Beyond Nation and Empire? Questioning the Role of Religious Missions under Portuguese Colonial Rule at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

From the beginning of European overseas expansion in the fifteenth century, religious missions occupied an important place in the internal organisation of colonial empires. Their contribution to the ideological structuring of imperialism and the interaction with local populations is undeniable. With the emergence of the new imperialism and the scramble for Africa (after the 1870s), the missions, often anticipating the colonial political and administrative presence, enhanced their role as advocates of Europe’s “civilising mission”, above all through the education of the colonised peoples. For Portuguese decision-makers, the religious missions, with a multi-century tradition, had an important role in defending territorial claims overseas and promoting the empire’s nationalisation. However, the lack of national missionaries, Christianity’s inter-confessional competition in the nineteenth century and the emergence of international legal rules protecting missionary activities hindered Portugal’s strategies. Using sources from several archives (in Lisbon, the Vatican, and elsewhere) to emphasise the role of a transnational missionary staff and the international law of missions, this text intersects these aspects, examining their convergence in the controversial case of the exit and replacement of Jesuit missionaries in Mozambique in 1910–1911, to demonstrate the need to look at the missionary issues in the Portuguese overseas domains from perspectives that go beyond nation and empire.

1. Introduction

Traditionally, Portuguese historiography has confined the study of religious missions overseas in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries within an analytical framework determined by national(istic) perspectives (Gabriel 1978; Gonçalves 2002). The focus has been mainly on Portuguese missionary activity in the Portuguese empire (in Africa: Cape Verde, Portuguese Guinea, Sao Tome and Principe, Angola, and Mozambique; in Asia, Goa and dependencies, Macau, and Portuguese Timor), minimising the overall question of Christian missionary activity in the Portuguese empire, whether led by Portuguese subjects or not. Studying such historical processes requires different types of arguments, questions, and perspectives, invariably moving towards a broader approach to contemporary missionary issues since mission cannot be seen in a strictly national threshold, whether in its metropolitan or imperial dimensions (Prudhomme 2007; Etherington 2012). As elsewhere, missions in the Portuguese empire were far from being uniquely or mainly constituted by Portuguese staff, nor were they defined solely by a political, ideological, cultural, or theological Portuguese framework, despite, in the Catholic case, their jurisdictional subordination to a Portuguese episcopal structure (Ferreira 1999, 2000). Christian missionary movements were a global process, crossing historical periods, borders, and populations, expanding and exporting a set of cultural characteristics inherent to Christianity and Western modernity (Hopkins 1999; Woodberry 2012; Marshall 2013; Paiva 2023). Religious missions transcend “any one nation-state, empire, or other politically defined territory” (Beckert 2006, p. 1445). Hence, its study should consider global, transnational, and international dynamics—a mission beyond nation and empire.

The study of religious missions, as a constituent part of Portugal’s imperial question in the modern period, has also been poorly assessed, partly due to the persisting idea that the religious phenomenon was in decline following the impact of the liberal revolutions and the secularisation process of the metropolitan society throughout the nineteenth century. Such an assumption tends to overlook religion (and its agents) as a critical factor in weaving contemporary historical processes (promoting or contesting ideas of Modernity, for instance) in Europe and across imperial boundaries (Mayer and Viaene 2016, pp. 9–22). Overseas, religious structures largely nurtured the repertoires and strategies of Europe’s emerging ‘civilising mission’ (Conklin 1997; Daughton 2006; Jerónimo 2010). Christian missionaries embodied European civilisational attributes, with different expressions and scales and not always following their imperial counterparts (Porter 2004; Prudhomme 2004). In the minds of the time, the mission was a way of providing indigenous populations with the spiritual, and consequently cultural and civilisational, tools to waive paganism and get closer to the “true faith” and, as many missionaries sustained, to the “light of civilisation” (Christensen and Hutchinson 1983; Daughton and White 2012).

This side-lining of missionary history cannot be disconnected from the fact that the missions were seen as an eminently religious enterprise. However, missions were (and still are) more than merely a conversion process. Missions were in constant and simultaneous dialogue with other societal dimensions—politics, economics, and culture (Stanley 1990; Porter 2003, 2004; Prudhomme 2004; Etherington 2005; Daughton and White 2012). Obviously, for its constituents—the missionaries—the primary goal of every mission was converting the increasing number of colonial subjects. Evangelising means spreading the gospel of Christ and creating Christians, whether Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, or Presbyterians. The evangelisation process implied several levels of social and cultural intervention on the ground, namely in the educational field, presumably the most impactful and enduring missionary activity. Imperial powers rapidly handed educational responsibilities to missionaries; the same way Christian churches were largely responsible for education at home. In colonial lands, they educated the new subjects under a nationalising repertory more or less shared by all European colonial administrations.

