other missionary mentors, the Amerindians of the aldeias, now pompously renamed as towns, quickly reverted to savagery in many instances. Gomes Freire de Andrada, who was governor-general of most of southern Brazil at this time, reported in February 1761, that the emancipated Amerindians were selling their livestock, neglecting their husbandry, and letting everything on field and farm go to rack and ruin. All they seemed to be interested in was holding dnmken orgies; 'for which reason', he concluded gloomily, 'there is nobody as yet who wants to marry any of them'. In fact, many of the Amerindians who had been given their freedom were unable to adjust themselves to the new responsibilities for which they were totally unprepared, nor did their white neighbours and cocitizens cease at once to try and exploit them. Nevertheless, if many commrmities declined and disappeared from the face of the earth, others successfully survived their changed circumstances and eventually became absorbed in the mass of the Luso-Brazilian population."

13 Joao Ltkio de Azevedo, Novas Epanrlforas. Estudos de hist6ria c literat11ra (Lisboa, 1932), pp. 50-62, for -Gomes Freire de Andrada's dispatch of 9 February 1761, and the re1evant laws and decrees relating to the formal emancipation of the Amerindians, which were printed integrally in the Collecfiio Jos Breves Pontificios e leys regias que foriio

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Pombal's dictatorial abolition of the colour-bar against Brazilian Amerindians and Christian Asian vassals of the Portuguese CroW!l, and the grant of full civil rights which was simultaneously bestowed on them, were not extended in anything like the same measure to persons of Negro blood. It is true that, as we have seen, a royal decree of the 29 May 1761, envisaged the foundation of a seminary for native clergy in Mo,ambique island, where full-blooded Negroes, provided they were 'freedmen, and instructed in the arts and sciences, and of good report and character', could be educated for the priesthood, as they were in Sao Tome and Angola. But we have also seen that this seminary was never founded; and Pombal certainly had no intention of abolishing Negro slavery in the overseas possessions of the Portuguese CroW!l. He did indeed abolish Negro slavery in Portugal in the year 1761, but on economic rather than on humanitarian or egalitarian grounds, as the wording of the decree makes clear." In short, just as the founding fathers of the United States were not thinking of their Negro slaves when they enunciated the inalienable right

expedidos e publicadas desde o mmo de 1741 sabre a liberdade das Pessoas, Bens, e Commercia dos Indios do Brasil published together with a Supplementa at Lisbon in 1760.

u. '. . . fazendo nos meus Dominies Ultramarinos huma sensiuel falta para a cultura das terras e das minas, s6 vern a este continente occupar os lugares dos moe;: as de servir, que ficando sem commode se entregam a ociosidade', etc., preamble to the alvar& of 19 September 1761, abolishing Negro slavery in Portugal, for all Negroes and Negresses landed in Portuguese ports after the space of six months from the publication date in Brazil and Africa, and a year in Asia.

roo


of every man to 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness', nor was Pombal thinking of the Negro slaves in Brazil when he condemned in such forthright terms any form of discrimination against the Amerindians.

The position of the Negro slave in Brazil, as elsewhere, hardly needs stressing here. Suffice it to say that his (or her) existence was usually 'nasty, brutish, and short', the average life of a slave on the plantations or in the mines being estimated at from seven to ten years. The household slaves were usually, though not invariably, a good deal better off than the field-hands and the miners. Those of the Negresses who were favoured with their masters' attentions might aspire to lead an enviable lifeunless there was a white misttess to wreak a jealous and sadistic revenge on them. Freed slaves and their descendants, of whom there were large and steadily increasing numbers, were better off than slaves in most ways, but they were still discriminated against in law. They enjoyed fewer rights than their white fellow-citizens, and the pnnishment infucted on them was usually more severe for an identical offence.

One of the curiosities-and tragedies-of colonial history is the illogical distinction which was drawn for centuries between the enslavement of the Black Man and the Red. The enslavement of the Amerindian was forbidden by Church and State at a relatively early date in both Spanish and Portuguese America; but Fr. Bartolome de las Casas, O.P., who, after first condoning Negro slavery later emphatically condemned it, had few followers in this respect among his own compatriots, and

IOI


still fewer among the Portuguese. The attitude of Padre Antonio Vieira, S.J., may be regarded as typical of the more humane among his countrymen; and Vieira, while ftghting tooth and nail for the freedom of the Amerindians, limited himself to denouncing the sadistic illtreatment of Negro slaves without suggesting that their enslavement was equally wrong. In one of his earliest sermons, Vieira compared the sufferings of the Negroes in the sugar-mills at harvest time to those of Christ upon the cross; but he adjured the slaves if not exactly 'to grin and bear it' at any rate to pray and bear it, assuring them that such Christian resignation would be suitably recompensed in Paradise.

Vieira's attitude is all the more paradoxical since, unlike many of his contemporaries, he did not believe in the innate superiority of the white man over the black. 'Can there be', he asked in his celebrated Epiphany sermon of r662, 'a greater want of understanding, or a greater error of judgement between men and men, than for me to think that I must be your master because I was bom further away from the sun, and that you must be my slave because you were born nearer to it?' And again: 'An Ethiope if he be cleansed in the waters of the Zaire [Congo] is clean, but he is not white; but if cleansed in the water of baptism, he is both.' This insistence that religion and not race was the hallmark of a civilized man did not prevent Vieira from arguing to the end of his days that the freedom of the Amerindians could best be secured by increasing the importation of Negro slaves from West Africa. Only thus could the Amerindians be liberated from the servile labour of the household and the

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plantation without damaging the colonists' economic interests.15

Colonial Brazil was sometimes characterized as being 'a hell for Blacks, a purgatory for Whites, and a paradise for Mulattoes'; and the treatment of African slaves in Brazil, if not worse than that which was meted out to their brethren in the Spanish, French, English and Dutch colonies in the Western hemisphere, was at any rate nothing to be proud of. Towards the end of the seventeenth century the Portuguese Crown began to take a belated interest in mitigating the harshness with which slaves were often treated, but the legislation which was enacted for this purpose does not seem to have achieved any lasting result. The pleas of Antoni!, Benci, and other Jesuits for a better treatment of the slaves in Brazil also seem to have gone unheeded, partly, perhaps, because their works had .such an extremely limited circulation." In the second half of the eighteenth century a slowly iucreasing number of people in Portugal and. Brazil began to have scruples about the moral validity of the

15 C. R. Boxer, A great Luso-Brazilian figure: Padre AntOnio Vieira, S.J., pp. 22-23, and the sources there quoted.

16 Andre Joao Antonil [pseudonym of Giovanni Antonio Andreoni, S.J.J, Cultura e opulenda do Brasil por suas drogas e minas (Lisboa, I7II ), was suppressed by the Portuguese government a few weeks after its publication, and less than ten existing copies of this eighteenth-century edition are recorded by bibliographers; Jorge Benci, S.J., Economia Christii dos Senhores no govemo de escravos (Roma, 1705), is even rarer. The only recorded copy seems to be that in the National Library at Rome, utilized by Seraftm Leite, S.J., for the second edition published at Oporto in 1954. Crown edicts against the mistreatment of Negro slaves were promulgated in 1688, 1698, and 1714, but they had no lasting effect.

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Negro slave-trade, and were concerned about the cruelty with which slaves were commonly treated. This growth in humanitarian feeling was presumably a reflection of the ideas fostered by the movement known as the Enlightenment. But these critics were still a small minority, and the deep-rooted prejudices with which they had to contend are strikingly revealed in an anonymous pamphlet published at Lisbon three years after Pombal's abolition of Negro slavery in Portugal itsel£17

This pamphlet is cast in the form of a dialogue between a Lisbon lawyer and a slave-owning gold-miner from Brazil who has come to seek his advice about a refractory slave. The lawyer opens the discussion by saying that whoever deals with youths or with Negroes needs patience, to which the miner retorts: 'Slowly, Sir! I agree that patience is necessary in dealing with youths; because after all they are somebody' s children, and they are white like ourselves. But I cannot endure to hear it said that patience is necessary in dealing with slaves; for after all they are Negroes, and as their owner has bought them for money, he can do whatever he likes with them'. The miner goes on to say that he knows of nothing whatever that can be said in favour of Negroes or of slaves, and that if patience must be used in dealing with other white men's sons this does not apply to Negroes. 'For we whites are descended from Adam, and the Negroes are descended from Cain, who was black,

17 Nova e curiosa relafilO de hum abuzo emandado, ou evide!lcias da raziio; expostas a Javor dos homens pretos em hum dialogo entre hum letrado e hum mineiro (Lisboa, 1764). This very rare little work is not listed in any of the standard bibliographies, and I have never seen another copy than that in my own library.

