– Prince Arnold Kufulula
Dom Nicolau, prince of Kongo (1830-1860) also known as Nicolau I Misaki mia Nimi is the earliest African leader who wrote publicly to protest colonial influences, Nicolau protested against Portuguese commercial and political activity and military expansion by publishing a letter in a Portuguese newspaper in Lisbon.
In the history of Angolan resistance to Portuguese rule the traditional and most common form of protest has been armed rebellion. In the ate nineteenth century, however, new forms of protest appeared.
African and mestigo assimilados (Angolans with varying degrees of Western education) began to express their protests in writing, both in letters to authorities and in colonial newspapers. Perhaps the earliest case of Angolan written protest came in 1859-1860 in the activities of a prince of the Kongo Kingdom, Nicolau de Agua Rosada de Sardonia. Nicolau, or Nicolas, protested against Portuguese commercial and political activity and military expansion by publishing a letter in a Portuguese newspaper in Lisbon. His written protest is the first case of Angolan written assertion against modern colonial influence.
The life of Prince Nicolas is inextricably woven into the fabric of the fortunes of the Kingdom of Kongo and of Angola, a Portuguese colony to he south of the Congo River. By the time of Prince Nicolau’s birth in the first third of the nineteenth century the Kingdom of Kongo had become a de facto, if not a de jure, colonial puppet of the government-general of Angola. Portuguese military and political expansion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which involved wars and slave-trading activities, as well as internecine warfare among the Kongo provinces, had effectively ruined the power and sovereignty of the Kongo kings.
Although the Kongo Kingdom was not formally annexed to Angola until 1885, as the “District of Congo,” the kings of Kongo were dependent upon Luanda for supplies of food, wine, and arms, and for political support andCatholic priests long before. Moreover, the tradition that the Portuguese educated Kongo royal princes for the priesthood, in Luanda and in Lisbon.
The weakness and dependence of the Kongo Kingdom coincided with a colonial revival on the part of the Portuguese authorities in Angola.The official decree of 1836 abolishing the slave trade in Portuguese Africa was followed by a new colonial program which was designed to replace the slave trade revenue with legitimate trade profits; Portuguese commercial, political, and military expansion between 1845 and 1865 was thus an attempt to renovate the post-abolition economy of the territory.
Part of the plan to increase the government revenue involved Portuguese expansion of customs house control north of Luanda. A number of active governors-general, beginning in 1842, sought to capture most of the coastal trade north of Luanda, including trade in the mouth of the Congo River, and thereby to gain profits for Portuguese merchants and customs revenue for the provincial government. Nicolas’ exact birth date remains uncertain. Contemporary engravings of Nicolas during his visit in Lisbon in 1845 suggest that he was then perhaps fifteen to twenty years of age 7 In any event, he was the son of King Henry II of Kongo, who ruled from 1842 to 1857.
In early 1845 King Henry, from his capital at Sao Salvador, sent letters to the Governor of Angola expressing the desire to send Infante Dom Alvaro d’Agua Rosada e Sardonia, apparently the heir to the throne at that time, to Portugal to get an education.
Prince Nicolau Agua-Rosada was a tall black, with very dark color, kind features, a perfect racial type of muxiconga, which is distinguished especially by the prominence of cheeks, narrowness of the forehead, and by the thickness of the lips; he was modest, intelligent, not very talkative, but with affable and polite manners.
Dom Nicolau, prince of Kongo (1830-1860) also known as Nicolau I Misaki mia Nimi is the earliest African leader who wrote publicly to protest colonial influences, Nicolau protested against Portuguese commercial and political activity and military expansion by publishing a letter in a Portuguese newspaper in Lisbon.
Prince of Congo of Bapindi Kingdom Arnold Kufulula wants to make influential movies to inform viewers of contributions of the African and Black community throughout history.
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