Various constraints have dominated Portuguese historiographical analysis, such as the problem of being locked into an excessive, almost exclusively internal, and political chronology as a determining element in understanding stages, ruptures, and continuities—such as regime changes and internal legislation. As if external events did not impact and condition policymaking internally, at home and overseas. This aspect is all the more significant in the case of a transnational process such as the Christian missionary enterprise, whether led by Protestants or Catholics. The latter, more consequential for the Portuguese national and colonial contexts, has been frequently detached by Portuguese historiography from its global links to the Holy See and other Catholic decision centres, such as the headquarters of religious congregations working in missions settled in Portugal’s empire. Another issue is the central role of national aspects in understanding the missionary phenomenon, which, to a certain extent, reproduces the arguments linked to the ideas of the exceptionality and specificity of the Portuguese case (Jerónimo and Pinto 2015). Those particularities include Portugal’s multi-century colonial and missionary experience among non-European peoples and the Crown’s Royal Patronage (Padroado Régio or Real), a system set in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and resiliently defended as a historical right, a relic of a glorious past and proof of the nation’s pioneering commitment to the European civilising project (Cordeiro 1883; Barbosa 1995; Costa 2000; Gonçalves 2001). However, other contemporary colonial empires contained specificities to be considered, from the French Protectorate of Missions, the Belgian Catholic predominance in the Congo Free State (later Belgian Congo), to the important Catholic presence in “Protestant” empires (Britain and Germany), which implies relativising the Portuguese supposed exceptionality when comparing with other contexts.

Portugal had obvious specificities derived from her internal context and dynamics—the Catholic-dominant factor and the Royal Patronage as the main structural missionary system are probably the most poignant. Still, approaching the history of missions should not exclude or minimise the impact of external factors, which are frequently absent. Religious missions intermingled internal and external elements, processes, and actors playing in a complex and multi-layered stage. Without one or the other, we would obtain a partial story. Therefore, this analysis should consider, on the one hand, Portugal’s political transformations at the turn of the century, the noticeable and inescapable predominance of the Catholic Church in Portuguese society (with significant political and societal outcomes), the intricate State–Church relations (and its ties to the Holy See), and the anticlericalism entrenched in Portuguese political sects and intelligentsia; on the other, the global dimension of Christian missionary movements (both Catholic and Protestant), the active agency of an increasing cast of transnational actors and the unprecedented legality of an International Law of Missions, with its diplomatic implications and eventful consequences to Portugal’s imperial prospects. All impacted missionary activity in the colonial territories under Portuguese rule. Studying the “mission” must go beyond the confines of the nation and the empire since it cannot be understood within a national historiographical framework (Stuart 2007; Wendt 2011). Moreover, analysing missionary interactions gives further insights into the history of empires and State–Church relations, usually seen from a metropolitan viewpoint, without considering that events occurring in the colonies also impacted religion at home. For example, the relationship between the Holy See and Portugal must consider how the latter’s missionary policies rebounded in the metropolitan context (Reis 2006; Simpson 2014).

Despite the Catholic factor prevailing over most Portuguese historiography on missions, Portuguese scholars have scarcely explored the Holy See and its different entities. The Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide, the Pontifical department responsible for missionary activities, is frequently not invited to the analysis. Most accounts reduce its role as the fierce opponent of the Portuguese Patronage’s prerogatives, a player only concerned with taking lands and peoples, thus undermining the country’s historical legacies, as flows of diplomatic correspondence and public statements advocated (Cordeiro 1883). It repeats and perpetuates a long-lasting simplistic and short-viewed narrative of Propaganda vs. Patronage without questioning how Rome regarded the Portuguese problem within the larger framework of the Pontifical missionary strategy of the nineteenth century (Prudhomme 2014; Dores 2021). For many at the Holy See, the Patronage, as it was organised and controlled by the state, entailed more risks than advantages. To its detractors in Rome, the Patronage was incapable of providing a proper and updated evangelisation to the colonial peoples and, therefore, hindering the advance of the Protestants. In a time of fierce inter-confessional competition, that worried some Pontifical circles. But despite divergent theological and universalistic reasoning regarding the evangelising qualities and capabilities of the missionaries working under the Patronage banner, Rome’s criticism seemed equally concerned with the persistence of the metropolitan anti-congreganist legislation and the politicisation of religious affairs, namely the state’s demands to curtail bishops and other clerical leaderships’ nominations.1

