Roberts A.D. The Cambridge History of Africa, Volume 7: from 1905 to 1940
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
CONCLUSION
gold francs in Russia after 1917, while its scope for investment
in China and Latin America was subsequently restricted.
The trade generated by investment in the Congo also benefited
Belgium. By the late 1930s Belgium received 75 per cent of
exports from the Congo, and
8 5
per cent of those from Ruanda.
Belgium's share of its colony's imports, which had fallen to
3 5
per cent by 1935, rose steadily to 44 per cent by 1938. The Congo
contributed
a
growing share of Belgium's total external trade. The
percentage of Belgium's imports (excluding gold) derived from
the Congo rose from less than 2 before 1930 to 4.5 in 1934 and
7 in
1937—8.
The percentage of Belgian exports sent to the Congo
declined from 3.4 in 1926 to 1.1 in 1934 but rose to 2.3 in 1938.
By that time, activities connected with the colonial economy
provided some 400,000 jobs in Belgium. Admittedly, the trade of
the Belgian Congo was not, in our period, especially impressive
if measured against size of territory, population or capital
investment,
18
but this reflected the long-term nature of speculation
in railways and mining; the real returns were yet to come.
Meanwhile, Belgium's colony had come to make a notable
contribution to the world's supply of raw materials: by the late
1930s its copper represented 7 per cent of world output, its tin
5,
its cobalt 27, its palm-oil 15 and its palm-nuts 13. It was the
world's largest producer of industrial diamonds and uranium; its
monopoly of the latter was challenged from 1933 by Canada, but
an agreement in 1938 secured the Belgian Congo 60 per cent of
the market.
These results did much to sustain Belgium's position as a
significant, if minor, economic power, but they were achieved at
a high cost to Africans, both in material terms and in terms of
scope for personal fulfilment. The colony had become a huge
industrial enterprise; in some respects it was enlightened and even
benevolent, but the whole system
was
predicated on the continuing
concentration of power in white hands, and the regimentation of
African life. When Belgium was occupied by Germany in 1940,
the Congo once again helped it survive as
a
force in world politics,
but the war and its aftermath imposed new tests on Belgium's
capacity to retain the total control which characterised the
prevailing Belgian conception of colonial rule.
11
Of the totals for sub-Saharan Africa, the Belgian Congo accounted for around 11
per cent of land, population and capital investment by the mid-1930s, but no more than
5 per cent of trade.
493
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
CHAPTER
io
PORTUGUESE AFRICA
THE METROPOLITAN BACKGROUND
I9OJ-1926
At
the
beginning
of the
twentieth century Portugal
was an
underdeveloped country whose economy was perhaps as typical
of the Africa she was purporting
to
civilise
as of
Europe. This
underdevelopment showed
all the
signs
of
being
a
chronic
condition.
Of
a population
of
six million, 75 per cent still lived
in rural communities producing Portugal's main items of export:
wine, fruit, olives, fish, timber and cork. Agriculture belonged
to
a pre-capitalist age and the peasant obtained
a
pitiful living alike
on the minifundia of the north, where he was proprietor, and on
the latifundia
of the
south, where
he was
sharecropper
or
labourer. Backward
as her
rural economy was, Portugal
had
become
the
world's principal producer
of
cork, sardines
and
fortified wines. There was a marked tendency to overproduce and
the government was continually seeking outlets
in
the colonies;
on the other hand,-Portugal remained unable
to
feed herself and
did not produce significant grain surpluses until the 1930s.
The urban population worked
in
cities which were largely
pre-industrial. Agricultural produce and sardines underwent some
industrial processing,
but in 1920
Portugal's only important
manufactured export was cotton textiles. Ninety per cent
of
her
foreign trade was carried in foreign ships; imports of manufactured
goods were more than twice the value of exports and the visible
trade deficit
was
only covered
by
remittances from emigrants.
