Founding of Luanda (1576): Portugal's Slave Port in Angola

The founding of Luanda took place in 1576, when the Portuguese captain Paulo Dias de Novais established the settlement of Sao Paulo de Luanda on the Atlantic coast of what is now Angola. Intended as the base for a Portuguese conquest of the Mbundu kingdom of Ndongo, it became the capital of colonial Angola. For nearly three centuries it was also one of the busiest slave ports of the Atlantic world.

Background

Portuguese ships had reached the mouth of the Congo River in 1483, and the Kingdom of Kongo became Portugal’s main partner in West Central Africa. Kongo’s rulers converted to Christianity and traded captives, ivory and copper with Portuguese merchants, many of them based on the island of Sao Tome.

South of Kongo lay Ndongo, whose ruler bore the title ngola, the word from which the name Angola comes. Portuguese traders were active there from the early sixteenth century, and missionaries visited in 1560, but there was no permanent Portuguese settlement on this coast.

In 1571 King Sebastian of Portugal granted Paulo Dias de Novais a donation charter making him proprietary governor of a stretch of coast south of the Kwanza River. In return Dias de Novais had to bring settlers, build forts and churches and conquer the territory at his own expense. It was the first such grant on the African mainland, modelled on the hereditary captaincies used in Brazil and on Atlantic islands such as Sao Tome.

The founding

Dias de Novais sailed from Lisbon in 1574 with a small fleet carrying soldiers, settlers and Jesuit priests. In February 1575 he landed on Luanda Island, a long sandbar sheltering a natural bay, where Portuguese traders were already living under the authority of Kongo.

In 1576 he moved to the mainland opposite the island and founded Sao Paulo de Luanda on the heights above the bay. A church and a simple fort were built, the beginning of the later Fortress of Sao Miguel. The bay offered one of the best harbours on this coast and easy access to the interior along the Kwanza and Bengo rivers.

Luanda Island itself had long mattered to the Kingdom of Kongo. Its shallow waters were the source of nzimbu, small shells that served as Kongo’s currency, and the island was ruled by an official answering to the king of Kongo. Portuguese control of the bay therefore had consequences for Kongo as well as for Ndongo.

Wars with Ndongo

Relations with Ndongo were at first peaceful, but in 1579 the ngola ordered the killing of Portuguese traders at his court, and war followed. The Portuguese built inland forts, such as Massangano on the Kwanza, and relied heavily on African allies and soldiers. Dias de Novais died at Massangano in 1589 without conquering Ndongo.

Conflict continued for decades. In the 1620s Ndongo’s resistance was led by Queen Nzinga, whose diplomacy at Luanda and later wars made her one of the best-known African rulers of the period.

After Dias de Novais’s death, the Crown took direct control of the colony, and Angola was ruled by governors appointed from Lisbon. Their wars depended on African auxiliaries and, from the early seventeenth century, on alliances with the Imbangala, mobile bands of warriors who lived by raiding.

The slave port

Luanda’s economy was built on the export of captives. People taken in Portuguese wars, sent as tribute by subjugated chiefs, or bought at inland markets were marched to the coast, held in the town and shipped across the Atlantic, chiefly to Brazil and also to Spanish America. Historians estimate that well over one million enslaved Africans embarked at Luanda between the late sixteenth and the mid-nineteenth century, making it one of the largest single ports in the Atlantic slave trade.

By the seventeenth century much of Luanda’s trade was run by merchants with close ties to Brazil. Ships from Rio de Janeiro and Bahia brought tobacco, sugar-cane brandy and other goods, which were exchanged for captives at Luanda and carried directly back across the South Atlantic.

The town’s population mixed Portuguese officials, soldiers and traders with Luso-Africans of mixed descent, free Africans and large numbers of enslaved people. Churches, convents and the governor’s residence stood on the upper town, while the lower town by the bay was the centre of commerce.

Luanda became a city in 1605. In August 1641 the Dutch West India Company seized it, hoping to supply its own colonies in Brazil. A fleet from Brazil under Salvador Correia de Sá retook the city in August 1648, confirming the close links between Angola and Brazil.

Later history

Portugal formally banned the export of slaves from its African territories in 1836, but the trade from Angola continued illegally for some years afterwards. Luanda remained the capital of Portuguese Angola, and the Fortress of Sao Miguel, rebuilt in stone in the seventeenth century, still overlooks the bay. When Angola became independent on 11 November 1975, Luanda became the capital of the new state.

Timeline

• 1483: Portuguese ships reach the Kongo coast.
• 1571: King Sebastian grants Paulo Dias de Novais a charter for Angola.
• 1575, February: Dias de Novais lands on Luanda Island.
• 1576: Sao Paulo de Luanda is founded on the mainland.
• 1579: War breaks out between the Portuguese and Ndongo.
• 1589: Dias de Novais dies at Massangano.
• 1605: Luanda receives the status of a city.
• 1641-1648: Dutch occupation of Luanda.

Why it matters

The founding of Luanda began the long Portuguese colonial presence in Angola, which lasted until independence in 1975. It also created a port through which a very large share of the Africans carried to Brazil were shipped, tying the history of West Central Africa closely to that of the Americas.