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During the 1870s, an advisory commission to Portugal’s Ministry of the Navy and Overseas Affairs conceived the project to link Angola on the Atlantic coast with Mozambique on the Indian Ocean coast, counting on the support provided by the Portuguese government, which aspired to control a solid strip of territory across the central part of the continent.20 Nonetheless, Portugal was unable to gain effective control of the hinterland.
Aware of French and Belgian activities on the lower Congo River, in 1883 the Portuguese occupied Cabinda and Massabi, north of the Congo River, towns that Portugal had long claimed. In the same year, Portugal annexed the region of the old kingdom of Congo. Seeking to uphold these claims against French and Belgian advances in the Congo River Basin, Portugal negotiated a treaty with Britain in 1884; the other European powers, however, rejected it.
At the Berlin Conference of 1884, the participants established in principle the limits of Portugal’s claims to Angola, and in later years a series of treaties with the colonial powers in control of the neighbouring territories delineated Angola’s boundaries. The west-coast territory acquired by Portugal included the left bank of the Congo River and the Cabinda enclave. In 1890, however, Britain delivered an ultimatum to force Portugal’s withdrawal from Nyasaland (present-day Malawi) and Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe and Zambia).
The nominal occupation of large areas of the ocean coast by the Portuguese was a clear obstacle to the claims of rival colonial powers, while the inner parts of the continent remained unseen and still uncharted. The political and financial problems affecting the Portuguese Crown made easier a shift in the balance of power in Africa. In addition to that, the Berlin Conference internationally established a variation of the overpowering policy from the traditional right conferred by original discovery to the right granted by effective occupation.
The Berlin Conference—whose four main issues were the commercial opening of the Congo region, the suppression of slavery in that area, the freedom of navigation on every African river, and the procedures to follow for the future occupations on the continent—imposed the right of effective occupation.