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In addition to that, the slave extraction and export that subsequently developed eventually soared to sixty thousand in the first two decades, and then to three hundred and forty-five thousand from 1506 to 1575: Portuguese intentions to maintain good relations with the Congo people were rapidly sacrificed to profit.2
In 1575, carrying credentials from King Sebastião I, Paulo Dias de Novais landed on the Island of Luanda in command of a fleet of seven ships carrying about 350 soldiers and 350 sailors, cobblers, tailors, and petty traders. The following year, Dias de Novais moved to the mainland opposite the island and established the settlement that was to become São Paulo de Assunção de Luanda. What attracted Dias de Novais to the area was the prospect of controlling the legendary silver mines of Cambambe, a utopia that had fuelled Portuguese dreams and wishes for a long time. Luanda and the São Paulo settlement offered a sheltered port in an excellent spot very close to the river Kwanza, the supposed route to the mines.3
Over time, this area became the departure point of the Kwata-Kwata wars and the assembly and loading point for slave ships bound for Brazil.4 Basically, the development of Brazilian sugar plantations and the exploitation of Brazilian mines towards the end of the seventeenth century utterly depended on slave labour provided by Angola; the brisk trade in slaves brought more colonists and the settlement grew. There followed a long period in which Brazil and Angola were intimately connected under the aegis of the Portuguese Crown, whose African policies were dictated by the economic interests of its South American dominion. Besides, Portuguese colonial policies had to take into account the fact that the administration of such a vast portion of land with so little available Portuguese manpower could not do without the use of local collaborators.
Angola understandably attracted few permanent settlers: those territories were portrayed as savage and forbidding, and Europeans generally regarded the climatic and sanitary conditions as prohibitive. Malaria was rampant throughout the land, and the colony well deserved its reputation as a “white man’s grave”.