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The practice of miscegenation and cultural assimilation was surely the only means by which the Portuguese could respond to the pressure exerted by rival colonial powers, but, more than that, it ostensibly provided the only chance of survival for the small number of coloniser agents, overwhelmingly male, sent to make their way in such an adverse environment.5 Portuguese men absorbed African legacies through intermarriage, giving birth to a society in which mulattos enjoyed some kind of status.6 After all, Portugal had no other option but to reach working compromises with the Euro-African community: they had a better knowledge of the land’s physical and social geography, a better resistance to climatic conditions and, in addition to that, they were adapted to the local populations, with whom they used to trade.7
By the mid-eighteenth century, a significant proportion of sons of the country were already occupying positions within the middle cadres of administration and armed forces, operating as a buffer between emissaries of the metropolis and the native populations. These were divided into nine major ethnolinguistic Bantu groups: Kikongo (or Bakongo), Kimbundu, Lunda-Quioco (or Tchokwe), Umbundu (or Ovimbundu), Ganguela, Nhaneca-Humbe, Ambo, Herero, Xindonga, and, in addition to that, small Koisan groups occupied some areas in the South. All of these groups were more or less hostile to external penetration and periodically embroiled the Portuguese in insidious small-scale conflicts, preventing them from reaching an effective detribalisation of the hinterland and discouraging the creation of more-extended settlements or the implementation of fazendas. Until the end of the nineteenth century, the overwhelming majority of whites were confined in Luanda and in a handful of coastal settlements, such as Benguela and later Moçâmedes.
The Abolition Process
The progressive loss of the network of trading posts along the Asian shores, followed in 1821 by the more traumatic loss of Brazil, forced Portugal to make the most out of the remnants of its empire.8 However, it was by now plain that the traditional, purely mercantilist approach to the exploitation of the African territories was no longer an alternative to the model set up by rival colonial powers, nor did it have a chance to survive the advent and implementation of capitalism.