I04


and who died cursed by God himself, as the Scripture relates.' To this the lawyer replies that even if the Negroes were descended from Cain, Cain himself was the son of Adam, so the Negroes have the same origin as white men. He further points out that there is no scriptural proof that Cain was a black man, and that even if he was, the whole of mankind perished in the Flood with the exception of Noah and his family, none of whom were black according to the Bible.

The miner returns to the attack by asking how the Negroes came by their colour, to which the lawyer answers that there is no satisfactory explanation of this, although many learned men have investigated the problem. He dismisses the miner's suggestion that it is because they are born nearer the stm, pointing out that many white people are born of white parents in the tropics, while Negro parents in temperate countries always give birth to black children. Unabashed by these arguments, the miner says that whatever the origin of their colour, the fact remains that Negroes are black and 'therefore not people like ourselves'. The lawyer retorts: 'Sir, the blackest man in all Africa, because he is a man, is just as much a man as is the whitest German in all Germany.' He goes on to instance many famous Ethiopes in biblical history, including the Queen of Sheba and one of the three Wise Kings who worshipped the infant Christ in the manger at Bethlehem. He concludes this line of argument by exclaiming with greater feeling than accuracy: 'What does ilot Portugal owe to the blacks in its conquests in Brazil! They were the ones who threw the Dutch out of Pernambuco and Rio de Janeiro; and our Lord the King

!05


D. Pedro II granted a habit of the Order of Christ to a black, who on that occasion successfully led the others; for that great king did not wish that the accident of colour should deprive him of the honour to which his merits entitled him.'18

The miner remains tmconvinced by this argument, and asks the lawyer why, 'if the blacks are jnst as good as us, what is the reason that they are our slaves, and we whites are not their slaves'? The lawyer says that slavery is not a question of colour, since Muslims, Indians, Chinese and other peoples have also been enslaved at various times and places, while the Muslims of Barbary still enslave their white Christian captives. He points out that at one time the Romans enslaved all their prisoners of war, and that this custom was formerly practised among some European nations, though it is now extinct; implying that slavery itself is an anachronistic institntion which is bound to disappear eventually. The miner replies emphatically: 'I am amazed at what your worship tells me about this matter; but I have always observed that in Brazil the Negroes are treated worse than animals, being punished very severely, and called by very insulting names, yet withal the blacks endure this.' When the lawyer reminds him that punishment for a crime must not

1s The Dutch never occupied Rio de Janeiro, and this is a garbled reference to the Negro leader, Henrique Dias, who took a prominent part in the war of 1645-54, which resulted in the expulsion of the Dutch from Northeast Brazil. Dias was granted the Order of Christ by King John N, the father of King Peter II. Cf. Jose .Antonio Gonsalves de Mello, Henrique Dias. Governador dos Pretos Crioulos e Mulatos do Estado do Brasil (Recife, I954); C. R. Boxer, The Dutch in Brazil, 1624-1654 (Oxford, I957).

ro6


overstep the limits of necessary severity, the miner says: 'Your Worship is joking! On a certain plantation in Bahia, I saw two slaves killed in one day, their master standing by and ordering them to be flogged to deatl1 by other slaves; and on a farm in Rio de Janeiro I saw a master kill a slave with his own hands. Moreover, none of these men were punished for killing their slaves, nor did anybody take the slightest notice of it. For after all, if they killed the Negroes, they were the ones who lost their money thereby, and a man can do what he likes with his own.'

This cynical attitude is deplored by the lawyer, who says that the slave-owners who committed these atrocities were guilty of mortal sin. If they had not been punished for these crimes, he adds, it must have been because the local justices did not know about them. 'Ah Sir!' he says to the miner, 'how badly do they treat the poor slaves in the Brazils! But who acts in this way? Avaricious people! Godless people! People with the hearts of wild beasts!' The unrepentant miner retorts: 'How I would like, Sir, to see you trying to cope with a hundred, or two hundred, disobedient, treacherous, lazy and thieving slaves, and to see how you would treat them then!' The lawyer has the honesty to acknowledge: 'I would probably treat them worse than does anybody there. But,' he adds, pointedly, 'what everyone ought to do is to treat his servants with charity, with zeal, and for love of God. Whoever does not have the patience to take trouble with slaves should seek some other way of life. For it is more important not to offend God than to gain profit from any worldly concern whatsoever.' The miner

!07


observes that the lawyer has become 'a missionary in favour of the Negroes', but that is because he has no experience of what they are really like. Somewhat illogically, the miner asks: 'What would you do, Sir, if you saw the Negroes in the Brazils working almost continually day and night, and this while going naked? As a rule, they are only given a little bit of manioc flour to eat; and they have Sundays and some Saints' days off, so that they can earn something to keep them from starving.'

The lawyer remarks that though he has never been in Brazil, he has heard much about the harsh way in which slaves are treated there, and he asks the miner to come to the point and explain the reason for his visit. The latter states that he has a Negro slave, whom he bought about ten or eleven years ago. At first the Negro served him so faithfully and well that the miner, in order to encourage him, promised to free him in another ten years; but seeing that the Negro thenceforward worked harder than ever, he resolved secretly that he would not keep his word. Eventually, the slave began to suspect his master's real intentions, and his zeal cooled to such an extent that the miner decided to sell him as a slave in Brazil, 'with the sole object of getting him killed by the harsh prmishments in vogue there'. The slave, in order to forestall this plan and advised by other Negroes, became a member of the Lisbon Confraternity of Our Lady of the Rosary for Black Men, one of whose privileges was that none of the brethren could be sold as a slave for the overseas market.19 The miner punished him severely for this

u Cf. also for the spiritual privileges granted to this brotherhood on the same conditions as to white members of a confraternity,

108


move, and determined to ship him secretly to Brazil, but on going to church and making his confession last Sunday, his confessor had told him that he could not, in conscience, do such a thing. He has now come to the lawyer to take legal advice on this point.

It need hardly be said that the lawyer strongly supports the confessor's stand as being both morally and legally correct. He continues: 'What you ought to do, is to fulfil your promise; or, at the very least, inflict no further affiiction on your slave, who is sufficiently unfortunate, in being one. It is a very common error to believe that the blacks are born solely in order to serve as slaves, but Nature itself loves men of all races without distinction. The way in which many masters treat their slaves is unjust. The latter ought to be punished when they do wrong, but the punishment should be in proportion to the fault. Children are likewise punished by their parents, but in moderation. I do not argue from this that slaves who disobey their masters should not be punished at all, but I only affirm that the punishment should not degenerate into cruelty. A conditional promise has the force of law. You promised to free your slave if he continued to serve you well: he not only continued to serve you well, but better still. You are, therefore, obviously bound to free him. You are likewise bound to respect the privilege which he enjoys as a member ofhis Brotherhood. Hence,

Patente das indulgencias, grafas, privilegios, e prerogativas, com que os Swnmos Pontffices, Legados Apostolicos, Bispos e Arcebispos _adomdriio, enriquedrJo, e dotJriio a confraria, e irmandade do santissimo Rosario de Nossa Senhora dos Homens Pretos de Siio SaiJJador da Matta de Lisboa (Lisboa, 1757).

109


my opinion is that either yon should give your slave a certificate of manumission, or else you should treat him kindly, so that he does not lead a dog's life. In this way you will avoid sinning before God, and do what you ought to do.'