Two-thirds
of the
adult population were illiterate,
and
rural
poverty and overpopulation caused emigration
to
run as high as
50,000
a
year during
the
first
two
decades
of the
century.
Portugal's currency was unstable;
it
was revised
in
1911 and
at
once began
a
rapid decline. The escudo, which had exchanged
at
7.54 to the pound sterling in 1919, sank to 127.4 by 1924. Annual
budgetary deficits were due not so much
to
overspending by the
494
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE METROPOLITAN BACKGROUND
cautious republican governments,
as to
the decline
in
national
income due to inflation. The lack of natural resources, including
energy,
the
failure
to
save and invest,
the
small size
of
the
domestic market, the poverty of industrial skills, were all inter-
related problems from which there appeared to be no escape. The
unrest which these problems created found expression in violent
ideological disputes only marginally related to Portugal's econo-
mic problems. Monarchists and republicans, clericals and anti-
clericals, liberals and socialists, differed little in their approach
to
economic questions.
No
land reform was undertaken and
the
timid interventions of the government in the economy were inept
and unproductive.
Like many underdeveloped countries, Portugal
in
the early
twentieth century appeared to be ruled by an oligarchy of lawyers,
bureaucrats, academics and military men. Lack of civilian expertise
gave great importance to those who had acquired organisational
and technical skills
in
the armed forces. The armed forces were
prominent under both
the
monarchy
and the
republic which
replaced it in 1910. Their place in national life can be gauged from
the fact that at the time of the 1926 revolution 23 per cent of the
budget was devoted to the armed forces.
Many writers accepted the idea, admittedly imprecise, that the
resources of Africa would enable Portugal to generate her own
economic head
of
steam.
At the
beginning
of
the twentieth
century, however, only the tiny island
of
Sao Tome regularly
showed
a
balance of payments surplus and contributed substan-
tially
to
the colonial exchequer. The other colonies continued
to swallow
up
resources
in
endless campaigns
of
pacification.
Africa repeatedly confronted politicians with pressing short-term
problems which pushed the fulfilment of grandiose imperial ideals
into the distant future. Moreover, in spite of strongly protectionist
tariff policies pursued by all Portuguese regimes, Portugal's own
trade with her colonies was seldom a very large proportion of her
total foreign trade: during most
of
our period
it
was between
about 7 and
10
per cent (if
we
disregard re-exports from Portugal
of colonial produce, which were often substantial).
Portugal felt aggrieved that the powers had denied her full
claims to African territory in 1891. Besides, Portugal had made
use of chartered companies to stake out imperial claims, and now
two-thirds
of
Mozambique
was in the
hands
of two
such
495
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
PORTUGUESE AFRICA
companies, both dominated by foreign capital. Nonetheless, three
generations of Portuguese would be told that the greater Portugal
exceeded the whole of western Europe in extent, and without
doubt her African possessions gave Portugal an international
significance she could not otherwise have attained. This interna-
tional importance became a source of great anxiety. It was known
that in 1898 Britain and Germany had signed an agreement in
which a future partition of the Portuguese colonies was provided
for, and every diplomatic exchange in which Portugal was
involved was poisoned by the existence of this 'secret' treaty. The
fate of King Leopold's Congo Independent State seemed to lie
in wait for Angola whenever the British Foreign Office asked a
question about contract labour.
The overthrow of the monarchy in 1910 intensified these
suspicions. South Africa appeared to be poised to seize Delagoa
Bay, and monarchists gathered in Spain to bring about a restor-
ation. It was suspected, quite correctly, that Britain would not
intervene to protect the republic.
1
German designs on southern
Angola were quite explicit. Up to 1905 they had pressed for the
right to build a railway linking the Otavi mines in South West
Africa to a Portuguese port and considered the whole area to be
their own sphere of influence, even opposing Portuguese missions
of 'pacification'. In 1913 Britain and Germany, groping for a
rapprochement,
renewed their agreement to partition the Portuguese
empire and, although the treaty naturally lapsed in 1914, the
outbreak of war proved even more dangerous for Portugal, when
the Germans raided deep into southern Angola and defeated a
Portuguese force at
Naulila.
