Exception has been taken even to the decree allowing the transport of foreign goods through Angola on payment of a moderate tariff, and as this decree will not come into force until customs houses have been built all along the frontier, many Governments are likely to have risen and fallen in Lisbon before it ceases to be a dead letter. Meanwhile a brisk smuggling trade goes on between Angola and the Belgian Congo. (The duty on cotton goods imported to Angola is 250 réis per kilo white, 500 réis coloured. Foreign tobacco pays from 1,800 to 3,600 réis per kilo, and the duty on other articles amounts to 10, 12, 20, and 25 per cent. of their value. Foreign imports to Portuguese Congo pay a smaller duty, for the great majority of articles 6 per cent. ad valorem.) Angola, with a thousand miles of coast, is divided into five districts: Congo, Loanda, Benguella, Mossamedes, and Lunda, and is occupied by 5,000 troops, of which under 2,000 are Europeans. The total number of Europeans in the colony is in normal times only about 9,000, or 2 per cent. of the entire population. The chief exports are rubber, coffee, wax, etc. It is a fertile land, capable of immense production when the country can be opened up and exploited. Of course, the required outlay for this is enormous, and the Portuguese have not been able to develop their own European territory, have not the smallest prospect of being able to develop Angola—a country many times the size of Portugal—not in the twentieth century. It is sheer waste to allow this country to remain undeveloped for want of capital which, chiefly owing to the large potential production of rubber, would under capable administration, amply repay itself. At present the annual deficit in Angola’s budget varies from 800 to 1,500 contos, and the colony is moreover burdened by a heavy debt. It is one of the most distressful colonies of Portugal.
Mozambique.
The immediate prospects of Mozambique are less distressing, and recently a slight surplus has been attained, but here, too, the Hinterland is totally undeveloped. Apart from the strip of territory along the coast (1,400 miles in length), says M. Marvaud,[71] “l’autorité portugaise ne se fait sentir aux indigènes qu’à coups d’expéditions militaires.” It yields, among other products, rubber, cotton and sugar, but it depends largely for prosperity on the traffic of the port of Lourenço Marques. This traffic has been secured by the treaty of April, 1909, between Mozambique and the Transvaal, but is envied by other African ports, which may succeed in depriving Lourenço Marques of the traffic in a few years hence, when the treaty expires. Meanwhile the natives of Mozambique leave the colony to work in the mines of the Rand, and Mozambique thus prospers artificially and temporarily, while its own resources are undeveloped and the means of developing them decrease.
Portuguese Guinea.
Portuguese Guinea, with about 170,000 inhabitants, yields much the same products as Mozambique, but its climate is unhealthy. Much of the trade has been in the hands of Germany, and, although the soil is rich the yearly deficit which the Lisbon Government has to meet for this colony is, with that of Angola, the principal reason why it has been found impossible to allow those colonies which have a surplus to keep it for their own use.
S. Thomé and Principe.
Thus, the Budgets of the islands of São Thomé and Principe show a yearly surplus, but they have not been permitted to utilise it for the construction of the roads so greatly needed for their further development. These islands produce coffee, rubber, tobacco, ginger, tea, but over 90 per cent. of their exports consists in cocoa.
A SQUARE, LISBON