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Dakar was a city well-accustomed to the spotlight. Though Benin City lay outside of its orbit, and indeed had an orbit of its own— Bangui, the lynchpin of French control in Central Africa, was supplied from Benin City and had a community of Beninese traders— and other ports like Libreville [1] prospered in their own quiet way, Dakar was king in the lands once known as the Guinea Coast. The city contained contingents from all the surrounding regions: Cote-de-Poivre, the Mande lands of the south, the western Toucouleur. Mosques and cathedrals sprouted from the fertile soil of newly-built neighborhoods. Railroads snaked around the land, while coaling stations and port facilities abutted the sea. Construction materials for roads and rails came in, which enabled more cash-crops like peanuts to be transported to the ports, which gave the French authorities purchasing power to improve the port facilities and bring in more cotton clothes, alcohol, machinery, and weapons. All this commerce was, of course, taxed by the increasingly wealthy administration.


Dakar was a prosperous city, even if more of that wealth was spent on building new playgrounds for the French community instead of improving the welfare of the city as a whole— but this injustice became an impetus for the development of politics. The French government, in a spirit of democratic magnanimity, had allowed the formation of African organizations even before the Great European War. At the war’s end, the signing of the Charter of Dakar in 1921, which allowed the limited election of African deputies who served in an advisory role to the Estates-General and helped the sub-committees on colonial rule to create political and economic policy, led to a veritable explosion of politics. Reformist Muslim imams, Christian preachers, secular activists for autonomy, and more all vied for the minds of the limited electorate and, anticipating a future expansion of the electorate, the hearts of the population at large. The Unitarians, separatists, and other parties viewed apprehensively by the French campaigned more quietly, in esoteric meetings at cafes and underground rallies. And so it came to be that, even as walls, ditches, and forts sprang up around Bangui in expectation of a Unitarian incursion from the east, the attention of the French and later the world would land squarely on Dakar.


The December Riots began with a “demonstration of solidarity” with the peoples of East Africa. The local Unitarian parties led a march through the poorer neighborhoods of the city, the ones that never recovered from the French Flu and associated disasters. This was, naturally, an incredibly provocative move— almost designed to engender violence— and the French police was on high alert. Before they could do anything, though, another party had already entered the fray. Republican counter-protesters met the Unitarians, shouting anti-authoritarian slogans and holding signs with photographs from the East African front with depictions of Ethiopian and Turkish crimes against the Somalis. The Republicans drew from poor neighborhoods as well, but on average tended to have higher hopes for the future and greater contact with the cosmopolitan middle class. The rank-and-file Republicans tended to be Wolof natives of the land and lived closer to the coast, while the Unitarians were immigrants from other areas who lived on the periphery of the city. In other words, the antagonism between the two groups transcended politics. A thrown stone or fist kicked off a day of pugilism in the streets of Dakar. In the confusion, young boys settled scores with their bullies and the “fraternités du travail”— once a kind of proto-labor union, these organizations were quickly evolving into their modern-day roles as cartels and gangs— balanced their accounts. The French police were at a loss. Though they could not condone the Unitarians, they could not support the Republicans— who were, if not separatist, at least desired autonomy— and separating the criminal element from either would be a task indeed. After two days, the police finally intervened, with explicit orders from the higher-ups to leave the Republicans alone and on crushing the Unitarians. Two days and several charred houses later, the riots were over. Unitarian leaders were charged with political crimes and sentenced accordingly. Republican leaders were publicly censured and fined, and privately told to stop turning their parties into private militias or face stricter punishment. The events of the month proved that Republicanism was the more effective vehicle for change even from a purely pragmatic point of view. As Somali refugees filtered in by sea and land and the extent of the world’s knowledge of Unitarian crimes in East Africa grew, Republican organizations would even extend their reach into formerly Unitarian neighborhoods on the periphery of the city. But the Unitarians were not gone. Embittered by their losses in the riots and the uneven hand of French “legal justice”, they retreated and, in the decades to come, prepared to be a very sharp thorn in the Republicans’ side.

