[Sun] The Portuguese are in the interior of Africa
From their base on the island of São Tomé, the Portuguese set up a trading post in Guato, enjoying successful diplomacy and the pepper and slave trade with a small kingdom there called Benin. The Portuguese also brought missionaries to Guato, who baptized a small group of Beninese and taught some to read and write.
The Portuguese established a stronghold further south in San Salvador, the so-called Congo. Congolese Bakongo know how to process metals, including iron, but their economy mainly involves palm trees. They make bread from palm fruit and extract oil from the pulp to cook and eat.
They also make wine from palm trees and get fibers for mats, baskets, fishing nets, clothes, and house roofs.
Portuguese and Jesuit missionaries established friendly relations with the Bakongo people, especially their king. The kings of the Congolese and Bakongos between 1506 and 1540 were Mbemba-a-Nzinga, also known as Afonso I.
He received 10 years of clerical education in his youth and became a devout Christian. He developed an admiration for Christian values and European culture and, like European Christians, believed that slavery was a normal part of world affairs. Slave traders from São Tomé followed missionaries into the Congo to search for slaves on the Portuguese sugar plantations of São Tomé.
King Alfonso was involved in the slave trade for income, but he was angry at the greed of Portuguese slave owners and the profits they believed should have belonged to him.
Portuguese slave traders were cunning. They persuaded the community to rebel against Alfonso's rule, and then they went to war against them under the pretext of rebellion, which made the prisoners of war more slaves. By the 1520s, the slave trade had thrown Alfonso's kingdom into turmoil, weakening his authority and depopulating some areas.
In 1522, the Portuguese took over the administration of the Congo, while Alfonso remained nominally king. About 200 Portuguese live in San Salvador, the capital of Congo, and the number of Portuguese and Baconese mixed is also increasing, some of whom will hold government positions.
Alfonso sent a letter to the King of Portugal complaining about the immorality and plundering of Portuguese slave traders from São Tomé – the letters were confiscated in São Tomé. Alfonso pleaded with more teachers, doctors and priests. He was an ardent Catholic who destroyed paganism as much as he could.
He provided his subjects with images of saints and crosses and built churches. His son became a bishop and was sneered at by Portuguese missionaries. Alfonso's request to reach Portugal was ignored. The Portuguese king was more interested in developing his colonies in Brazil.
Sin and Bakongo
Some Portuguese do not like the polygamy of the Bakongo people, they consider the Bakongo people shameless when it comes to sensual sin. They believe that Bakongo is unruly and, and some of them believe that this is the result of Bakongo eating too spicy food. Those who disapproved of the Bakongo extended their disapproval to the Portuguese clergy marrying black mistresses.
Bakongo separates boys and girls after infancy, and children are taught to exercise self-control, but those who reach late adolescence are allowed to dance, and their dance symbolizes fertility. Such a movement shocked the missionaries, one of whom wrote that they did not "describe such a thing on paper."
In addition to what the Portuguese missionaries saw, Bakongo's laws on sexual misconduct were very strict. Adultery is considered a violation of taboos and a tear in the fabric of society. Those convicted of sexual promiscuity could be sold into slavery or wrapped in dried palm leaves and burned alive.
There have been incidents of adolescent boys and girls hiding together for experiments, but picking the girl's flowers is considered to be an injury to the girl's family, who can receive compensation or some form of revenge. In addition, Bakongo considers homosexuality an offence and punishes it.
Nevertheless, the Portuguese attitude towards Bakongo's morality justified the widespread enslavement of blacks. They believed that blacks were better off as slaves under the control of morally virtuous Europeans than running free—similar to Aristotle's claim about the Greeks and their slaves.
