Portuguese participation in the slave trade 123African labour, once its superiority to native labour was realized. The Spanish
West Indies also began to import slaves for their sugar plantations, while
there was still a demand for labour in metropolitan Portugal and its Atlantic
islands. Thus the moment when Central Africa, through the kingdom of Kongo,
was opening its doors to Western influence coincided with a need for manpower
which was to be met by slave trading. It would be hard to find a clearer example
of the deep misunderstanding to which the slave trade gave rise between Africa
and Europe : here an opportunity was lost and never regained. It is of course
true that in Kongo, as elsewhere in Africa, traditional institutions were such
as to facilitate the development of the slave trade; but the fact remains that
the manikongo's hopes of giving his people access to white skills, and so
bringing them out of their isolation, were cruelly betrayed. Moreover, the
kingdom of Kongo had no other goods to offer except slaves; and, once it
engaged in this trade, it was bound sconer or later to be at the mercy of the law
of supply and demand, and of various competing interests, both abroad, in
the shape of slave-traders, and at home, in the shape of neighbouring peoples
also involved in the trade.
The settlers of Sao Tomé grew more and more active and imported slaves
in ever-increasing numbers, not only for their own home market but also for
export. At the same time they gradually established themselves in the kingdom
and along the river, continually improving their links with the hinterland.
During his reign, which lasted until 1543, Dom Afonso managed to curb the
trade within his kingdom; and many times he repudiated it in his letters to the
king of Portugal. But he could not prevent his vassals from enriching themselves
through the trade, while his own enfeebled kingdom became the object of
covetousness from across his borders. When he died, his successors were unable
to stop either the growth of slave trading or the attacks of neighbouring tribes
aimed at making prisoners of war to exchange for the whites' barter goods. The
number of slaves being exported from the port of Mpinda around 1530 has
been estimated at 4,000 to 5,000 a year. Meanwhile Brazil's manpower needs
led the traders to look towards the south. Angola was at that time more thickly
populated than Kongo, and was better able to meet this increased demand.
Moreover the dealers were interested in having their purchasing areas closer
to their embarkation points, so as to reduce as much as possible the loss of
slaves in transit, which was always heavy. Early in the sixteenth century,
traders developed the habit of going direct to the Angolan coast : they first
reached Ambriz, then the Dande and the Cuanza. In so doing they were acting
against the interests both of the Portuguese crown, to which they paid no taxes,
and of the manikongo, by encouraging his vassals to deal with them direct.
With the decline of the kingdom of Kongo, Portugal's focus of interest shifted
to Angola. In 1571 the king of Portugal granted Paulo Dias de Nováis a deed
of gift over Angola: in so doing he abandoned his policy of exercising loose