Mapping the Malagueta Coast: a History of the Lower Guinea Coast, 1460–1510 through Portuguese Maps and Accounts

I

The Malagueta Coast can serve as a classic example of a region which was integrated into the world economy as a result of world demand for its resources—spices and labor in the fifteenth/sixteenth centuries, and again in the nineteenth century palm oil, cocos fiber, and labor—and has sunk into oblivion once the demand ceased. It is similar with Liberia's rubber and iron ore industry of the twentieth century. I had wanted to write this paper, which reconstructs the discovery and commercial exploitation of the coast through a systematic analysis of published maps and reports, ever since I walked and paddled along this coast in 1968. Furthermore I intend to review the discovery of the coast in the perspective of overall Portuguese policy and politics (interior and foreign). Last, but not least, this is to help students of Liberian and West African history with a review of the early sources—among which maps are by far the most abundant.

The Portuguese legacy to Africa is enshrined in coastal toponymy until today. Avelino Teixeira da Mota in his "Topónimos de origem portuguesa" focused on Portuguese names still surviving in the nineteenth century, but I will focus here on contemporary fifteenth- and sixteenth-century nomenclature and what it might reveal about the African discoveries. The Portuguese initially were attracted by gold at the Rio d'Ouro (later Spanish Sahara), then slaves, and eventually malagueta—a substitute for Indian pepper—commodities known on the Lisbon market and which served to name the coasts: malagueta, marfim, ouro, esclavos. Diogo Gomes was the first to actually see Malagueta on the Gambia in 1445, but the malagueta coast was not discovered until after Henry's the Navigator's death in 1460.

Some of the early names were attributed to physical features such as Cabo das Palmas, Cabo Monserrado, Cabo do Monte, or Rio Junco; others relate to the day of their discovery, e.g. Sam Paulo, Santa Maria, S. Clemente, Santa Apollonia, San Tomé. Others again indicating human and commercial activities have disappeared. But many names have survived, such as Sierra Leone, Lagos, Cameroons, and Gabon, and were even resuscitated (e.g, Zaire), while others have vanished. But those latter are preserved in maps or reports, and point to European-African interactions and exchanges which would otherwise remain obscure.

Here I will give first an overview of the phases of this coast's contacts with Portugal, followed by an assessment of the maps and interpretation of the clues they provide. Not always does today's toponomy correspond to early Portuguese toponymy—e.g., the Saint Paul river is not the same as the "rio Sam Paulo" of the maps, and only very few points have remained fixed over time, e.g., Cape Palmas, Cape Mount, and Cape Montserrado.

II

Traditional history has painted a picture of prince Henry as entrepreneur, but he was perhaps more the co-ordinator/organizer who found financiers, merchants, navigators, and cartographers for discovery and colonization. Henry's project changed direction several times: what started as an attempt to encircle and conquer Morocco, continued with the discovery of the Atlantic islands and their colonization for commercial purposes (sugar and meat) and ended as trading venture in exotic products and black slave labor for the plantations. The kings, his brothers Duarte, Pedro, and João II, and Afonso V his nephew, left him much freedom, busy as they were with foreign affairs (Morocco and Spanish-Flemish allies), but still saw exploration as a royal project and part of their foreign reconquista policy. But as court and country increasingly benefited from the discovery of Madeira, the Canaries, and the Azores—bringing revenues from land grants and from sugar and wheat, which formerly had to be imported from Chios and Morocco and now were produced within the country—they encouraged it. After the establishment of fort Arguim, Henry's court officials and the colonists bore an ever growing share of the exploitation of the African coast and founded the Lagos company to develop the slave trade.

Henry...