The miner replies by suggesting that it will be sufficient if he gives the slave his freedom in another fifteen or twenty years. 'Better late than never,' responds the lawyer, 'but how old is he now?' The miner then confesses that he bought the slave some fourteen or f1fteen years ago, when the Negro was already about twentyeight years old. The lawyer rebukes him for his callousness in planning to get rid of his slave just when the latter reaches an age when he can no longer do any heavy work, and will become a more or less useless month to feed. The miner remains quite unrepentant in face of this admonition and twits the lawyer with being an Ncgrophile Intellectual, who for some unaccountable reason prefers a black man to a white. Having failed to convince each other of their respective viewpoints, the miner takes his leave of the lawyer by placing on the table the legal fee of eight testoons, 'which may serve to buy a watermelon as a dessert for your dinner'.

I,have summarized the Nova e Curiosa Rela,ao at some length, because, like the previously quoted correspondence of Domingos Jorge V elho and Paulo de Silva Nunes, it accurately reflects the climate of opinion at the time it was written. It shows that there were a number of people who were sharply critical of the evils inherent in any system of slavery; but it also shows that these enlightened v1ews were not shared by the great majority of their

IIO


contemporaries, with whom it was an article of faith that the black man was born to serve the white, and that the latter could do what he liked with his own. The allegations made by the anonymous author concerning the illtreatment of slaves in colonial Brazil are amply borne out by the testimony of contemporary observers. I have only space to quote two of these here, but they will suffice.

In 1755, the Town Council of Mariana in Minas Gerais suggested that nmaway slaves who were recaptured should have d1e Achilles' tendon of one foot severed, thus preventing them from running away again, but not from hobbling about to work. Dam Marcos de Noronha, Cmmt of Arcos and Viceroy at Bahia, roundly condemned this infamous suggestion when he heard of it. He informed the Crown that 'the greater part of these slaves run away because their owners do not feed nor clothe them, nor treat them with compassion and charity as they ought to do, both in health and sickness. And besides ill-treating them as regards food and clothing, they lilrewise inflict a thousand cruelties and unheard-of punishments on them'. The testinlony of Dam Marcos de Noronha is of the more weight since he had previously been governor of Pernambuco (1746-9) and of Goyaz (1749-55), so that he wrote this criticism with ten years' experience of Brazilian slave-owners behind him. 2•

In 1758 a curious book was published at Lisbon entitled (in translation) The Ethiopian ransomed, indentured,

20 Petition 9£ the Senate of Mariana, May 1755, and the Cmmt of Arcos' dispatch, Bahia, ro Attgust, 1756, apud Accioli-Amaral, Memon·as historicas e politicas da provinda da Bahia (6 vols., Salvador, 1919-40), vol. ii. pp. 427-9.

III


sustained, corrected, educated, and liberated. The author, Manuel Ribeiro Rocha, was a Lisbon-born secular priest, who had long been domiciled at Bahia. His book amounts to a plea for the substitution of Negro slavery in Brazil by a system of indentured labour, under which the slaves bought from Africa would automatically become free after working for their master during an agreed period. He devoted a whole section (the ftfth) to discussing the punishment of refractory slaves, and the extent to which this right was abused by many slaveowners in Brazil. He tells us, among other things, that although flogging with the chicote (rawhide knout or whip) was limited to a maximum of forty lashes under Portuguese law, yet Brazilian slave-owners thought nothing of inflicting two-, three-, or even four-hundred lashes. He also states that there were some slave-owners who, whenever they bought a new slave, had him soundly flogged straightway, simply out of a sadistic determination to show that they would stand no nonsense. He advocates the abolition of such barbarous punishments as flogging with the chicote, pricking the victim's buttocks with a pointed knife, cauterizing the wounds with drops of hot wax, etc., and urges that corporal punishments should be limited to the use of the scourge, the cane, the palmatoria, and imprisonment. He also denotmces the slave-owner's common habit of abusing their victims with the most frightful oaths, curses, and insulting names. This, he says, was something which the Negroes particularly resented: 'and they claim that they also have souls like the whites. And that Christ our Lord likewise suffered and died for them; and that

II2


in the churches, masters and slaves all receive communion at the same table.' 21

That the treatment of slaves in Brazil did not improve appreciably during the eighteenth centnry, despite the gradual spread of humanitarian ideas in what was evidently a restricted circle, is proved by a comparison of tl1e accounts given by Antoni! and Benci at the end of the seventeenth century with that of Vilhena a htmdred years later. Many of the abuses and atrocities denounced by the two Jesuits are also condemned in the pages of the Noticias Soteropolitanas e Brasilicas, which the Portuguese professor of Greek compiled during a residence of twelve years (r787-99) at Bahia.22 Like his predecessors, Vilhena thought that something ought to be done to check 'the barbarous, cruel and unheard-of way in which the majority of owners treat ilieir tmfortunate slave labonrers'. He also denounced the sadistic floggings to which they were frequently subjected; the totally inadequate rations and clothing which they received-when they received any at all-and their being allowed only one day a week (apart

21 Manuel Ribeiro Rocha, Ethiope Resgatado, emp~nhado, sustentado, corregido, instmido, e libertado (Lisboa, 1758), especially pp. r88-223, for the mistreatment of slaves in colonial Brazil. The chicote was thus described by Captain W. F. Owen, R.N., in 1825: 'The knout was formed of several thongs of hard dried hull's hide, covered with knots, and attached to a stick about three feet long, as a handle' (Narrative of Voyages, London, 1833, vol. i, p. 124). The pnlmatoria was a wooden hand-shaped ferrule, pitted with holes, which was used to strike the offender's open hand, often inflicting weals and swellings which made it tmusable for a time.

22 Luis dos Santos Vill1ena, RecopilafiiO de Noticias Soteropolitanas e Brasilicas, contidas em XX cartas que da Cidade do Salvador Bahia de Todos os Santos escreve hum a ontro amigo emLisboa (ed. Braz do Amaral, 2 vols., Salvador, 1922), vol. i, pp. 187-9, 191, 215.

II3


from an occasional saint's day) in which to cultivate their own allotments. Their mortality was inevitably high from 'overwork, starvation, and flogging', but their inefficient and unfeeling owners seemed to be oblivious to the financial loss which they themselves suffered from having to replace the slaves so often. The treatment of the slaves employed in agriculture and in mining was admittedly worse, as a rule, than that of the household slaves, who were often comparatively well off. But when due allowance is made for this fact, it remains true that by and large colonial Brazil was indeed a 'hell for blacks'. 23

The corollary that Brazil was a 'paradise for Mulattoes' requires considerable modification. It is true that the sexual attraction of the Mulata for the average LusoBrazilian male is overwhehningly evidenced by the accounts of foreign visitors, by the complaints of colonial governors and bishops, and by popular song and story. The French circunniavigator, Le Gentil de 1a Barbinais, who stayed for some months at Bahia in 1718-19, was scandalized by the local citizens' preference for a coloured woman even if a white one was available. 'I have often asked them,' he wrote, 'the reason for such an extraordinary taste, but they never could tell me. For my own

23 Even the household service was often done 'to the sound of the chi cote and palmatoria', as may be seen from Santos Marrocos' account of the home of his Carioca fiancee in r8r4: 'pais apesar de em casa de sua mae hauer uma · imensidade de cscravas para o seu servi~o, eram as filhas obrigadas par semanas a regerem esse mesmo serviifo, e a tartaruga velha o fazia executar sem a menor falha, ao sam do chicote e palmatoria que sempre lhe servirio ao seu lado de Camaristas' (apud Pedro Calmon, Historia Social do Brasil. Aspectos da Sociedade Colonial, Jrd ed., Sao Paulo, 1941), p. 286.