Besides the prevalence of the Catholic element, i.e., “Portuguese Catholicism”, and the recurrent absence of the Holy See, most studies have also neglected the agency of Protestant missionaries2. The Protestant issue in the Portuguese empire has been mainly addressed by foreign authors focusing on a particular missionary society working in a specific territory (Soremekun 1965; Butselaar 1984; Silva 1998; Neves 1998; Ngoenha 1999; Burlingham 2011) rather than a transversal view of the relationship between Protestant missionaries, and Portuguese authorities (Dores 2021).

It is undeniable that the Holy See and the Protestant missionary societies are central players in the missionary process that took place in the Portuguese empire and are prominent figures in the transnational cast of the contemporary Christian missionary question, both in Portugal and in other imperial spaces, whether British, French, or Belgian (Elbourne 2007). The strategic decisions of each missionary institute present in the Portuguese empire passed through their headquarters, whether at the Baptist Missionary Society in London, the mother house of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit in Paris, or Propaganda Fide in Rome, whose networks influenced the ministries of the colonies and foreign affairs and metropolitan public opinion. This network is fundamental to understanding the missionary question during the rise of new forms of colonial expansion and domination in what became known as the “new imperialism” (1870s–1900s) (Digre 1990; Porter 1994).

Internationally, Christian missions and their work became increasingly considered relevant among governments, organisations, and the general public—deepening the repertoires of Europe’s moral obligation to civilise others. A new set of legal pieces helped foment missionary endeavours by recognising missionaries’ freedom to circulate, settle, and work in large parts of the colonial world, starting with the Berlin Conference’s General Act (1885), later confirmed by the Brussels Conference’s General Act (1890). An international law of missions was born. Imperial governments sponsored missionary freedom and religious tolerance (restricted to Christian denominations) in Africa to further European political presence and cultural influence, exporting old and new religious conflicts (going back to the Reformation and Europe’s religious wars) that helped carve further divisions in the continent (Adogame 2004; Akinwumi 2008). The new legal system opened new possibilities and gave missionaries new tools to extend their purposes and activities and deal with imperial and local governments.

Missionary freedom and the action of transnational players in Africa utterly concerned the Portuguese imperial authorities in Lisbon at a time of increasing interest in the continent, fearing that Portugal’s historical claims over African territories would not guarantee her political domain. Foreign missionaries, mainly British and French, represented unsettling threats and became seen as spearheads of a potential invasion or occupation by their governments. Both Britain and France had a vast capacity to recruit and export missionaries overseas to disputed lands. With a chronic inability to train and sponsor national missionaries, Portugal could not use them to fulfil an expansionist strategy over claimed areas of influence. A British or French mission was threatening as an administrative or commercial outpost. Portugal’s suspicion and objection to foreign missionaries would trigger several incidents that ended up involving the missionaries’ home countries in diplomatic entanglements that served, in the eyes of the Portuguese, to prove the missionaries’ non-religious and subversive purposes. Under the apparent disguise of international laws, they apparently endorsed Portugal’s imperial opponents. At the turn of the century, several moments showed the relevance of the diplomatic and inter-imperial dimensions of the missionary context, combining and overlapping different scales. Missions also reveal international, transnational, and global perspectives (Jerónimo 2012; Jerónimo and Dores 2017).

This text considers, on the one hand, the variety of a transnational cast, the Holy See and Propaganda Fide, and the diverse missionary societies, exploring their relations with the Portuguese imperial state; on the other, the set of international legal norms regarding missionary freedom in colonial Africa which conditioned Portugal’s missionary policy and the relationship with Protestant and foreign missionaries. These two aspects converged in the government-imposed exit of the Society of Jesus from Mozambique in 1910, a diplomatically troubled and ideologically endorsed decision at a turning point in the history of Portugal, the implementation of the Republic and its anticlerical agenda. It follows republican legislation against religious congregations, the case’s international impacts, and the further consequences for missions in Mozambique. It shows how including these elements gives a more comprehensive understanding of the history of religious (Christian) missions and the empire.

2. A Transnational Cast

Of the various actors present at the missionary stage of the Portuguese empire, I will focus on two: the Holy See, as the head of Roman Catholicism, and the Protestant missionary societies, as external elements accepted with suspicion by Portuguese authorities, both metropolitan and colonial.

