Mapa Cor-de-Rosa / Rose Map / The Pink Map - 1889-1893
In November 1889, the relations between England and Portugal became strained, in consequence of British occupation of certain territory in South-eastern Africa, claimed by Portugal for several centuries. England denied Portugal's claims because the territory had been simply claimed but never occupied, and the attempt of Major Serpa Pinto to drive the British from the disputed territory threatened to bring on trouble.
Great Britain saw that the moment was propitious for seizing the maritime ports beyond the seas which belong to Portugal, in Western and Eastern Africa, such as St. Vincent, Lorenzo Marquez, etc. There she had collected her available ships in more than sufficient number for a coup de main after the ultimatum of the nth of January 1890. However, Portugal did not cede to the threat of the squadrons of powerful England. Portugal ceded to the coalition of Europe for the partition of Africa.
The excitement in Portugal ran high, and mobs in Lisbon threatened the British Minister. Diplomatic relations were once more renewed; but this time under circumstances deplorable to Portugal to the last degree. The acquisitiveness of the English public loudly demanded from its Government the fulfilment of unbridled ambitions. The condition of the Lisbon Cabinet was desperate. On the one hand it saw the rising flood of the legitimate aspirations and of the indignation of the Portuguese people, wounded to its soul by the injustice and atrocious insult of Great Britain. On the other hand "the friendly nation" forgetting too easily the most rudimentary principles of international courtesy, not satisfied to profit by Portugal's slips, went straight to its aim without any feeling of consideration.
When the British South African Company of Mr. Cecil J. Rhodes was prepared to enter into active occupation of the territories which they were authorised to exploit, they had on the one hand the impis of Lobengula eager to wash their spears in white blood; on the south the Boers of the Transvaal, embittered at being prevented from trekking to the north of the Limpopo, and on the east and on the north east the Portuguese trying to raise a wall of claims and historical pretensions against the tide of English energy.
The treaty of 20 August 1890 appeared. The partial recognition of the rights of Portugal was acquired in it at the cost of most valuable concessions. England cut out for herself an African empire, and at the expense alike of Portugal's real empire and of Portugals's more or less theoretical sovereignty. The moment had come for Great Britain to recoup herself for what she had waived to Germany; she connected her dominions of the Lake region with Bechuanaland and the Cape, at the expense of the "hinterland" of Mozambique. By the treaty Portugal was deprived of a great part of Nyassaland, a vast region to the north of the Zambezi up to Barotze, Upper Machonie, Russire, and a part of the Save valley. Nevertheless this did not satisfy the moderate desires of some chauvinistic English, who wanted to reduce Mozambique to a strip along the sea.
The Portuguese had not in all these countries an effective dominion, but they had the whole stretch as a part of their historical domains, a certainly more valid claim than the more or less conjectural "spheres of influence," which were a sufficient excuse to other nations for making new conquests; but, so far as England and Portugal were concerned, the former had neither an historical right nor even a theoretical dominion in the territories taken from Portugal. European civilization demanded a much greater wealth in gold and men than Portugal can command, in order to render profitable the efforts of a ruling nation in such vast and distant regions as those of Portuguese Africa.
But this did not satisfy either Portugal or the Company, and the treaty was never ratified. A new agreement was signed on 11 June 1891, under which Portugal can hardly be said to have fared so well as she would have done under the one repudiated by the Cortes in the previous year. The bouudary between the British Company's territories was drawn farther east than in the previous treaty. The line starting from the Zambesi near Zumbo runs in a general south-east direction to a point where the Mazoe River is cut by the 33rd degree of east longitude. The boundary then runs in a generally south direction to the junction of the Lunde and the Sabi, where it strikes south-west to the north-east corner of the South African Republic, on the Limpopo. In tracing the frontier along the slope of the plateau, the Portuguese sphere was not allowed to come farther west than 32°30' E. of Greenwich, nor the British sphere east of 33d E. A slight deflection westwards was made so as to include Massi Kessi in the Portuguese sphere. According to the terms of the arrangement, the navigation of the Zambesi and the Shire was declared free to all nations.
By the spring of 1893 the British South Africa Company had fairly laid hands upon its great dominion of Zambesia. Matabele was swarming with searchers for gold; a railroad from the port of Beira, through Portuguese territory, was in progress; a town at Fort Salisbury was rising. Lobengula, the Matabele king, repented speedily of his treaty and repudiated the construction put on it by the English. Quarrels arose over the Mashonas, whom the Matabeles held in slavery and whom the new lords of the country protected. Both parties showed impatience for war, and it was not long in breaking out. The first shots were exchanged early in October; before the end of the year the British were complete; masters of the country, and Lobengula had fled from his lost kingdom, to die, it is said, during the flight. There were two pitched battles, in which the natives suffered terribly. They obtained revenge in one instance, only, by cutting off a party of thirty men, not one of whom survived.
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