Brazilian Confederation (Angola)
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The Brazilian Confederation (Portuguese: Confederação Brasílica) was a proposed union of Portuguese Angola with the Empire of Brazil in 1822. Ever since the reconquest of Luanda by colonial Portuguese forces from Brazil, commercial interests from Portuguese America became preeminent in Angola's main port cities of Luanda and Benguela.[1] Upon the outbreak of the Brazilian War of Independence, the merchant class in these ports conspired to declare independence from Portugal and requested protection from Emperor Pedro I of Brazil.[2]
Despite being acknowledged by the Imperial Government,[3] no action was ever taken to help the Angolan insurgency or claim the land for the Empire of Brazil. The Portuguese governor deployed a military force to close down the pro-Brazilian juntas in 1823, and the peace treaty between Brazil and Portugal in 1825 included a clause expressly forbidding Brazil from claiming Portuguese colonies outside the Americas.[4]
Background
Since the 16th century the Portuguese Empire tied both coasts of the South Atlantic together by kickstarting the Atlantic Slave Trade. Portuguese traders from the metropole held preeminence in the commerce between Brazil and Angola, up until the Dutch-Portuguese wars.
The Dutch, seeking to dominate the sugar trade, conquered Angola and Northeast Brazil. This way the Dutch West Indies Company controlled both the largest sugar plantations and the main slave ports that fed them. The Portuguese mainland became preoccupied by its war of independence against Spain, and therefore delegated to the Brazilian colonists the mission of retaking the lost Portuguese possessions in the South Atlantic. Governor of Rio de Janeiro Salvador de Sá assembled a naval force in Brazil and sailed across the Atlantic, successfully expelling the Dutch in 1648.[5]
What followed however was not a simple return of the Portuguese merchants. Salvador de Sá temporarily governed Angola together with Rio de Janeiro, and from that point forward the colonists from Brazil held large sway in Portuguese Angola.[1] Sea currents in the age of sail favored ships leaving Angola to stop in Brazil first before continuing the journey to Portugal, and trade between the two colonies flourished beyond just the slave trade. Some authors have gone as far as describing Angola as "the colony's colony" in the 17th and 18th centuries.[2]
In the 19th century the transfer of the Portuguese court to Brazil formally put Angola, alongside the other African and Asian Portuguese colonies, under the administration of Rio de Janeiro. At that time it was common for the Angolan elites to send their children to be educated in Rio instead of Lisbon, and there were many families spread on both sides of the South Atlantic.[6]
The establishment of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and Algarves in 1815 formally created a separate Brazilian zone of influence within the Portuguese Empire, and the Porto Liberal Revolution of 1820 called for a Constitutional Cortes with representation from all corners of the empire, including Brazil and Angola. However the Cortes' disdain for Brazilian autonomy and desire to reaffirm continental Portugal's preeminence in the kingdom soon alienated Brazilian authorities, such as José Bonifácio, who begun campaigning for a separate Constitutional Convention in Rio de Janeiro to reform the United Kingdom into a dual monarchy, with two capitals, two constitutions and separate governments, united under the same monarch.[7]
With these tensions going into 1821, Angola elected its representatives for the Cortes in Lisbon. The ships coming from Angola to Portugal, as mentioned previously, had to stop by Brazil on the way. When the three Angolan delegates docked in Rio, José Bonifácio requested that they refuse to continue the journey to Lisbon and instead call for a separate Constitutional Convention in Rio, which he argued would better represent Angola's interests.
Two of the delegates, including Eusebio de Queiroz Coutinho, father of later Brazilian politician Eusebio de Queiroz, agreed and didn't take their posts in Lisbon, also calling for every Portuguese colony to have the right to vote on which kingdom they wanted to be part of, Brazil or Portugal, a request that was believed to guarantee Angola joining Brazil if granted.[2]
In Angola, the municipal juntas that were formed to represent the colonists' interests followed the escalation of the Brazilian-Portuguese dispute with great interest, even choosing to celebrate Prince Regent of Brazil Pedro de Bragança's birthday instead of Portuguese King João VI's.[2] Support for Brazil was concentrated mainly in the province of Benguela.