Portugal, however, remained officially
neutral until March 1916, when she joined the
Allies.
Some 40,000
Portuguese troops were sent to France and in November 1917
Mozambique was invaded by the Germans, but by the Versailles
peace treaty Portugal received no territorial compensation except
the minute Kionga triangle in northern Mozambique. Nor did the
peace remove the threat to the empire's survival.
After 1918 British and South African dominance was unchall-
enged in southern Africa and Portugal's position as a virtual client
state was extremely precarious. South Africa was quite open about
her desire to control Lourenco Marques (Maputo) and used
1
J. Vincent Smith, 'The Portuguese Republic and Britain 1910-1914',
Journal
of
Contemporary
History,
197}, 10,4, 707-27.
496
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE METROPOLITAN BACKGROUND
diplomatic pressure
to
prevent the completion
of
the Benguela
railway. Meanwhile British capital took control of one chartered
company in Mozambique, increased its influence in the other, and
obtained
a
large stake
in the
railways and sugar industry.
In
Europe, Spain maintained her hostile attitude to the republic.
It
was the principal diplomatic achievement
of
the Estado Novo
that, after
1926,
this position was reversed and diplomatic support
was obtained from both Britain and South Africa at the very time
that Portugal was putting restraints on the operations of British
capital and missions. Both internally and externally, the Portu-
guese empire was more secure in the 1930s than
at
any time
in
the previous hundred years. Only the Third Reich eyed it jealously
but impotently from a distance.
Idealism is a marked trait in Portuguese political thought. The
early nineteenth-century constitutions had stated clearly that the
colonies were an integral part of the mother country, and liberal
statesmen had proceeded to abolish slavery and the death penalty
and to accord,
at
least in theory, equal rights
to
all Portuguese
citizens irrespective
of
colour. Against this idealism stood
the
stark realities of conditions in the colonies, where settlers strove
for
a
living
in a
hostile environment and underpaid officials
battled
for
solvency and order. The needs
of
these men led
to
harsher policies, designed to extract labour and revenue from the
African population. The labour law
of
1899 codified
a
complete
reversal of attitudes, imposing the 'moral obligation* to work and
the adoption of Portuguese cultural standards as a pre-condition
for the granting of civil rights. A man could evade the application
of this law
if
he was a property owner or pursued
a
profession,
and from these clauses developed
the
practical distinctions
between
civili^ados
and
indigenas
(natives) which were eventually
codified in the 1926 Estatuto
dos
Indigenas.
In
1919 provision was
made for demarcating African reserves and allowing the
civili^ados
to acquire freeholds but
in
few areas was there any significant
demand for land by whites or
civili^ados
and this law was hardly
acted upon before 1940. In theory all Africans would eventually
become
civili^ados
but, as a Portuguese observer was later to write,
' The Lisbon empire builders made the laws, but the local settlers
made the rules.'
2
It
was
not in
the settlers' interest
for
many
Africans to become
civili^ados
and thereby escape the obligation
2
A. de Figuciredo, Portugal: fifty years of dictatorship (London, 1975),
12.
497
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
PORTUGUESE AFRICA
to labour, nor were they willing to treat those who did acquire
this status as equals. This fact took away any incentive the
Africans might have had to
'
civilise'
themselves — and few ever
did.
