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The Portuguese generally take a lot of pride in the fact that Brazil, a country they discovered, has become one of the most vibrant and varied countries on earth and a true cultural superpower. That diversity, of course, came into being largely because of the slave trade. But slavery is a word seldom mentioned in discussions of Portugal’s glorious age of expansion and empire.
A current exhibition in the museum in Lagos makes a laudable attempt to promote Portugal’s own multicultural heritage, talking at length about how successive migrations of humanity have culturally enriched European societies and made them much more ethnically diverse, but fails to mention how forced migrations of people created economic riches, or even the remarkable fact that Lagos itself would give its name to the capital of Africa’s most populous nation, as many of the slaves traded in the Algarve originated in that part of Africa.
Portugal first arrived in what would become its largest African colony, Angola, in 1483, and they would stay there for almost 500 years. Like any colonial relationship it was one of brutality and forced obedience:
Until the late 1900's Portugal used the area as a "slave pool" for its far more lucrative colony in Brazil and to benefit from the occasional discovery of precious gemstones and metals. Angola suffered from one of the most backward forms of colonialist rule. (from www.africanet.com)
According to an article by Helena Matos in Público, it always held a special significance for the Portuguese:
(There is a) word which, in Portugal, throughout the entire twentieth century was murmured in times of crisis and in the inevitable periods of euphoria that followed. That word is Angola.( Read more... )
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The thing I'm trying to write at the moment is just getting more and more involving and I might never finish it; if I do it will also contain more links than the internet. When I was in Portugal a couple of weeks ago the press was full of articles about the Prime Minister's visit to Angola, along with 300 empresarios, looking to take advantage of Portugal's past, erm, connections with the country in order to grab a slice of the action. This was followed by a huge article in the magazine VISÃO (which I picked up at the airport) about China's industrial, financial and commercial (but not yet cultural, oddly enough) takeover of the country. It set me thinking about Angola's past masters and their future ones...as I say, it may just stay in my head, driving me mad until I actually get it done. I am sure it has been very much in the heads of Angolans recently, maybe I've accidentally read their minds.
I might just spend the entire afternoon at work tomorrow getting it done. My boss is away for a week in Portugal, oddly enough. I could chat about it all morning with my Somali students, but I'd have to teach them the word 'history' first. And 'China'.
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