“Não há cousa que mais danifique os homens que a ambição e soberba”: redes de poder e revoltas em Angola sob a administração ultramarina portuguesa pós Restauração (1640-1667)

Abstract

In the freshly restored Portugal of 1640, the brigantino monarch was engaged to validate his sovereign over the kingdom and his precious achievments overseas. To disattach from the castilian chains, however, was only one of the many barriers placed against the portuguese Crown. In angolan lands, the flemish invasors landed causing tumult in the hinterland, undoing and/or rearranging alliances, provoking uprisings between sobas and royal agentes and threatening the operation of the commercial system of the atlantic, taking away from the lusitanian control a factory responsible for a massive exportation of slave labor. In addition to the damage to the Royal Treasury, the spiritual scenary was shaken. Without the recognition of the Holy See to the new King, Angola saw its diocese lacking a bishop and the jesuits saw their religious influence in peril thanks to the arrival of the capuchins and carmelites missions. Angola was regained from the dutchmen and the portuguese administration that followed adopted an aggressive policy of internalization, promoting wars with the goal of capturing black captives destined for Brazil. This research examines the strategies employed in the legitimation of the portuguese sovereign in Angola between 1640 and 1667, in face of the many conflicts fomented by the several agents that compose the angolan territory, seeking to comprehend if and how the Crown managed to control the local uprisings, to submit the hinterland sobados and expand its military domain in the angolan interior in a context of political instability for the portugueses empire.