Portuguese Guinea

Portuguese Guinea (Portuguese: Guiné Portuguesa), called the Overseas Province of Guinea from 1951 until 1972 and then State of Guinea from 1972 until 1974, was a Portuguese overseas province in West Africa from 1588 until 10 September 1974, when it gained independence as Guinea-Bissau.

The Portuguese Crown commissioned its navigators to explore the Atlantic coast of West Africa in the 1430s, to find sources of gold. At that time the gold trade was controlled by Morocco. Muslim caravans across the Sahara also carried salt, kola, textiles, fish, grain, and slaves. The navigators first passed the obstruction of Cape Bojador in 1437 and were able to explore the West African coast as far as Sierra Leone by 1460 and colonize the Cape Verde islands beginning in 1456.

The gold ultimately came from the upper reaches of the Niger and Volta Rivers and the Portuguese crown wanted to divert the gold trade to the coast. To control the gold trade, the Portuguese king ordered a castle built, called São Jorge da Mina (now Elmina Castle), on the Portuguese Gold Coast in 1482 along with other trading posts. The Portuguese government founded the Company of Guinea to trade and set the prices of goods, including gold and ivory, Melegueta pepper and slaves. The Atlantic slave trade transported an estimated eleven million people from Africa between 1440 and 1870, including two million from Senegambia and Upper Guinea.

This area was the source of an estimated 150,000 African slaves transported by the Portuguese before 1500, mainly from Upper Guinea. Some were used to grow cotton and indigo in the previously uninhabited Cape Verde islands. Portuguese traders and exiled criminals penetrated the rivers and creeks of Upper Guinea, forming a mulatto population speaking a Portuguese-based Creole language as a lingua franca. However, after 1500 most Portuguese interest, both for gold and slaves, centered further south in the Gold Coast.

At the beginning of the 17th century, the Portuguese exported slaves from Upper Guinea from Santiago in Cape Verde, and those from the Gulf of Guinea from São Tomé Island. In the 1630s and 1640s, the Dutch drove the Portuguese from most of the Gold Coast. The Portuguese did retain a foothold at São João de Ajuda in Benin, now called Ouidah, since before the 1750s they preferred to acquire slaves from the Gulf of Guinea rather than Upper Guinea. In the 17th century, the French established bases at Saint-Louis, Senegal, the English at Kunta Kinteh Island on the Gambia River and Dutch at Gorée.

The very weak Portuguese position in Upper Guinea was strengthened by the first Marquess of Pombal who promoted the supply of slaves from this area to the provinces of Grão-Pará and Maranhão in northern Brazil. Between 1757 and 1777, over 25,000 slaves were transported from the “Rivers of Guinea”, which approximated Portuguese Guinea and parts of Senegal, even though this area had been largely neglected by the Portuguese for the previous 200 years. Bissau, founded in 1765, became the centre of Portuguese control.

British interest in the area led to a brief attempt in the 1790s to establish a base on the island of Bolama, which showed no evidence of continuous Portuguese presence. The British settlers pulled back in 1793 and the Portuguese officially occupied the island in 1837. Even after the Portuguese claim in 1837, Afro-Portuguese lived and worked there alongside Afro-British from Sierra Leone, since Britain did not relinquish its claim to Bolama until 1870.

The abolition of the slave trade by Britain in 1807 gave the slave traders of Guinea a virtual monopoly over the West Africa slave trade with Brazil. Although the Brazilian and Portuguese governments agreed in the 1830s to stop this traffic, it probably continued at 18th-century levels until after 1850, when the British pressured Brazil to enforce its existing ban on the import of slaves. The last significant consignment of West African slaves reached Brazil in 1852.