The Empire Strikes Back… And Loses, or How an Angolan King-Queen Opposed the Entire Portuguese Colonial Empire Weronika Kubik
The beginning of the Portuguese Colonial Empire can be marked by their conquest of Ceuta, a North-African coastal city, in 1415. Overtime, they established colonies in five African countries, known today under the collective name PALOP (Países Africanos de Língua Oficial Portuguesa). One can list several reasons for these overseas voyages. From the Christian crusade against os mouros, as the Portuguese called Muslim people of Northern Africa, through simple human curiosity about the terrifying, unknown territories (it was believed that the waters and lands beyond Cape St. Vincent were the home of dangerous sea monsters and demons, with climate so unfavorable that would make human existence a living hell), as well as the desire to form new trade routes, discover sources of foreign commercial goods and precious metals, all the way to the mission of bringing the so-called light of civilization and faith to the natives. The Portuguese presence in Africa ended in 1975, when all of the colonies declared independence and demanded that the colonizers leave the borders of the countries. Although the Portuguese still believe themselves to be the “good colonizers”, their attitude towards the inhabitants of the lands they occupied wasn’t always harmless or noble. One particularly interesting episode in the Empire’s history involves relations with a political structure that was at the time known as The Kingdom of Kongo and its vassal states.
Iga Chatys
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