Portugal Claimed All This Land. Its Oldest Ally Said No

Portugal claimed a belt of land right across Africa, and its oldest ally said no. 🌍

In 1886 Portugal drew the "Pink Map": a pink band joining its colonies Angola and Mozambique, coast to coast. That land is today Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi, and nobody asked the people living there. Britain, Portugal's oldest ally, had its own plan, a Cape-to-Cairo line pushed by Cecil Rhodes, and the two lines crossed in today's Malawi. In late 1889 a Portuguese column under Serpa Pinto fought the Makololo chiefs on the Shire River and claimed the valley.

On 11 January 1890, Britain's prime minister and foreign secretary, Lord Salisbury, sent an ultimatum: "What Her Majesty's Government require and insist upon" was the withdrawal of all Portuguese forces from the Shire, the Makololo and the Mashona lands, with an answer "in the course of this evening", or the British envoy would leave Lisbon. That night the Council of State met under the young King Carlos I, and on 12 January Portugal gave in.

Lisbon exploded. Crowds stoned the British consulate, the statue of Camões was draped in black, and the government fell. The next night, the composer Alfredo Keil wrote a march of defiance, "A Portuguesa"; Henrique Lopes de Mendonça added the words, and more than 22,000 free copies were printed. Its chorus: "Às armas! … Contra os canhões marchar, marchar!" ("To arms! … March against the cannons!"). The Treaty of Lisbon (11 June 1891) drew the borders that still stand, and Portugal kept none of the land in between.

Today "A Portuguesa" has been Portugal's national anthem since 1911, and every time Portugal plays, stadiums still sing it. The alliance survived too: it has been in force since the Treaty of London of 1373, the oldest diplomatic alliance in the world still in force.

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Sources: London Gazette, 17 Jan 1890 (the ultimatum telegrams); Teresa Pinto Coelho, "Lord Salisbury's 1890 Ultimatum to Portugal" (Oxford); Presidência da República and Museu da Presidência (the anthem); Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal (the 1886 map and the 1890 score); GOV.UK (the 1373 alliance); UK Parliament Hansard, 12 Oct 1943.
Credits: Imagery: Sentinel-2 cloudless - https://s2maps.eu by EOX IT Services GmbH (Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2016), CC BY 4.0; NASA Blue Marble; the Tagus coast and the Shire river: © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL); borders: Natural Earth, and the Pink Map traced from the 1886 original (approx.); elevation: AWS Terrain Tiles (SRTM, courtesy USGS); pictures: Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, Hemeroteca Digital de Lisboa, Elliott & Fry (public domain, via Wikimedia Commons); music: "Ice and Snow" by Rafael Krux (FreePD.com), CC0.

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