The Portuguese Empire and Africa: The History and Legacy of Portugal’s Exploration and Colonization of the West African Coast by Charles River Editors

Author:Charles River Editors
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Charles River Editors
Published: 2019-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

The Rose Colored Map

A Portuguese map of the Indian Ocean

While the Portuguese had been developing their colonies in East Africa and West Africa, the other European powers were more focused on events in the New World, the East Indies, and Australia. Africa remained terra incognita, a source of cheap slave labor and little more than that. That would change when American explorer Henry Morton Stanley successfully completed an exploration of the Congo River and excited the interest of Belgian King Leopold II, who then established his private colony of the Congo Free State. This was an audacious coup that startled the major European powers, which were increasingly in competition with one another over their various programs of international global expansion. Suddenly, Africa, the great unknown, was better understood thanks to the efforts of a generation of intrepid explorers and became the focus of more European imperial interest. The Portuguese, who had been in Africa for over three centuries already, had fallen behind the other European powers, gaining a reputation as the “poor man” of Europe. Indeed, as Britain, France and Germany began to jostle for territory in Africa, ancient Portuguese claims were often ignored and disregarded. It was somewhat by the skin of its teeth that Portugal was able to formalize and retain its two major colonies of Portuguese East Africa and Portuguese West Africa.

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