In the early twentieth century the army and navy provided most
of the colonial administrators. In 1906, however, the Escola
Colonial was set up to train civil servants and in 1911 the colonial
ministry was separated from that of the navy. Until 1907 colonial
budgets were manipulated in Lisbon and surpluses in one colony
were transferred to meet deficits in another. The colonies some-
times found themselves charged with items of metropolitan
expenditure while the Lisbon-based Banco Nacional Ultramarino
controlled colonial currency and credit. Settlers and governors
alike demanded more control over their own affairs and less
interference from Lisbon. Devolution of responsibility to the
colonies was part of the republican platform in 1910, and in 1914
an organic law was tabled in Lisbon and subsequently implem-
ented in stages up to the end of the republic in 1926. The most
controversial aspect of this decentralisation was the concentration
of power, after 1920, in the hands of high commissioners who had
ministerial rank and enjoyed a position amounting to virtual
dictatorship in the colonies. This was reinforced by lack of
political continuity in Lisbon: between 1910 and 1926 the offices
of prime minister, foreign minister and colonial minister each
changed hands three times a year on average.
Colonial autonomy led Lisbon to demand that the colonies pay
their way and use their own resources for economic growth.
Short-term financial expediency dictated policies which would
maximise revenue. The governors of Mozambique saw salvation
in the labour contracts with South Africa and Southern Rhodesia
and in the growth of transit traffic from Beira and Lourenco
Marques. In Angola, however, there was no easy solution, and
the export of labour to Sao Tome was chiefly designed to increase
the profits from the cocoa plantations and not to raise Angola's
own income. In all colonies the recruitment of black militia
proved a cheap and crudely effective way of maintaining a security
force; and hut-tax payments propped up colonial budgets while
drawing Africans into wage labour and the money economy.
These policies proved highly controversial. The South African
labour contracts were attacked by those who claimed that the
economic growth of Mozambique was being sacrificed at the altar
498
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE METROPOLITAN BACKGROUND
of the sterling balances. In Angola the republican governors, of
whom Norton
de
Matos (1912—15
and
1921—3) was
the
most
important, became increasingly dictatorial and used their financial
autonomy to initiate programmes of public works which placed
the state
in
strong competition with private concessionaires for
labour.
Not
surprisingly, governors were soon
to be
found
interpreting the labour laws
in
such
a
way that labour
for
the
government would
be
compulsory but contracting
to
private
concerns voluntary. Herein lies
the
clue
to the
superficially
humanitarian and liberal native policies of the stronger governors.
The Estado Novo
The military coup
of
28 May 1926 did not immediately alter the
situation
in
Portugal,
and it
was only
in
1928 *hat
a
stable
government formed round the determined figure
of
the finance
minister, Antonio Salazar. Like his fellow dictators, Salazar was
to encourage
a
powerful mythology
in
which
the
chaos
and
corruption
of
democratic liberalism was represented
as
being
replaced by order, solvency and a new nationalism which subord-
inated sectional interests to the common good. In fact, Salazar's
accession to power brought with it little that was new in the stock
of practical political and economic ideas. The difference was that
he made sure of his support within the property-owning classes
and armed forces. Fiscal orthodoxy and balanced budgets
re-
mained articles of faith which were affirmed simply by cutting and
cutting again at state expenditure. There was no money to spare
to maintain
the
infrastructure
of
communications
or
basic
industries, and the economy showed few signs
of
growth until
after the Second World War. Military budgets, however, increased
and
in
1937 took
up
over
30 per
cent
of
the government's
expenditure. The dominance of lawyers, academics and generals
continued, though within the structure of party discipline which
Salazar demanded. Few concessions were made to monarchists or
the extreme Catholic groups
of
the right:
the
king was
not
restored nor the church re-established. The most clearly empha-
sised difference lay
in
the new regime's attitude
to
civil rights.
Public avenues of criticism and opposition were closed and the
lively debate on colonial matters which had marked the republic
ceased abruptly.
At first Salazar, like so many finance ministers before him, saw
499
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
PORTUGUESE AFRICA
the colonies as a financial burden Portugal could well do without.
However, he was soon to discover that the republic had overcome
the worst colonial problems, and had initiated policies which the
Estado Novo could adopt with few alterations. The republic had
brought to an end the wars of pacification, and military
administration had already largely been replaced by civilians.