II4


part, I believe that being suckled and reared by slave girls they derive this inclination from their milk.' 24 The colonial authorities· legislated frequently but vainly against the money, dresses, and jewellery lavished upon coloured ladies of easy virtue by their admirers, often to the impoverishment of their lawful white wives. Antoni! at the beginning of the eighteenth century and Vilhena at the end of it, deplored the liberty and licence which were frequently granted to Mulattoes of both sexes, whether bond or free, by their owners or by their fathers-a relationship which was often combined in the same individuals. E. a mulata que e Mulher ('It is the Mulata who is the real woman') as the Brazilian saying goes, and the same idea is echoed in the last two lines of an old carnival song from Belem do Para:

El-Rei, El-Rei, El-Rei Embaixador, Ora viva a mulata que tem o seu amor !25

2 ,~_ Le Gentil de Ia Barbinais, Nouveau Voyage autotlr du monde (3 vols., Paris, 1728), vol. iii, p. 204. The Count of Assumar, Governor of Minas Gerais in 1717-21, voiced the same opinion when he wrote of the white Mineiros, 'even the so-called great·ones have been bred in the milk of servitude'. A sinrilar argument was advanced in Portuguese Asia a century earlier, when the European-born friars argued that their colleagues who were born of white parents in India were nevertheless suckled and brought up by Indian ayahs. Cf. p. 66 above for the citation from Fr. Miguel da PurifiCa~ao, O.F.M., RelafCiO Dcjensiva dos jilhos da India Orientale da ProJJiJuia do Apostolo S. Thome dos frades menores da regular observanda da mesma India (Barcelona, 1640). On the question of white child and coloured wetnurse see Gilberto Freyre, The Masters and the SlaJJes (New York, 1946), pp. 278-9.

26 For other popular verses on mulatas and the jealollSy with which white women regarded them see Pedro Ca.lmon, Historia Social do Brasil. Espirito da Sociedade Colonial, pp. 164--9.

Il5


This toleration, or rather favouritism, which was extended to many Mulattoes in many ways was, however, paralleled by much social and legal discrimination against the pardos as they were also called. Colonial legislation discriminated against persons with an infusion of Negro blood much more than it did against Mamelucos, Caboclos, and other examples of cross-breeding between Whites and Amerindians. Free Mulattoes were often coupled with enslaved Negroes in the wording of laws which either forbade them to carry weapons and to wear costly clothes, or else severely restricted their use of these marks of gentility which might tend to place them on a level with the Whites. For most of the colonial period they were not allowed to hold high positions in Church and State, although this was more of a theoretical than a practical bar at various times and places. Apart from anything else, the relative scarcity-or total absence-of white women in many regions of Brazil resulted in this official colour-bar being largely ignored in practice.

In 1725, for example, the white gentry of Minas Gerais protested against anyone of other than pure white descent being considered as eligible for municipal and judicial posts. These representations were sympathetically received at Lisbon, where the Overseas Councillors advised the Crown that the passage of legislation in this sense would encourage white men to marty women of their own colour, instead of living in sin with Negresses and Mulatas, as most of them did. Accordingly, in January 1726, the Crown promulgated a decree that all candidates for municipal office in Minas Gerais must be (a) of pure white descent, and (b) either the husband or else

II6


the widower of a white woman. This probably had some temporary effect; but twenty-seven years later the governor of Minas Gerais observed that provided the aspirant was not of too dusky a hne, it was wealth rather than colour which remained the chief criterion for municipal office in that captaincy. The governor also supported a request made by the better educated Mulattoes of Minas Gerais that they should be allowed to wear swords like white gentry, a privilege which had hitherto been denied them, but which the Crown granted at Gomes Freire de Andrada's suggestion in 1759.26

It was not only the Mulattoes of Minas Gerais who fmmd legal obstacles in the way of their social advancement. In the 168o's the pardos of Bahia protested to the Crown at Lisbon and to the Jesuit General at Rome against their recent exclusion from the schools run by the Jesuits. When the matter was referred back to the authorities at Bahia, Padre Antonio Vieira, who was then VisitorGeneral of the Society in Brazil and who had himself a little Negro blood in his veins, explained that the pardos had been banned because the upper-class white citizens would not tolerate their own sons sitting alongside those half-castes, 'most of whom are of vile and obscure origin'. He added: 'They are nearly always badly brought up, as the regular and secular clergy and the local gentry have all learnt by experience. For that reason, on this coast of Brazil, they are already prohibited from

" C. R. Boxer, The Golden Age of Brazil, 1695-1750, pp. 165-6, 402, and sources there quoted, to which should be added the order of I759 by which Mulatto gentlemen were allowed to wear swords PANRJ, val. viii, p. 214).

II7


entering the priesthood and the Religious Orders, or from holding any government post.' He stated that the Jesuits themselves had never been in favour of discriminating against any 'honest and well-mannered youth', irrespective of his colour, and that they would readmit coloured students if ordered to do so by the Crown and by their General, as did indeed happen. It was also the ·Crown which intervened sixteen years later to compel the Rectorate of the University of Coirnbra to admit a Brazilian pardo whom they had previously rejected on account of his colour. It was likewise King John V who ordered the Governor of Pernambuco in 1731 to admit a qualified Mulatto advocate to practice as Pro.curator of the Crown, after the Governor had rejected him for thiS post solely on account of his colour."

What is said above of the Jesuits applies mutatis mutandis to the other Religious Orders working in Brazil. Sometimes they admitted coloured novices and sometimes they did not, the most exacting and consistent of those who maintained a rigorous colour-bar being the Teresian bare-footed Carmelites, established at Olinda in 1686. This branch of the Order not only steadfastly refused to adruit coloured individuals of any kind and shade, but rejected any aspirant of Brazilian birth, even if he was of pure white origin. Though accepting the money and the charity of the inhabitants of Pernambuco, these fnars recruited their numbers exclusively from European-born

27 Vieira's letter of 27 July r688 and further documentation in Seraftm Leite, S.J., Historia da Companhia de jesus no Brasil, vol. :• pp. 75-80, ibid, vol. iv, pp. 260-7; vol. iii, pp._ 201-4; F. A. Pereira da Costa, Anais Pernamb11canas (7 vols., Renfe, 1951-8), vol. v, PP·

59-6!.

II8


and bred Portuguese during the hundred and forty-five years that their monastery existed. 28 It was a similar tale with the armed forces of the Crown. Perhaps because European recruits were always in short supply and desertion was rife, soldiers of the regular garrisons in Brazil served alongside each other without distinction of colour-though the European-born were apt to be favoured when it came to a question of promotion or one of compassionate discharge. The ruilitia regiments, on the other hand, were sometimes organized on a class and colour basis; and I have already alluded to the distinction made by the Viceroy Marquis of Lavradio between the white and coloured officers of the militia at Rio de Janeiro m the last quarter of the eighteenth century;'9

Finally, a word on the Irmandades or lay-brotherhoods of colonial Brazil, and their attitude to race relations. This was anything but uniform, some of them being based on rigid class and race distinctions, while others were open to all and sundry. As an example of the former category I may cite the Tertiary Order of .st. Francis, which refused to admit coloured individuals of any kind, and even barred white men who were married with Mulatas. As an example of the latter category I may cite the Black Brotherhood of Our Lady of the Rosary founded at Ouro Preto in 1715. Though primarily mtended for Negroes, whether bond or free, this partlcular confraternity adruitted people of all colours and

28 Francisco Augusto Pereira da Costa, Anais Pernambucauos (7 vols., Recife, 1951-8), vol. iv, pp. 282-4.

'" C. R. Boxer, The Golden Age of Brazil, 1685-1750, pp. I42-J, 398, and sources there quoted, to which should be added Vilhena Noticias Soteropolitanas e Brasilicas, val. i, pp. 250-70. '

Il9


of both sexes in accordance with the terms of its compromisso or statutes. Early in the eighteenth century, Bahia had no less than thirty-one approved brotherhoods dedicated to the Virgin Mary alone. These were divided on a racial basis, six being reserved for Negroes and five for Mulattoes (pardos), the remainder being exclusively white confraternities constituted according to social position or to age. As indicated above, some of the Brazilian white brotherhoods were so exclusive that their statutes contained a clause that any brother who married beneath him in class or colour should automatically forfeit his membership.30

From the foregoing it is, I hope, sufliciently clear that racial prejudice and racial tension existed in colonial Brazil to a much greater extent than some modern authorities-'no names, no pack-drill', as we used to say in the army-are willing to allow. In Brazil, as in Portuguese Asia and Portuguese Africa, Negro, Preto, and Cafre, were all pejorative terms, often synonymous wit!1 Escravo. 'Have pity on a man living among Kaflirs,' wrote the Count of Assumar from Minas Gerais to an aristocratic friend at Lisbon in 1718, and the next year he advised his correspondent to reject the viceroyalty of Brazil if it were offered to him by the Crown, 'since America is no country for white men.' Despite these sour observations, the free Negro and the dark-hued Mulatto had little or no hope of ascending in the social scale, whatever their aptitudes

30 M. S. Cardozo, 'The lay brotherhoods of colonial Bahia', in The Catholic Historical Review, val. xxxiii (Washington, D.C., 1947), pp. 12-30; Francisco Antonio Lopes, Os Palacios de Vila Rica. Ouro Pre to no circlo de ouro (Bela Horizonte, 1955), pp. 194-7; Caio Prado Junior, FormafiTo do Brasil contemporaneo, I, Colonia (Sao Paulo, 1953), p. 252 11.

