The Pink Map (Portuguese: Mapa cor-de-rosa), also known as the Rose-Coloured Map, was a map prepared in 1885 to represent the Kingdom of Portugal's claim of sovereignty over a land corridor connecting the Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique during the Scramble for Africa. The area claimed included most of modern-day Zimbabwe and large parts of modern-day Zambia and Malawi.

In the first half of the 19th century, Portugal held total control over only a small number of coastal settlements in Angola and Mozambique. The Portuguese also claimed suzerainty over other de facto independent towns and nominal Portuguese subjects in the Zambezi valley, but could rarely enforce its claims; most of the territory now within Angola and Mozambique was entirely independent of Portugal's control. Between 1840 and 1869, Portugal expanded the area it controlled but felt threatened by the activities of other European colonial powers in the region.

The United Kingdom refused to acknowledge Portugal's claims in Africa which were not based on effective occupation, including a Portuguese offer in 1889 to abandon their claim to a transcontinental link in exchange for British recognition of other claims. The 1890 British Ultimatum ended Portuguese claims based on the discovery doctrine and recent exploration. The dispute seriously damaged the prestige of Portugal's monarchy among the Portuguese public, which rapidly turned to republicanism.

At the start of the 19th century, effective Portuguese governance in Africa south of the equator was limited. Portuguese Angola consisted of areas around Luanda and Benguela, and a few almost independent towns over which Portugal claimed suzerainty, the most northerly being Ambriz. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Angola's main function within the Portuguese Empire was supplying Brazil with slaves. This was facilitated first by the development of coffee plantations in southern Brazil from the 1790s onward, and second by the 1815 and 1817 agreements between the United Kingdom and Portugal limiting—at least on paper—Portuguese slave trading to areas south of the equator. This trade diminished after Brazilian independence in 1822 and more sharply following an 1830 agreement between Britain and Brazil by which the Brazilian government prohibited further imports of slaves. To find people for export as slaves from Angolan towns, Afro-Portuguese traders penetrated as far inland as Katanga and Kazembe, but otherwise few Portuguese moved inland and they did not attempt to establish control there. When the Brazilian slave trade declined, the Portuguese began using slaves for agricultural work on plantations stretching inland from Luanda along the Cuanza River, and to a lesser extent around Benguela. After the Portuguese founded Moçâmedes, south of Benguela, in 1840 and occupied Ambriz in 1855, Portugal controlled a continuous coastal strip from Ambriz to Moçâmedes, but little inland territory. Although Portugal claimed the Congo River estuary, Britain at best accepted limited Portuguese trading rights in the Cabinda enclave north of the river, although these rights did not make Cabinda Portuguese territory.

Portugal had occupied parts of the Mozambique coast since the 16th century, but at the start of the 19th century Portuguese presence was limited to Mozambique Island, Ibo and Quelimane in northern Mozambique, outposts at Sena and Tete in the Zambezi valley, Sofala to the south of the Zambezi, and the port town Inhambane further south. Although Delagoa Bay was regarded as Portuguese territory, Lourenço Marques was not settled until 1781, and was temporarily abandoned after a 1796 French raid. In the late 18th century most of the people exported as slaves through Portuguese settlements in Mozambique were sent to Mauritius and Réunion, at that time both French colonies, but the Napoleonic Wars disrupted this trade, and by the early 19th century the Portuguese sent Mozambican slaves to Brazil. As was the case with Angola, slave exports declined after 1830 and were partly replaced by exports of ivory through Lourenço Marques from the 1840s onward.

The nadir of Portuguese fortunes in Mozambique came in the 1830s and 1840s when Lourenço Marques was sacked in 1833 and Sofala in 1835. Zumbo was abandoned in 1836 and the Gaza Empire forced Afro-Portuguese settlers near Vila de Sena to pay tribute. Although Portugal claimed sovereignty over Angoche and a number of smaller Muslim coastal towns, these were virtually independent at the start of the 19th century. However, after Portugal renounced the slave trade, these towns continued the practice. Fearing British or French anti-slavery interventions, Portugal began bringing these towns under stricter control. Angoche resisted and fought off a Portuguese warship attempting to prevent slave trading in 1847. It took another military expedition and occupation in 1860–1 to end Angoche's slave trade.

Portugal also initiated the Prazo system of large leased estates under nominal Portuguese rule in the Zambezi valley. By the end of the 18th century, the valleys of the Zambezi and lower Shire River were controlled by a few families who claimed to be Portuguese subjects but who were virtually independent. However, starting in 1840 the Portuguese government embarked on a series of military campaigns in an attempt to bring the prazos under its control. Portuguese troops suffered several major setbacks before forcing the last prazo to submit in 1869.

In other inland areas, there was not even the pretence of Portuguese control. In the interior of what is today southern and central Mozambique, Nguni people who had entered the area from South Africa under their leader Soshangane created the Gaza Empire in the 1830s and, up to Soshangane's death in 1856, dominated southern Mozambique outside the two towns of Inhambane and Lourenço Marques. Lourenço Marques only remained in Portuguese hands in the 1840s and early 1850s because the Swazi people vied with Gaza for its control. After Soshangane's death two of his sons struggled for succession, with the eventual winner Mzila coming to power with Portuguese help in 1861. Under Mzila the centre of Gaza power moved north to central Mozambique and came into conflict with the prazo owners who were expanding south from the Zambezi valley.