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Black Republic of Letters

Note - Alexandre de Serpa Pinto

Alexandre de Serpa Pinto (1846-1900) was a Portuguese explorer and colonial administrator. He led the Portuguese push into the Shiré River valley in the interior of southern Africa, which provoked the British Ultimatum of 1890. Learn more about Alexandre de Serpa Pinto.

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"In Africa" Translation:(Excerpt from Le Soleil of 30 August)

The attention of all of the peoples and of all of the governments of Europe are turning more and more toward Africa. In spite of so many hardy explorers, enterprises and discoveries, the Black continent has not yet revealed all of its secrets; but the greedy nations are not waiting for it to be fully known before they start arguing over its possession.

In Africa, conflicts can erupt that shake up Europe: Egypt, Tripolitania, Tunisia, Morocco, have been or will soon be apples of discord between powers; the Senussian sect will someday enflame Muslim fanaticism against the Christian conquerors. Africa is the object of all of the important diplomatic incidents, and of a series of treated that have succeeded one another at short intervals in recent months; the Anglo-German treaty of 1890, the Anglo-French treaty of 5 August, the Anglo-Portuguese treaty of 20 August. Finally, all commercial and adventurous ambitious that were once directed at America are now focused on Africa.

America, first monopolized almost entirely by the Spanish, was, during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth century, the goal of fruitful schemes, of audacious dreams, of violent appetites.

Today, America is closed to chivalrous expeditions; it will also soon be closed to European commercial operations. But Africa is opening before them; they're jumping at it at every opportunity. As is always the case in contests of greed, England is coming out on top; its Companies, formed with enormous capital, based on the model of the old East India Company, have shared between themselves, on their own authority, the most vast and the richest regions of the African continent. When they have come up against rivals, the metropole has supported them. They dealt with the Germans by giving them real compensations; they defied the French by giving them illusory compensations; the brutally silenced the Portuguese by the ultimatum of last January.

But it is not a perfect success; the disadvantages of too vast and too absorbing a domination are everywhere the same. In America, the Spanish empire saw no end of rebellions, of incursions of English and French corsairs, and of the brigandage of filibusters. In Africa, the English empire will not be able to avoid similar vicissitudes. the hatred that it has provoked in its foundation will not allow it to develop and consolidate in peace.

Already, in their fight against the Boers of Transvaal, a few years ago, the English have encountered the effect of free men exacerbated by injustice. It was a descendant of French emigrants, General Joubert, who is in Paris these day, who inflected their bloody failure in Majuba.

Now it is the Portuguese who have been pushed to the brink by the appetites of British egoism. The Portuguese have seen themselves for centuries as All Powerful in Africa; they have created immense establishments there; they have renewed in our day ancient rights by acts. Violently dispossessed of what they considered their patrimony, they must have felt a just resentment against this offence One singular fact reveals it: a lieutenant of the Portuguese navy, the former governor of Shiré, submitted his resignation and became a pirate. Against English domination, he will renew the exploits of the Filibusters against Spanish domination; to start, he and his crew captured a steamboat of the British Lakes Company.

The heroic times will return, and the descendants of are worthy to resuscitate it; the descendants of Albuquerque are worthy to resuscitate it; while at one end of Africa, Lieutenant Azvedo Coutinho was distinguishing himself as the champion of Portuguese honour, at the other, his comrade Lieutenant Santos risked his life to protect the persons and the goods of the French who had fallen to the power of the King of Dahomey. These are brave men, and the small nation that produced them must be respected as one of the greatest.

Urbain Gohier

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