Battle of the Pembe ford

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Battle of the Pembe ford
Battle of the Rio Cunene (depiction after Angelo Agostini)
Battle of the Rio Cunene (depiction after Angelo Agostini )
date September 25, 1904
place on the Rio Cunene in what is now the province of Cunene , Angola
output Portuguese defeat
consequences Vengeance campaign of the Portuguese in 1905
Parties to the conflict

Kwamato ( Ovambo )

Portugal Kingdom 1830Portugal Portugal

Commander

Chief Tchetekelo

Captain Luís Pinto de Almeida

Troop strength
unknown 500 men (255 Portuguese, 245 Africans), a few hundred allied Khumbi; 2 cannons
losses

high

16 officers,
12 NCOs,
114 European and
170 African soldiers, unknown number of Khumbi

The Battle of the Pembe ford in September 1904 occurred in the course of Portugal's efforts to annex the region north of the Kunene River inhabited by Ovambo . It ended with the worst Portuguese defeat to date in sub-Saharan Africa.

initial situation

Settlement areas of Angolan ethnic groups (Ovambo rosé in the south)

In order to be able to actually take possession of the entire area of ​​Angola, which was assigned to him at the Congo Conference in 1885 , Portugal had to subjugate the ethnic groups settled in the extreme south before the German rivals from German South West Africa did so. On the other hand, the Portuguese were hardly present south of the central highlands at that time. In the southwest they had the port city of Moçâmedes ; their efforts to settle emigrants from Madeira and groups of exiled continental Portuguese on the fertile highlands of Huíla met with only moderate success. A number of Portuguese bush traders were active in the region, as well as a few missionaries. The governor, based in Lubango , had only a few and poorly equipped troops, a good part of which consisted of Africans recruited further north (mostly from the Ovimbundu ). He was therefore often forced to use Portuguese settlers and those Boers who had settled on the highlands of Huíla (in Humpata ) for military actions . In many cases it was decisive that he could mobilize auxiliary troops from opposing ethnic groups.

Until 1898 the Khumbi were subdued in three campaigns and then z. T. won as an ally. In the border region of Cunene , however, the Kwamato (Portuguese: Cuamato), who belonged to the Ovambo, and especially the Kwanyama (Cuanhama), offered strong resistance and were supported by related groups in German South West Africa - not least through the smuggling of guns, the modern ones were than those of the Portuguese colonial troops.

Portuguese expedition

From 1902, the southern Angolan tribes rose again against Portuguese rule. While the Germans were busy with the uprising of the Herero and Nama , in September 1904 a Portuguese expeditionary force under the command of Major João Maria de Aguiar advanced from Huíla into the Ovambo area to "pacify" them. The corps comprised 467 Portuguese and 613 African colonial soldiers, as well as 11 European settlers, 420 African mercenaries and around 500 allied Khumbi warriors. It had a field artillery division and a company of mounted dragoons.

Portuguese colonial troops around 1900.

At a ford through the Kunene near Pembe , an advance detachment under the command of Captain Luís Pinto de Almeida was ambushed by the Kwamato. The division consisted of 499 colonial soldiers, half Portuguese and half African. It included two platoons of dragoons and two field cannons; their armament consisted of rifles, pistols (only for officers) and sabers. In addition there were an indeterminate number of warriors of the Himba and the Khumbi. They met probably a few thousand Kwamato who had holed up in patches of forest. They often had rifles, but for the most part arrows and bows and / or spears, but in each case combat knives and / or clubs. Instead of ordering a retreat, de Almeida decided to attack, during the chaotic course of which Portuguese colonial soldiers and African auxiliaries even shot at each other once in the turmoil. More than 300 men in the advance division, including a good number of the officers, were ultimately shot, slain or killed with naked weapons on the battlefield; the rest fled.

Although at that time the Portuguese press wrote of the "greatest defeat that Portuguese weapons had ever suffered", it did not have such catastrophic consequences as the defeat of Alcácer-Quibir (1578) and it did not traumatize the Portuguese nation as much For example, the defeats suffered by Dogali (1887) and Adua (1896) against Africans had traumatized the Italians in comparison. Even among the Angola Portuguese, memories faded considerably over the decades - all the more since they only had isolated access to sources on the history of Angola and the majority of them were still illiterate in the 1970s.

With fresh troops with a strength of around 2,000 men, the new governor of Huíla set out in the following year on a more successful punitive expedition against the Kwamato, which rose again in 1907 and was only temporarily subdued in 1908. During the First World War in South West Africa, however , they rose again in 1914 and 1915 with German help ( see also: Kampf um Naulila ). It was not until 1916 that the border area was considered "pacified" and Portugal was able to consolidate its rule.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ William Gervase Clarence-Smith: Slaves, peasants and capitalists in southern Angola, 1840-1926. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1979.
  2. ^ René Pélissier: Les guerres grises: Résistance et revoltes en Angola (1845-1941). èditions Pélissier, Montamets / Orgeval 1977, especially chap. XVII, Un corps dur: le Sud-Angola inconquis (1879-1916) , pp. 415–488.
  3. ^ António Aniceto Monteiro, web link below
  4. ↑ José Bento Duarte, Senhores do sol e do vento: Histórias verídicas de portugueses, angolanos e outros africanos , Lisbon: Estampa, 1911, in excerpts in the web link below. NB: It is not excluded that this author confuses the Himba, whom he calls "Chimba", with the Khumbi.
  5. ↑ The traditional armament of the Kwamato is similar to that of the Kwanyama, as shown in José Redinha, Etnias e culturas de Angola , Luanda: Instituto de Investigação Científica de Angola, 1975, p. 91
  6. ↑ René Pélissier, op.cit.

Literature on the historical context

Web links

See also

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