I20


and qualifications. One or two exceptions merely confirm this general rule. Whatever social heights light-skinned Mulattoes and Mulatas might achieve by passing themselves off and being accepted as white, the prejudice agamst Afncan blood was so strong that in 1771 the viceroy ordered the degradation of an Amerindian chief, who, 'disregarding the signal honours which he had received from the Crown, had sw1k so low as to marry a Negress, staining his blood with this alliance'. If colonial Brazil was in some respects a Mulattoes' Paradise, it was a rather uneven one. 31

We do not need psychiatrists or psychologists to tell us that every hwnan being is a bw1dle of contradictions, nor do we need historians to tell us that this was just as true m the past as it is in the present. We have only to recall the author of the 137th psalm and the millions who have sung it down the ages with no feeling of embarrassment or incongruity. Nor, I presume, do we need reminding that Christians and Buddhists, both adllerents of essentially pacifist Creeds which abhor the shedding of blood, have vied with-or against-each other in waging sanguinary wars, with battle-cries like that of the Calvinist Scots' army at Dunbar in 1650 ' d ' Jesus an no quarter!' The Portuguese were, and are, no exception to this rule; and if I have dwelt in these lectures

31 Letters of D. Pedro de ,Almeida_, d. Ribeirao do Catons, April I7I_8 ~1d June _1719 (authors collection). For an analysis of colour pre~udtce an~ Its connection with Negro slavery see Caio Prado Juruor, op. c1t., pp. 267-76, Cf. also Pedro Calmon Historia Social do Brasil, passim. '

I2I

9


on the dark rather than on the bright side of Portuguese colonization in past centuries, it has not been with the object of suggesting that they behaved worse than other European nations would have done in the prevailing circumstances. I only wish to show that sweeping generalizations like the following recent pronouucement by Dr. Armando Cortesao must be taken with a pinch of salt: 'The Portuguese never had any preconception of race or of colour. They always dealt with and still deal with christian fraternity towards all, whether they are white, black, swarthy or yellow !'32 This statement, though made in perfect good faith, is not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

The truth was and is more complex, as I stated at the beginning of these lectures. The Portuguese were neither angels nor devils; they were human beings and they acted as such; their conduct varying greatly according to time, place, and circumstances. The Brazilian planters who flogged their slaves to death for trivial offences were almost invariably generous and kindly hosts; and they may have been capable of sincere affection for individual Negroes and Mulattoes. If some slave-owners only manumitted their slaves when these latter were too old and ill to fend for themselves, others freed them in the prime of life-though few can have acted with the

a2. 'Os Portugueses nunca tiveratn preconceitos de rac;:as ou de cores. A todos trataram e tratam com fratcrnidade, crista, quer sejam brancos, pretos, bac;os ou amarclos' (Armando Cmtesao, Realidades e desvarios Afticanos. Discurso proferido na Sodadade de Geografia de Lisboa em 9 dejunho de 1962, Lis boa, 1962, pp. 30--JI). On p. 23 of the same we read, 'sempre tratimos os indigenas humanamente e, quando civilizados, de igual para igual'.

122

I


bizarria of the Visconde de Ponte de Lima, who appeared in the bull-ring on the 2! November 1708, with a retinue of twenty husky Negroes, whom he had bought a few days previously, all of them richly dressed and with the certificates of freedom which he had just given them tied to their arms. 33

Moreover, if slaves in Brazil were treated just as harshly a they were in the English, French, and Dutch WestIndian colonies, it remains true that their chances of manumission were greater; and the Black Brotherhoods of Our Lady of the Rosary provided them with a source of aid and comfort which was lacking in the sugarcolonies of the Northern European powers. If the Portuguese in Brazil often acted on the Anglo-Saxon principle that the only good Amerindian was a dead one, there were other occasions when they shared the Red Man's joys and sorrows. A French Capuchin missionary who was very critical of the way in which the Portuguese mistreated some tribes in the backlands of Bahia towards the end of the seventeenth century, also admitted that the church weddings of converted Amerindians were well attended by the local Portuguese, who added a gay note to the solemnity of the occasion by playing lively airs on their guitars and firing salvoes of musketry in honour of the happy pair.'•

33 '. • • trouxe mais vinte negros vcstidos a mourisca, com

asseyo, e custo, e todos com as suas cartas de alforria atadas nos brac;:os, p~rque o dito despois de os comprar par muy hom dinheiro, lhes deu hberdade a todos, e os vestidos, como tambem a todos os mais criados' (Jose Soares da Silva, Ga.zeta em forma de carta, 1701-1716, ed., Lisboa, I9JJ, p. I79)-

34 Fr. Martin de Nantes, O.F.M. Cap., Relarion succinte (c. 1707), apud C. R. Boxer, The--Golden Age of Brazil, 1698-1750, p. 233.

!23

BRAZiL AND THE MARANHAO

It was a similar story elsewhere in the Portuguese conquistas. Although a viceregal decree published at Goa in 1567 at the prompting of the first Ecclesiastical Council celebrated in Portuguese India, ostensibly put an end to all social intercourse between Portuguese families and their Hindu and Muslim neighbours, we know that tins order for enforcing what is nowadays termed apartheid was not strictly obeyed. Successive Ecclesiastical COLmcils at Goa . denounced not only the contmued toleration of 'heathen' religious processions but the practice of Christians lending their jewellery, fmery, and slaves to the participants therein. We also gather from these ecclesiastical fulminations that the Portuguese on occasion supplied guns to ftre salutes during the Muslin1 Fast of Ramadhan! Far from enforcing monogamy on all and sundry as the puritanical prelates of the 1567 and later Councils decreed, many of the Portuguese themselves maintained seraglios whenever they could, and I have previously quoted some of the missionaries' complaints about Lnsitanian concupiscence on a staggering

scale.35

35 For the enactm_ent of the 1567 and subsequent Ecclesiastical Councils periodically held at Goa see J. H. da Cunha Rivara, ~rch_ivo Portugucz Orieutal,. Fasc. _IV _(r~62),- For a_ survey of the ~C£?1s1atton favourino- converts and discmnrnatmg agamst aU non-Chnstlans (or, rather, :an-Roman Catholics), in the period I562-1843, see P. Pissurlencar, Roteiro dos Arquivos da India Portuguesa (Goa-Bastod, 1955), pp. 62--95. The documents published by Cuuha. Riva~a in Fasc. VI (r876) of the above-quotedArcl11vo Portuguez f?~tental ~1ve a good idea of the way in whic~ the P_ortugue~e authonues oscillated between repression and toleratiOn durmg the eighteenth century over such matters as Hindu marriage ceremonies, compulsory conversion a"f orphan children, reservation_ of official pOsts for cOnverts,

etc., etc.