[1] OTL: Monrovia.


The outlawing of slavery across the Portuguese Empire in the 1840s was of earthshaking importance for the dominions of Southern Africa. Without slavery, neither Portuguese Angola, the Cape Colony, nor any of the lands in between would have developed as they did.

The Portuguese arrived in the lands of the Kongo Kingdom in the 1400s, while on their way to India. Though relations were initially quite cordial, the growth of Manuela changed things. The great colony in the New World had an insatiable appetite for slaves, and the people of Portugal generally preferred emigration to Manuela over Africa. After the missionaries successfully completed their goal of converting the Manikongo, the ruler of the kingdom, to Catholicism, newer Portuguese immigrants to Africa in the 1500s and 1600s were disproportionately poor peasants or exiled convicts called degredados. Once they landed in the environs of Kongo, they took up the ignoble calling of the slave trade. Kongolese attempts to stop the slave trade by expelling the Portuguese were initially successful, but an expeditionary force from Manuela broke the Kongolese army’s back. Kongo survived into the 1700s, but royal authority ranged from shaky to nonexistent and Portuguese influence seemed unstoppable. The kingdom of Ndongo to Kongo’s south, however, was even less lucky. The Portuguese colony of Angola, headquartered at the fortified port of Luanda, steadily encroached on Ndongo territory until even titular independence was lost, though a collection of Ndongo nobles escaped eastward and took over the inland kingdom of Matamba. By 1700, the Angola Colony stretched far to the south, with secondary centers at Benguela and Baleias [1] that grew into slave ports rivaling the older settlement of Luanda. Changes in the 1800s, including Manuelan independence (and, well, Manuelization [2]), the abolition of the slave trade, and inland migrations, forced Angola to restructure. Ivory, wax, copal, and oil were gathered inland and fetched a profit on the coast. Enterprising Portuguese settlers built coffee plantations, capitalizing on growing European appetites for the drink. Africans played a part in this restructuring as well— the Ovimbundu peoples, who migrated to the hinterlands of Benguela between the 1500s and 1700s, had strong contacts with the inland Lunda and Chokwe. They were the middlemen in the transport of ivory, wax, and other products of the inland gathering economy. In return, the Ovimbundu kept Portuguese gun manufacturers in business by buying weapons and selling them at a markup to the Chokwe, who used them to subjugate the Lunda in the late 1800s. Southeast of the Ovimbundu lands, the Ovambo set up the kingdom of Kwanyama in areas outside the direct control of the Portuguese. Ovimbundu arrived in the new state as immigrants and captives, helping the Kwanyama state improve its agricultural capabilities on the edge of the Namib Desert. Baleias was perhaps the best example of the prospects Africans had under an administration that, while still hostile to them, no longer sought to enslave them and ship them to another continent. In Baleias, Portuguese control existed alongside Ovimbundu traders with contacts in the north, Ovambo farmers, and Herero pastoralists that sold their cattle in the markets. The creole of Baleias, an odd mix of Standard Portuguese, Ovimbundu, and Herero, became a prestige dialect of sorts, steadily pushing aside the competing creoles of Benguela and Cabo do Destino [3].

