<P> The first of the major European trading forts, Elmina, was founded on the Gold Coast in 1482 by the Portuguese . Elmina Castle (originally known as São Jorge da Mina Castle) was modelled on the Castelo de São Jorge, one of the earliest royal residences in Lisbon . Elmina, which means "the port", became a major trading centre . By the beginning of the colonial era there were forty such forts operating along the coast . Rather than being icons of colonial domination, the forts acted as trading posts--they rarely saw military action--the fortifications were important, however, when arms and ammunition were being stored prior to trade . The 15th - century Portuguese exploration of the African coast, is commonly regarded as the harbinger of European colonialism, and also marked the beginnings of the Atlantic slave trade, Christian missionary evangelization and the first globalization processes which were to become a major element of the European colonialism until the end of the 18th century . </P> <P> Although the Portuguese Empire's policy regarding native peoples in the less technologically advanced places around the world (most prominently in Brazil) had always been devoted to enculturation, including teaching and evangelization of the indigenous populations, as well as the creation of novel infrastructure to openly support these roles, it reached its largest extent after the 18th century in what was then Portuguese Africa and Portuguese Timor . New cities and towns were purportedly designed to accommodate Portuguese settlers and their Europe - inspired infrastructure, which included administrative, military, healthcare, educational, religious, and entrepreneurial halls . </P> <P> The Portuguese explorer Paulo Dias de Novais founded Luanda in 1575 as "São Paulo de Loanda", with a hundred families of settlers and four hundred soldiers . Benguela, a Portuguese fort from 1587 which became a town in 1617, was another important early settlement they founded and ruled . The Portuguese would establish several settlements, forts and trading posts along the coastal strip of Africa . In the Island of Mozambique, one of the first places where the Portuguese permanently settled in Sub-Saharan Africa, they built the Chapel of Nossa Senhora de Baluarte, in 1522, now considered the oldest European building in the southern hemisphere . Later the hospital, a majestic neo-classical building constructed in 1877 by the Portuguese, with a garden decorated with ponds and fountains, was for many years the biggest hospital south of the Sahara . </P> <P> The establishment of a dual, racialized civil society was formally recognized in Estatuto do Indigenato (The Statute of Indigenous Populations) adopted in 1929, and was based in the subjective concept of civilization versus tribalism . Portugal's colonial authorities were totally committed to develop a fully multiethnic "civilized" society in its African colonies, but that goal or "civilizing mission", would only be achieved after a period of Europeanization or enculturation of the native black tribes and ethnocultural groups . It was a policy which had already been stimulated in the former Portuguese colony of Brazil . Under Portugal's Estado Novo regime, headed by António de Oliveira Salazar, the Estatuto established a distinction between the "colonial citizens", subject to Portuguese law and entitled to citizenship rights and duties effective in the "metropole", and the indigenas (natives), subject to both colonial legislation and their customary, tribal laws . Between the two groups there was a third small group, the assimilados, comprising native blacks, mulatos, Asians, and mixed - race people, who had at least some formal education, were not subjected to paid forced labor, were entitled to some citizenship rights, and held a special identification card that differed from the one imposed on the immense mass of the African population (the indigenas), a card that the colonial authorities conceived of as a means of controlling the movements of forced labor (CEA 1998). The indigenas were subject to the traditional authorities, who were gradually integrated into the colonial administration and charged with solving disputes, managing the access to land, and guaranteeing the flows of workforce and the payment of taxes . As several authors have pointed out (Mamdani 1996; Gentili 1999; O'Laughlin 2000), the Indigenato regime was the political system that subordinated the immense majority of native Africans to local authorities entrusted with governing, in collaboration with the lowest echelon of the colonial administration, the "native" communities described as tribes and assumed to have a common ancestry, language, and culture . After the World War II, as communist and anti-colonial ideologies spread out across Africa, many clandestine political movements were established in support of independence . Regardless it was exaggerated anti-Portuguese / anti - "Colonial" propaganda, a dominant tendency in Portuguese Africa, or a mix of both, these movements claimed that since policies and development plans were primarily designed by the ruling authorities for the benefit of the territories' ethnic Portuguese population, little attention was paid to local tribal integration and the development of its native communities . According to the official guerrilla statements, this affected a majority of the indigenous population who suffered both state - sponsored discrimination and enormous social pressure . Many felt they had received too little opportunity or resources to upgrade their skills and improve their economic and social situation to a degree comparable to that of the Europeans . Statistically, Portuguese Africa's Portuguese whites were indeed wealthier and more skilled than the black indigenous majority, but the late 1950s, the 1960s and principally the early 1970s, were being testimony of a gradual change based in new socioeconomic developments and equalitarian policies for all . </P>

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