124


From about 1540 onwards, the Portuguese authorities at Goa certainly enacted a large number of harsh and oppressive laws with the object of preventing the open practice ofHinduism, Buddhism, and Islam in Portuguesecontrolled territory-with the partial exceptions of Ormuz, Diu, and Macao-but the application of these laws varied from the exceedingly rigorous to the purely formal. Similarly, the laws which were enacted for the purpose of favouring converts to Christiatuty at the expense of those who declined to be converted, and with the declared object of taking the orphan children of Hindus to be catechized and brought up as Christians, were sometimes applied to the letter, but more often not. If some viceroys, such as Francisco Barreto (1555-8) and Dom Constantino de Bragan<;a (1558-61), were priest-ridden bigots who strove to enforce them as far as possible, other viceroys, such as Dom Luis de Ataide (rs68-71, 1578-81) and the Count of Lavradio (1671-7), were relatively tolerant and applied them halfheartedly or not at all. It was a common complaint of the ecclesiastical authorities at Goa in the eighteenth century that the secular arm did not give the Church adequate snpport at all times, and that Hindu and Muslim merchants and officials were usually favoured much more than native Christians. 36 In short, it is unsafe to generalize

36 'Where is the household of Goa, even the most respectable, in which Hindus do not make bold to enter without hesitation? A poor Canarim may be waiting outside the door for hours on end without anyone taking any notice of him, if he is a Christian. Along comes a Hindu, and up the stairs he goes with every confidence .. .' (Fr. Manuel de Natividade, O.P., writing at Goa, 9 December 1715). 'A

125


on this topic of religious bigotry and toleration in Portuguese India; though it can be said as a rough guide that bigotry was more in evidence than tolerance for most of the two centuries between 1561 and I76I.

As with religious bigotry, so with racial prejudice, and for obvious reasons the two often went lund in hand. The Muslim, the Hindu, and the Negro who was legally and socially discriminated against on account of his religion, was apt to fmd himself despised on account of his colour. Indeed, colour-prejudice survived the draconic edicts of the Marquis of Pombal in 1763-74, and the egalitarian legislation of the Constitutional government in Portugal in the early nineteenth century. But here again it is unsafe to generalize. In May 1825, Captain W. F. Owen, R.N., attended a ball at Government House on Mo~ambique island, 'at which was present every soul that could claim European origin, however distant or tinged by the mixture of black blood. Such an extraordinary collection as this was scarcely ever witnessed. It included nearly every grade, from highly polished civilization to the just fledged savage, whose limbs had never before been confmcd within the limits of broadcloth; from the well-fitted and neat costun1c of Europe, to the loose butterfly-looking suit of vanity and

Hindu living in these our lands, as long as he wears a cabaya and professes Hinduism, has free leave to enter anywhere in any house, even the most private room; but as soon as such a man, from whom nothing was kept secret, is converted to Christianity, he does not find a door open to him, nor is he held in the same regard as formerly' (Viceroy Caetano de Mello de Castro to the Crown, Goa, ro January 1707). Cf. J. H. da Cunha Rivara, Archivo Portuguez Oriental, val. vi (r876), pp. 6s, 93, 193, 445-7.

126


ignorance; while the complexions varied from the most brilliant black to the pleasing red and white of our more favoured race'. This seems to imply that racial equality m Portuguese East Africa existed in its most tmrestricted form. Yet over fifty years later an ex-governor of Sofala could protest in print against the unwritten but 'inexorable' social law by which a native of Portuguese India could not hope to be promoted above the rank of captain (retired) in the Portuguese military medical service, whatever his merits and length of service.37 One other instance will show the difficulty of generalization in this f1cld. For a long time, slaves in Angola were treated as badly, or worse, than those in Brazil; but by the end of the eighteenth century slavery on many Angolan rural estates had become little better than a farce. A widow who owned such an estate (arimo) could only re-marry if her slaves approved of her choice !38

97 'No districto de Sofalla ha hum facultative de 2a. dassc chamado Gon~alvcs. E natural da India', e por consequencia condem~ nado a lei inexoravel que lhe nao di acesso alem de capitao, a esse posto s6 lhe e concedido pela. refonna ... e reahnente barbara nao os dcixarem subir na cscala hierarchica at€ aos postos que attingem os outros seus collegas' (Alfredo Brandao Cr6 de Castro Ferreri, Apontam~ntos _de um ex-governador de Sofala, Lisboa, r886, p. 65). For the multJ-ractal ball at Government House, Moyambique, on the 13 May 1825, see W. F. W. Owen, R.N., Narrative of voyages to explore ~~1e shores of Africa, Arabia, and Madagascar (2 Vols., London, 1833), vol. 11, PP· I9I-2.

'" 's - 11 d ·d 1 , e cazao, a esco 1a o m_an o 1e sua; com_ tanto que Seja aprovado por esta occioza escravatura; do contrario a dczerr;ao he o scu recurs:o ordinaria, par nao experimentar a severidade do novo scnhor, que a sua voluntaria opinllo detesta' (Elias Alexandre da Silva Correa, Historia de Angola, 1792, 2 vols., cd. Lisboa, 1937, vol. ii, pp. ITZ-14.

127


I should like to make one further point by way of conclusion. The Portuguese have often been the severest critics of their own colonial misrule, but even the fiercest of these critics seldom suggested that the conquests, colonies, or provinces-as they were variously termedshould be abandoned on that account. Three typical examples will suffice to show their attitude. Dom Joao de Castro, 'Knight of the Renaissance', as his latest English biographer calls him, who governed Portuguese Asia with conspicuous success from 1545 to 1548, wrote of the Hindu inhabitants of Portuguese territory, 'They could more properly be called our slaves than our subjects', and again, 'I can assure Your Highness that more souls are lost among the Portuguese who come out to India than are saved among the heathen who are converted by the preachers and Religious to our holy faith'. On another occasion, writing of the way in which the Portuguese mistreated their h1dian allies, he commented: 'Truly it is a weighty thing that we should persecute the mdians to such an extent that we hardly leave them an clement in which to live. We have already taken the sea from them, and we are slowly usurping the land from them piecemeal through litigation in claiming title-deeds and donations. It only remains for us to deprive them of the air, since they have no use for f1re, as their food is limited to herbs and fruits, wherein', he concludes ironically, 'Nature has shown her great foresight'. Yet Dom Joao de Castro was in some ways a conquistador of the old school. He forbade his men to give quarter to their Muslim enemies in the relief of Diu-a command which they disobeyed, to his great annoyance-and he

128


proudly thanked God for making him a born Portugucsc.39

Diogo do Couto, the soldier-chronicler to whom I have already alluded several times, spent most of his long life in Golden Goa, which he saw decline :&om its noonday splendour into its sunset glow, after the arrival of the Dutch and the English in Eastern seas. Among several tmpublished works which he left on his death in 1616, was one entitled Dialogo do soldado pratico (Dialogue of the t•eteran soldier). This is, perhaps, the most vitriolic attack on Portuguese colonial maladministration ever pe1med, and the following passage may be taken as typical of its mordant criticism. 'mdia has the most pure and excellent airs in the world, the finest and most salutiferous fruits, and spring and river waters on the face of the earth, bread, barley, every variety of pulse and vegetables, enough large and small cattle to sustain the world, and everything else about it is marvellous. 111e worst that there is there, is us, who came and ruined such a wonderful country with our lies, our deceits, our frauds, our chicaneries, our injustices, and other vices which I forbear to mention.' Yet Couto was nothing if not a patriotic Portuguese and an ardent imperialist. He devoted his old age to glorifying his countrymen's martial achievements in the East in the Decadas that he compiled so laboriously in the face of considerable handicaps. ' 0

~~ Elaine Sanceau (cd.), Cartas de D;jo5o de Castro (Lisboa, 1954), pp. 28, 39. 45. 2]0, 298.