Further to the south, the Portuguese Cape Colony developed along a parallel but unmistakably different track. The beginnings of permanent Portuguese settlement in the areas and contact with the local Khoikhoi peoples dated to the 1500s. Relations were initially quite good, with the Khoikhoi proving amenable to trade. The chief of some larger Khoikhoi clans permitted the establishment of trade fairs in their territories. These fairs were initially seasonal settlements, but developed into permanent establishments of mixed populations. Each trade fair was ruled by a captain, who was elected by the Portuguese population and whose appointment was confirmed by the Khoikhoi chief who permitted the fair’s continued existence. The captains were expected to preside over the fairs’ proceedings, ensure justice for Portuguese and Africans, and deliver tribute and gifts to the Khoikhoi chiefs. As time passed and the captains grew confident in their power, they did none of the above. Instead, they started to intervene in the 1600s’ and 1700s’ internecine struggles of the Khoikhoi clans. A captain might offer to call the population under his charge to fight on behalf of one clan in exchange for a land grant, and then offer to switch sides in exchange for slaves. In this way, the lands beyond Cabo de Destino came to be dominated by massive landholdings called prazos, ruled by large clans of Portuguese conquistadores. The owners of the prazos ruled as the successors of the Khoikhoi chiefs. They exacted tribute from the minor clans under their rule, and decided which pastoralists would graze on which pastures. All this depended on the judicious use of force, which the prazo owners could bring to bear using retinues of slaves. Many of the conquistadorespurchased slaves from Angola, and trained them into soldiers of private armies. These armies grew during the Khoikhoi clan wars, where the losing clan might find some or all of its members added to the retinues of the conquistadores who aided the winning clan. While most of the Bantu slaves of Angola were used to begin placing the land under cultivation, and the free Khoikhoi were allowed to continue their pastoral lifestyle as long as they gave up part of their herds and gathered gold as tribute, most Khoikhoi and some Bantu slaves saw service as soldiers or were taught new trades as household workers, boatmen, carpenters, and metalsmiths.

The Portuguese government disapproved of the prazo owners’ near-feudal control of the African population and the unforgivably high autonomy that these dynasts, encamped in their kraals and guarded by their slave retinues, enjoyed from the official administration in Cabo de Destino. But there wasn’t much that they could do. The prazo owners were very effective at defending and expanding the zone of Portuguese control in the Cape, and their forces could be called upon to defend the Cape from other Europeans or Africans. The prazo owners’ response to the migrations of the Nguni people from the 1700s to the 1800s proved this point. The southward movement of the Nguni, a collection of Bantu agricultural tribes from Zambezia, disrupted the Khoikhoi society of the Eastern Cape. Aspiring conquistadores rushed in, and new prazos sprung up in the hinterland of Porto de Natal [4]. The Nguni migration and the subsequent splitting of the Nguni into the Xhosa, Zulu, and other groups had not been stopped entirely, but the new arrivals had learned from experience that the Portuguese ruled the land. The smaller prazos, unable to defend against the migrating Nguni or the slave armies of the larger prazos, were quickly gobbled up, and the society of the Eastern Cape grew to resemble a less pastoral, more agricultural version of the West.

The abolition of slavery came alongside the reorganization of the Cape settlements into municipalities with town councils. Though the prazo owners would have to give up the practice of slavery, they managed to get away with keeping their farm workers by paying them in small amounts of Cape currency (Portugal had no minimum wage). The slave-soldiers were retained as hired guards for the farms and pastures that had become vital to the Cape’s economy. Society grew more open in some ways— even if most former slaves chose to stay where they were, some of them saved up their Cape currency and took it to new towns and older cities like Cabo de Destino and Porto de Natal. Monetization of the economy proved to be a great boon. But the prazo owners still retained a kind of feudal control over the inland areas’ economy, society, and politics. An employer might not be your master, but he is still your boss.


