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‘Legitimate Commerce’ and Peanut Production in Portuguese Guinea, 1840s–1880s*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Joye L. Bowman
Joye L. Bowman
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
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This article examines the transition from the slave trade to ‘legitimate commerce’ in Portuguese Guinea between 1840 and 1880. Peanuts became the principal export crop. They were cultivated on plantation-like establishments called feitorias located primarily along the banks of the Rio Grande and on Bolama Island. From the 1840s through the 1870s, Luso-African, other Euro-African and European traders built these feitorias. These traders depended upon both slave and contract labour to cultivate their export crop.

Although Portugal claimed Portuguese Guinea, French trading houses dominated ‘legitimate commerce’ in this West African enclave. The demand for increased peanut production came from the burgeoning French oil mills rather than from Portuguese industries. French merchants supplied the ships needed to transport the crop as well as many of the imported goods sold locally. By the 1870s the Portuguese realized they needed to break this French monopoly. By that time Europe was suffering from an economic recession, peanut prices were falling and cheaper oilseeds from India and America were entering the market. Portugal's attempts to establish commercial dominance met with little success.

The economic crisis of the 1870s not only created difficulties for feitoria owners and their workers, but also for Fulbe groups in the process of expansion. These Fulbe wanted to establish political control in order to reap the economic benefits the peanut trade offered — especially access to firearms and in turn, slaves. As peanut production fell from 1879 onward, Fulbe groups began fighting amongst themselves for control of shrinking resources. By 1887, the feitoria system and this phase of peanut production had ended. The Portuguese, like the Fulbe, had to look for new ways to survive economically.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , March 1987 , pp. 87 - 106
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

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66 Portugal and France both claimed to be neutral about local politics, but they actively supported groups against their enemies in return for favours. See AHU, Guiné, pasta 410, Francisço Teixeira da Silva, Governor, no 178 to Ministro e Secretário d'Estado dos Negócios da Marinha e Ultramar, 13 July 1887.Google Scholar

67 ‘Relatório de 1882’, 446; AHU, Guiné, pasta 387, Palácio do Governo to Ministro e Secretirio d'Estado dos Negócios da Marinha e Ultramar, 29 November 1883; BOGP, no. 32, 124; and AHU, Guiné, pasta 410, Governo da Provincia em Bolama to Ministro e Secretário d'Estado dos Negócios da Marinha e Ultramar, 13 July 1887.Google Scholar

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70 BOGP (1889), no. 24, 94; BOGP (1889), no. 32, 124.Google Scholar

71 This island port never really recovered from the economic problems the Portuguese faced in Guinea. The Portuguese believed, however, that this area somehow would recover miraculously from the 1870s and 1880s depression. Thus, Bolama remained the administrative capital for Portuguese Guinea until 1942, even though the island lost its economic importance with the destruction of the feitoria system and most economic activities shifted to Bissau. A Teixiera da Mota, Guiné Portuguesa, 2 vols. (Lisbon, 1954), 11, 77.Google Scholar

72 Instituto de Investigação Cientifica (Bissau), Documentos Diversos de 1888: Administrador de Concelho de Bolola to Secretário Geral do Governo, 14 January 1888.Google Scholar