40 Diogo do Couto, DiJlogo do so !dado prJtico ( ed. Caetano do Amaral, Lis boa, 1790); 0 so !dado prtftico (ed. M. Rodrigues Lapa, Lisboa, 1937), pp. 244-5 for the above quotation. Only four of

I29


If there is a modern Portuguese work which vies with Couto's Soldado Pratico in its bitter denunciation of Portuguese real or alleged colonial incompetence and misrule, it is Joao de Andrade Corvo's Estudos sabre as provincias ultramarinas, a 4-volume work commissioned by the Lisbon Academy of Sciences and published be-tween r883 and r887. The reader of these volumes is left with the impression that if Portuguese colonization was only half as retrograde and inefficient as it is represented as having been in these pages, then the sooner the Portuguese left their overseas possessions, the better for all concerned. Yet this is not at all what Andrade Corvo intended, nor what he himself thought. He served more than once as Minister of Marine and Overseas, and he was an enthusiastic colonialist who encouraged Serpa Pinto and other Portuguese explorers of Africa in the years r87o-90. As it was in the days ofD. Joao de Castro, of Diogo do Couto, of Andrade Corvo, so it is today. Life-long opponents ofDr. Salazar, such as Dr. Armando Cortesao, line up behind him when it comes to Portngal standing fast in Africa. Whatever the Portugnese workers and peasants may feel about Portugal's past, present, and future as a colonial power, the great majority of the edncated classes arc proud of her past history and present achievements overseas and arc resolved not to abdicate voluntarily in the foreseeable future.

Couto's twelve Daadas (IV-VII) were published in his lifetime, the remainder appearing posthumously at various dates between 1645 and 1788.

J30

INDEX

Abella, Domingo, 67 ll.

Abraham, D.P., 53 n. Abreu e Brito, Domingos, 28. Affonso I, KiugofCongo,2o--2T. Ajuda see Whydah. Albuquerque, Affonso de, his

policy of mixed marriages in India, 64-<J5, 76-77-

Alcantara Guerreiro, Canon, 46 n, 57.

Aldeias, Jesuit mission villages, 89, 9S.

Almeida, Dam Francisco de, 41-42.

Almeida, Dom Pedro de, sS, 59 n, 72 n, IIS n, rzo-r.

Alvarez, Joao, S.J., 8 n. Alvarez, Manuel, S.J., 10 11.

Ambaquistas, 40. Ambuila, battle of, 3 3. Anchieta, Jose de, S.J., 22, 92.

Andrade, AntOnio Alberto de, 98 n.

Andrade Corvo,Joiio de, 129-JO.

Angola, origin of nam_e, 23; race relations in, 22, 30-40,

127; slave-trade in, 23, 25, 28-29, 39-4.0, 127; advocates of 'Nigger-bashing' in, 26-27; pomp and ceremony in, 30; indigenons clergy of, 3 3-3 5; decline of population in, 28

Antoni] ( = Andreom), S.J, IOJ, II5.

Arcos, Cmmt of, J r r.

Arzila, 5 n. A vita bile, Fr. Pietro, his defence

of the colour-bar, 66--67. Axelson, Eric, 44 n. Axim, 7, II, r6, 17. Azevedo, Joiio Lucio de, 97 n~

99 n.

Bailadeiras, 77. Bandcirantes, 93-95· Banha Cardozo, Bento, 28. Banians, in Moyambique, 53-54-Barreto, Manuel, S.J., 49-50. Barros,Joao de, 3. 7· Benci,Jorge, S.J., 103, II3. Benguela, 22, 24, 25, 38. Benin, 12.

Blake, J. W., ro H, II 11.

Bosman, Willem, 12.

Braganya Pereira, A. B., 76 11.

Brahmins, Christian, 75-77· Brisio, AntOnio, C. S. Sp.,

II H, I6 1'1, 20 11, 22 n. Brotherhoods, Religious, r6,

roS-9, II9-20.

Caboclo, 87, n6. Cadomega, AntOnio de Oliveira,

on the loyalty of the Jagas, 24; his attitude to the Bantu of Angola, 26-27, 30; to Mulattoes and mixed bloods, 30-32; his praise of Capuchin missionaries, 3 5-36; on the Dem_bos, 36-37; on Luanda, 39; and Salazar, 40.

13 I

INDEX

Cafre (Kaifu), pejorative term, 120.

Cain, Negroes aUegedly descended from, 96, J04-5-

Caio Prado Junior, 120 11,

I2I 11.

Calmon, Pedro, II4 11, II5 11,

I2I _11.

CamOes, Lu{s de, 5, 6r-62. Canarins, 79-8 r, 84-8 5. Cape Verde islands, miscegena

tion in, 13-14. Capuchin missionaries in Congo,

21-22; in Angola, 32-36; in Brazil, 123.

Caste distinctions in Portuguese India, 7 5-76.

Castis:os, 62, 63 n. Castro, DomJoao de, 128-9 Castro, Dom Mattheus de,

Bishop of Chrysopolis, 67-68. Castro, Dom Rodrigo de,

captain of Safim, 5. Cervantes, Miguel de, 86. Ceuta, 3, 4, 5 Charados (Chardos), 75-76. Chicote, II2-13. Clergy, indigenous, in Cape

Verde, 14, r6, 33; in Sao Tome, 16, 31, 33; in Congo and Angola, 19,21-22, 33-35; in Mo~ambiquc, 56-57, 74; in India, 65-69, 75-

Confraternities, religious, 16, 108---9, II9-20.

Congo, Portuguese in the old kingdom of, 19-22, :::6, 33, 34. 35. 37. 38

Cortesao, Armando, 122, 130. Costa, Bernardo da, 8o.

Couto, Diogo do, 3, 58, 78, 129-JO.

CLmha, Manuel da, 13 n. Cunha Rivara, ]. H. da, 62 n,

73 11, 74 II, !34 11.

Dahomey, 17-18. Dalgado, S. R., 76. Davidson, Dasil, 20 n. Delgado, Ralph, 34 n. Dembos, 36-37. Descendentes, 79-80. Dias, Henrique, 106. Dias Ferreira, Gaspar, 86. Dias de Novais, Paulo, 23. Dominican friars, in Mo<;:am-

bique, 46-49. Duffy, James, 20 11.

Ehnina (Mina), 7, n-n, 13 n, 17 Ennes, AntOnio, 9 5 n. Ericeira, Dam Luis de Menezes,

sth Cmmt of, 73.

Fcmandes, AntOnio, 52. Fernandes Sardinha, Dam Pedro,

Bishop of Bahia, go. Fernandes Vieira, Jo:io, 27. Fidalgos, in India, 79-Figueira d.:t Serpa, Gaspar, 71. Freire de Andrada, Gomes, 99,

II7. Freyre, Gilberta, liS 11.

Gomes da Costa, Marshal, So. Gomes Freire de Andrada, 99,

II7. Gonsalves de Mello, Jose

AntOnio, 106 n.

132

INDEX

Gouveia, Francisco de, S.J., 22-23.

Guerreiro, Fernao, S.J., ro ll.

Hamilton, Alexander, 47, 55-56. Hindus, legal discrimination

against, 8r-8z, 124-6; sometrines favoured at the expense of Christian converts, 125-6; political emancipation of, 79, 83-84; denotmced by the Viceroy Dam Pedro de Almeida, 72 n; loyalty during the Maratha invasions, 83.

Irish, schemes for emigration into Mo<;:ainbiquc, 54-55·

Innandades, 108-9, r r9-20.

Jadin, Louis, 20 u, 34 n. Jagas (Bayaka), 23-25. Jews and Jewesses, intermarriage

with Negresses and Negroes in Sio Tome, rs.

Joloffs, ro.

Kaffir, pejorative term, 120. Kiemen, Mathias, O.F.M., 93 11.

Konk::ull language, Portuguese efforts to suppress, 8r -82.

Lanqados, 9-II, 52. Lancilotto, Nicholas, S.J.,

denounces Portuguese concupiscence in India, 59-61.

Las Casas, Fr. Bartolome de, O.P., 101-2.

Le Gentil de la Barbinais, II4-rs.

Leite, Serafim, S.J., 88 n, 9I 11, 92 n, 103 11.

Leite de Faria, Francisco, O.F.M., Cap., I3 11.

Lemos, Duarte de, 43-44· Lima, Lucas de, 68-69. Lisboa, Gaspar de, O.F.M.,

defends racial mixture in India, 63-64.

Lobato, Alexandre, 42 n, 46 n, 51 n, 5411, 55 11.