Steps had been taken to restrict the freedom of the concession
holders and the Niassa Company had not had its charter renewed.
Tariffs and quotas had been manipulated to increase the trade
between Portugal and the colonies, while the cotton-growing
scheme and the codification of native policy embodied in the
Estatuto
dos Indigenas
were both legacies of the republic.
This republican inheritance allowed Salazar to see the political
value of the empire as outweighing its economic liability. On to
the empire Salazar's Portugal could now project her new
nationalism: the Lusitanian civilising mission and the need to
make sacrifices for the sake of the empire were convenient
ideologies for a fascist
state.
Not surprisingly, little was said about
Portuguese multiracialism. This aspect of the Portuguese tradition
was only discovered in the era of African independence
movements. Before 1940, the 'civilising mission' was still much
as it had been articulated by the great empire-builders of the 1890s.
The unity of the colonies with the mother country, rather than
development towards independence, was the ideal made explicit
in the Colonial Act of
1930.
Under the monarchy and the republic,
this unity had remained confined to the world of metaphysics.
Salazar took steps to add substance to theory. Consequently
colonial autonomy became the one tradition of the republic that
was totally uprooted. There were to be no more dictatorial high
commissioners and the new administrative structures were to be
firmly in the grasp of
the
minister for the colonies and his council
in Lisbon. The Colonial Act (1930) and the new Portuguese
constitution (1933) helped to establish conformity throughout the
empire. The consent of Lisbon was required for loans and for
dealings with foreign powers: exchange controls were introduced
to restrict colonial purchases from countries other than Portugal.
Provision was made for Lisbon to legislate directly for the
colonies and the fields of personnel, military law, currency,
missions and labour were reserved for metropolitan action. In the
colonies the governors-general and the district governors had
500
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
MOZAMBIQUE
councils, part made up of senior officials and part of nominees,
which had to be consulted before local decrees were issued. The
administrative autonomy of concession companies north of the
Zambezi was ended in 1929-30; the charter of the Mozambique
Company expired in 1941.
For the first time in Portuguese colonial history, the writ of
Lisbon began actually to be obeyed in the colonies. The settler
and the official were made increasingly aware that they might in
reality be called to account for their conduct. Mozambique and
Angola ceased to be a rag-bag of separate customs zones, railway
corridors and company concessions and began to evolve as
integrated states.
MOZAMBIQUE
I9OJ-I9I6
Apart from forming a single geographical block, Portugal's
East African territory had little natural unity. It straggled for 2,000
miles along the coast and 400 miles up the Zambezi; it was
intersected by rivers flowing east from the high veldt; and its
seaports served regions of the interior which the partition of
Africa had made British. Yet Portugal too had gained much from
partition: though Portuguese authority had long been confined
to a string of dilapidated trading-posts along the coast and up the
Zambezi, it now had to be asserted over a vast and virtually
unexplored hinterland. Various makeshift arrangements, bearing
witness to Portugal's desperate attempts to provide instant
effective occupation, were brought together in 1907 to establish
a structure that remained unchanged in its essentials until 1929.
For administrative purposes, Mozambique consisted of four
blocks of territory. Two were directly subject to the state, while
two had been assigned to the Niassa and Mozambique Companies.
These enjoyed sovereign rights under charters due to expire in
1929
and 1941 respectively. The state territories (hereafter referred
to as 'the Colony') comprised five districts, each based on a
historic trading port. Each district had its own distinctive tax,
labour and land law, and operated its own customs
tariff.
In the
southern part of the Colony, military rule gave way, after 1907,
to civilian administration. In areas with a sizeable civiliyado
population, a local council was set up with limited autonomy.
501
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
PORTUGUESE AFRICA
*£&»..•
mmms
k
Land over 1000 metres
Southern border of former territory
of Niassa Company
122223 Territory of Mozambique Company
'SWAZI-
/ tAND j
390 km
200 miles
15 Mozambique, 1937
502
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008