Republicanism came to the attention of Portuguese South Africa [5] in the late 1800s, with the successful example of the Sao Martinho Democracy. This Afro-Manuelan democracy, established in the 1820s after the dissolution of Sequeira’s Manuelan state, initially had an uncertain future. Though this neighbor to the south, the liberal republic of Manuela-Pernambuco, shared an ideological affinity with Sao Martinho, there was much justified fear that Pernambuco might, after failing to conquer the Empire of Manuela-Rio Grande, re-establish white supremacy in the north instead. This failed to happen because Pernambuco, sensing its isolation in a continent filled with monarchies like the Inca and Rio Grande, decided to establish diplomatic relations with Sao Martinho, which would have proved very difficult to conquer in any case. In return, Sao Martinho gave up its claims on inland Manuelan territory to Pernambuco. Sao Martinho also strengthened links with the Dominion of New France, and kept itself economically afloat with the sale of timber, livestock, and coffee to the French. Sugar would have required the reintroduction of slavery, and was allowed to fall by the wayside as logging and herding, seen as the vocations of free men, came to dominate the rural economy. In the urban centers of Belem and Sao Luis and the capital of Fortaleza, literacy spread beyond the mestiço population as Catholic schools (which the initial slave rebels had been lukewarm towards) spread and created a new electorate that could at least conceptualize the republic form of government and their role in it. The nation was poor and its government was weak outside the cities, but it was functional and, with the immigration of skilled Africans from other New World states like the VFS, steadily growing. However, Sao Martinho did not forget its roots. Most of the ancestral population of Sao Martinho was composed of Angolan slaves, and despite Portuguese controls on immigration and emigration it was not uncommon for Martinians to visit Angola and vice versa. It was not long until Republican books, printed in the Portuguese of Fortaleza or translated from the Dutch of New Amsterdam, were spotted by the Portuguese authorities in soon-to-be-alarming numbers.


The Congress of Portuguese Africans, organized in 1933 by a wealthy mestiço named Lourenco Marques, was jokingly said to have doubled the population of Baleias. However, it certainly did bring it a massive number of teachers, civil servants, priests, farmers, and more from across South Africa. Though Marques got the permit for the meeting from Portuguese authorities by arguing that the Congress was a meeting of quiet reformers, who would draw up a list of gentle recommendations that the Portuguese governors in Luanda and Cabo could accept or refuse, the Congress quickly developed on a more interesting path. Republicanism was, far and away, the most organized of the modern ideologies in South Africa— a reflection of Sao Martinho’s influence. However, no one could quite agree on how to implement it.

Lourenco Marques seems to have envisioned a Republican federation of all South Africa, with its capital at Baleias instead of the more traditional centers of power at Luanda and Cabo. However, Angola and the Cape Colony developed in very different ways, and one of the first things the delegates realized at the Congress was how different the peoples of the two colonies were in culture, language, appearance, and perhaps even destiny. Some important parts of the Portuguese dominions, like the gold boomtown of Nova Lisboa [6] with its peculiar resistance to the prazo owners' encroachments, were entirely unrepresented. To this was added the additional layer of complexity in the opinion of the native kingdoms’ delegates. The Kongo Kingdom— which might have been annexed by Portugal, had the Spanish government not forced Portugal to keep it as an internally independent protectorate and keep the mouth of the Congo River, which ran through Kongo, open to trade— mostly desired to be left alone. The Bakongo people had their own identity, and felt little need to take on a South African or Angolan one. The Kingdom of Matamba, ruled by descendants of the old Ndongo royal family, was similar but for one thing. The Mbundu people, who were the majority of the Kingdom’s people, had irredentist tendencies. Unlike the more isolationist Kongo, Matamba desired active expansion. The King of Matamba, Francisco III, had plans of reuniting the Mbundu lands by conquering the old lands of Ndongo from Portuguese Angola, and leaving the rest of Angola to its fate. The old lands of Ndongo included the Angolan capital of Luanda, and the idea of integrating the cosmopolitan city into a new pan-Mbundu state gave some of Francisco’s advisors pause. Nevertheless, Matamba’s course was set against that of the nascent Angolan nationalists. Whether Luanda would be Matamban, Angolan, South African, or Portuguese remained to be seen.

[1] OTL: Walvis Bay. “Baleias” means “whales” in Portuguese.

[2] In OTL, we’d call it Balkanization.

[3] OTL: Cape Town.

[4] OTL: Durban.

[5] The term “South Africa” has come to represent a much larger area than in OTL— in theory, it encompasses the entire Portuguese zone of control.

[6] OTL: Johannesburg.