Lopes, David, 5 11, 6 n. Lopes de Siqueira, Luis, 32-33. Luanda, slave-trade in, 23-29;

miscegenation in, 30-31, 38-39; municipal council of, 31, 36; militia of, 31-32; population of, 38-39.

Mameluco, 86-87, rr6. Manuel, I (King of Portugal,

1495-152I), 2-J. Maranhao, .definition of, 93 n. Marathas, their war with the

Portuguese, 8 3. Mangham, R. C. F., .29. Mazagio, 4, 5-Mello, Fernao de, 2!

Mello de Castro, AntOnio de, 70. Mendes, Dam Affonso, S.J.,

Patriarch of Ethiopia, 68. Menezes, Joio de, O.P., 48-49. Merees de Mello, Carlos, S.J.,

67 ll. Merolla, Girolamo, O.F .M.,

Cap., J2. Mestis:os, in West Africa, 30--35,

39; in India, 62, 76-Bo; in Brazil, 87. See also Miscegenation, Mulattoes, Pardos.

133

INDEX

Mirra, Sao Jorge da (Elmina), Portuguese fortress on the Gold Cost, r48z-r6J7, 7, II-IZ, IJ n, 17.

Miscegenation, in Upper Guinea, 9-ro; in Lower Guinea, III]; in Congo, 21; in Angola, 30-35, 38-40~ inMoc;:ambiquc, 45-46, 48, 50-jl, 54. !26-7; in India, 59-65; 71-72, 76-So; in Brazil, 86-87, 89, 93, 95,98, II4-Ij, 117-20; ll1thc Maranhao, 98, 99, IIS; m Minas Gerais, u6-r7; m Cape Verde, I]-q, r6; m Sao Tome, 14-16.

Moc;:ambique, island, 42-43. Moc;ambique, miscegenation in,

45-46, 48, 50-5I, 54, 126-7; slave-trade in, ss-s6; lack of indigenous clergy in, 56-57; schemes for white emigration to, 54-55. See also Banians, Dominicans, Monomotapa, Swahili, Zambesia.

Monomotapa, 25, 49, 52, 57· Montaury, Joao Baptista, 47-

48. Mulata (female of Mulatto), JI,

40, rq-r6, 121. Mulattoes, ln Guinea, r-r6; in

Sao TomC, 14-15; in Congo, 21-22; in Angola, 30-35, 38-40; in Moc;:ambique, 45-46, 50-52; in Brazil, 87, 103, 114-20, 121.

Muslims, Portuguese enmity towards, 4-6, 41-45, 64, 81, 126; friendly rdations with, 44-45. 124.

Nantes, Martm dC, O.F.M., Cap., 123.

NObrega, Manuel de, S.J., 87-92. Nova c Curiosa Relarrio (1764),

summary of, 104-10.

Orlando Ribeiro, 79 n. Owen, Captain W. F., Royal

Navy, II3 11, 126-7.

Paiva Manso, Visconde de, 20 n, 36 11.

Palmatoria, rr2-13. Pardos, criticism of, II7-18. Paulistas, and the Amerindians,

93-95· Pissurlencar, Panduronga, 76 1t,

77 n, 83 11, ss. Pombal, Sebastiao Jose de

Carval110 e Mello, Count of Oeiras and Marquis of, and the colour-bar in Moc;:ambiq uc, 57, 73-74; and the colourbar in India, 83-84, 126; his suppression of the Jesuits, 87, 98; his emancipation of the Brazilian Amerindians, 98-roo; his abolition of N cgro slavery in Portugal, 1oo-r, I04

Prazo system, 49-53· Pumbos and Pumbciros (Pom

beiros), 28-29. Purificac;:ao, Miguel da, O.F.M.,

his defence of the Creole friars in India, 66, 67 11, II5 n.

Querimba islands, race relations in, 43-46.

Quilombo, 2 5.

I34

INDEX

Reinol(s), 77-79. Religious intolerance, in Portu

guese fudia, Sr-84, 125-26; Religious tolerance in the same, 125-6; in the Querim_ba islauds, 43-46.

Religious Orders, upholders of 'White supremacy in Portuguese India, 65-69; in Brazil, IIS-19.

Ribeiro, Orlando, 79 11.

Ribeiro Rocha, Manuel, 1!2-IJ. Rodrigues, Francisco, S.J., 8 n,

I4 n. Rodrigues, Jose Hon6rio, 39 11.

Ryder, A. F. C., 8 n, 13 11, 15 n, 16 11, 17 11, 18 n.

Sa.fim, 4, 5. Salazar, Dr. AntOnio de Oliveira,

I, 2 11, 40, 1JO.

Salter de Mcnonc;a, Dr. Duarte, 54-55·

Sanceau, Elaine, I29 11.

Sandomil, Count of, 68. Santa Teresa, Ignacio de (Arch-

bishop of Goa, 1721-40), 69. Santos,Joao dos, O.P., 43-45. Santos Marrocos, I 14 11.

Sao Salvador (Mbanza Congo), 2G-2I.

Sao Tome, 12-16, 31, 33. Senegambia, 6, ro. Seuegal, 9. Severim de Faria, Manuel de, 7,

8, 25-26.

Silva Correia, Gem1ano, 58 n, 59 n, So.

Silva Nunes, Paulo da, 95-97, no.

Silva Rego, AntOnio da, 3 5 rt.

Slavery and the Slave-trade, in Guinea, 8-10, 16-17; in Cape Verde, 13-14; in Sao Tome, 13-16; in Congo, 20-21; in Angola, 22-23; 28-29, 34, 39, 40; in Moc;:ambiquc, 55-56; in India, 59-62; in Brazil, 10o-14, 122-3; ill-treatment of Negro slaves, 62, rr2-14, 127; good treatment ofNegro slaves, 127.

Sofala, 41-42. Solorzano y Pereira, Juan de,

96. Sousa Coutinho, Dom Francisco

Inocencio de, criticises coloured clergy, 35·

Sousa Dias, Gastao de, 34 n. Sova, 29, JO. Swahili, relations with the Por

tuguese, 41-45.

Tangier, 4, 5. Tangos-maos, 9-II, 52. Taunay, Affonso de Escragnolle,

93. 94 11.

Teixeira da Mota, Aveline, 16 11,

r8 n. Trindade, Pedro da, O.P., 48-49.

Valignano, Alexaudre, S.J., denotmccs mixed bloods m India, 62-63.

Vaz, Jose, Goan Oratorian friar, 68.

Velho, Domingos Jorge, his opinion of the Amerindians, 94-97, IIO.

I35

INDEX

Vieira, AntOnio, S.J., praises Cape Verde clergy, 14; and the freedom of the Amerindians, 92---93, roz-3; and Negro slavery, 102-3; and the pardos of Bahia, II7.

Vieira, Joio Fernandes, 27. Vilhena, Luis dos Santos, II]

I4, II5.

Warri, 8

Whydah, J7-I8. Witte, Charles-Martel de,

O.S.B., 3 n.

Zaire, 19, 38, roz. Zambesia, 45, 47, 49, Zucchelli, Antonio,

Cap., 39 11.

Zmnbo, 48.

sr. 52. O.F.M.,

.. OXFORD BOOKt

'

PORTUGAL AND BRAZIL: AN INTRODUCTI~

Essays in memory of E. Prestase and A. F. 0. .. Edited by H. V. LIVERMORE with the assi- fill

W. J. ENTWISTLE

ANGOLA: A SYMPOSIUM Views of a Revolt

(Institute of Race ReiGt~)

LA TIN AMERICA The Balance of Race redreued

By I. HALCRO FEitGUSON, wit/1 a for-t/ by PHILIP MAKtN

(Institute of lWce Re/Gtiolu)

PROSPERO'S MAGIC Some thouJhts on clU!i and raGe

By PHILIP MASON

(Institute of R.ce ReiGtioas)

THE PORTUGUESE OFF Til£ SOUTH ARABIAN COJUT

By R. B. SEIUEANT

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PaEII [8214-17/9/63]

'

] 'it 1,,-f.

HE IA 97061

. ~' . f ~ .

325.

Boxer_Race Relations in the Portuguese Colonial Empire

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