After the proclamation of Brazilian independence in early September 1822, pro-Brazilian merchants throughout Portuguese Africa, dubbed by the Portuguese colonial authorities as the "Brazilian Confederation", agitated in local chambers for adherence to the new Empire.[2]
Only in Angola did the "Confederation" succeed in issuing official declarations of support for Brazil. The province of Benguela went a step further and formally declared its intention of separating from Portugal and requested protection from Emperor Pedro I of Brazil.[3]
Reactions
Portuguese reaction
The governor of Angola quickly deployed Portuguese forces to close down the provincial assemblies that issued the pro-Brazilian declarations, who offered no resistance.[2]
From then on, merchants sympathetic to the "Confederation" idea would passively receive news from the war in South America, on the hopes a victorious Brazil would eventually come to their rescue. The most persistent rumors registered by Portuguese authorities were that Admiral Cochrane would cross the Atlantic with the Imperial Brazilian Navy and take Angola.[2]
Brazilian reaction
The imperial government acknowledged Benguela's request by reprinting it in an issue of the official government paper, the Gazeta do Rio.[3] However the article of the paper uses the declaration purely for propaganda purposes, exalting the qualities of the Emperor and telling its readers that even peoples from other continents wish to be ruled by him. No commentary is provided on whether the government took the proclamation seriously or if it intended to act upon it.[2]
Eusebio de Queiroz and other Angolan politicians who sided with Brazil gained Brazilian citizenship, although they didn't return to Angola.
Once the Imperial Navy cleared the country's coast from Portuguese naval presence, no attempt was made to cross the Atlantic. In the 1825 peace treaty between Brazil and Portugal, one of its articles has Brazil give up any claims to Portuguese colonies outside the Americas,[4] making the Brazilian Confederation completely unviable.
Aftermath
With the loss of Brazil, Portugal revamped the Angolan economy to act as a substitute and lessen Brazilian commercial influence. Coffee, sugar, rice and other crops became the main focus of colonial investment, rendering trade between Brazil and Angola less valuable.
Brazil attempted to maintain its economic preeminence in Angola until the 1870s. It opened its first African diplomatic office in Luanda in 1828, and Brazil's consuls were given instructions to combat the slave trade in the terms of the Feijó Law and Eusebio de Queiroz Law, giving support to the Eastern Naval Division and promote "legal trade" (term for non-slavery related items). An incident involving claimants from the Kingdom of Kongo seeking asylum in Brazil with the consul's alleged help got the Brazilian embassy in Portuguese Angola closed, and the First Brazilian Republic proclaimed shortly thereafter completely withheld all Brazilian diplomatic interests in Africa, not restored until the 1960s.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Alencastro, Luiz Felipe de (2000). O trato dos viventes: formação do Brasil no Atlântico Sul, séculos XVI e XVII (in Portuguese). Companhia das Letras.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link) - ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 da Silva Guizelin, Gilberto. Dois Cônsules de sua Majestade Imperial em Luanda (1822–1861) Relações Brasil-Angola, de Rui Germack Possolo a Saturnino de Sousa e Oliveira. Edusp.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 "Gazeta do Rio" (PDF). October 5, 1822.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 "Tratado de Amizade e Aliança".
- ↑ Mello, Evaldo Cabral de. O negócio do Brasil:Portugal, os Países Baixose o Nordeste, 1641-1669. Companhia de Bolso.
- ↑ Nassif, Luis (10 September 2011). "Relações entre Brasil e Angola, por Pepetela". GGN.
- ↑ Costa, Emília Viotti da (1998). Da Monarquia à República (9th ed.). Editora Unesp.
External links
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