Throughout the nineteenth century (as before and even after), religious missions were frequently expected to play a crucial role in promoting and sustaining political rule across the empire despite occasional discordant and concurrent views. For that reason, Portuguese authorities distrusted foreign (usually Protestant) missionaries as driving forces of competing powers. Notwithstanding the suspicions over the Protestants and the dominance of Catholicism, the desire for a nationalising mission that would promote the constitutive aspects of “being Portuguese”, where Catholicism was of the utmost importance, did not mean that the Holy See gladly supported Portugal’s expectations regarding the missions’ intended purposes. Above all, the missionary question—especially concerning the Patronage—was intermingled with the struggle between Rome and Lisbon over religious issues in late-nineteenth-century Portugal. The missionary field was a further battleground for anticlerical stances, the state’s confessionalism, civil rights, and religious liberty. Furthermore, certain Pontifical circles were highly suspicious of Portugal’s abilities to carry on with an appropriate and suited missionary activity capable of facing contemporary challenges, mainly the Protestant concurrence. For their part, Portuguese politicians were focused on using missions, namely Catholic ones, to expand their rule across African lands, competing with other powers, whether local or European. After settling in, the Catholic missionaries would become jurisdictionally submitted to the Portuguese episcopacy according to the Patronage system’s rules. Through this system, Catholic missionaries, embodying the nation’s religious confessionality and its cultural distinctiveness, would contribute to the nationalising strategy of local peoples, that is, leading the African subjects to recognise and accept Portugal’s authority over them and those lands (Prudhomme 2014; Dores 2021).

Negotiating with the Holy See was imperative, forcing a constant diplomatic game between the two chancelleries (Dores 2021). While Portugal insisted on the defence of the Royal Patronage, claiming the exact fulfilment of its rights based on fifteenth and sixteenth-century papal bulls, the Holy See recalled that these also implied duties. Rome usually stressed an essential aspect for the revalidation or acceptance of the Patronage regime: the effective legalisation of religious congregations as a fundamental element of Catholic missionary work. Religious congregations had been expelled from Portugal in 1834. Despite the prohibition and the maintenance of anti-congreganist legislation, several congregations had begun to settle after the 1850s, increasingly occupying an essential role in the charity, educational, and missionary fields. From Lisbon, the refusal to review the liberal anti-congreganist legislation was accompanied by the warning that legalising the congregations would bring more harm than good to the cause of the Church. As we will see, at the end of the nineteenth century, religious congregations were constantly criticised by numerous sectors of Portugal’s politics and society (Neto 1998; Dores 2021, p. 61).

The perspective of a Catholic homogeneous attitude regarding missionary activities, in Portugal and elsewhere, is therefore erroneous and out of step with a historical context immersed in a complex system of relations between imperial states, the state and the Church, states and the Holy See, Catholic missionaries and colonial authorities, and Catholic missionaries and colonised populations. All these players had their own agendas, purposes, and expectations. And their interactions impacted differently in the Catholic evangelising process. The missionary movement promoted by Rome sought dialogue with the empires while trying to intervene directly in the colonial space as part of what would be called “Catholic internationalism”. It, therefore, makes sense that Vincent Viaene emphasised the agency of the Holy See to study the history of Catholic missions, without which Catholic missionary activity as a whole would be incomprehensible. Historians of modern Catholicism, Viaene argued, were slowly discovering “global history”, which seems contradictory given the global dimension of the Church’s activities, international connections, and ongoing relationship with colonial empires (Viaene 2008).

The Holy See itself, from its different entities, presented multiple perspectives on missions derived from their various visions and expectations. Propaganda Fide, the coordinating centre of the pontifical missionary policy (Prudhomme 1994), was concerned with promoting the expansion of Catholicism overseas, competing directly with Protestantism’s advancement and softening the competition between Catholic congregations throughout the missionary world. The conflict between the White Fathers, Comboni Missionaries, and Spiritans in central Africa is just one of several examples of the struggle for land and souls to evangelise that marked Catholic expansion during the nineteenth century. To this, we would have to add the perspectives of each of the “Catholic” colonial states—such as France, Portugal, Belgium, or Italy—interested in outlining their missionary policy, where nationalising tendencies or supremacy over pontifical elements prevailed (Mayeur 1990; Prudhomme 1994; Dores 2021).

Another key player in the study of missionary activity in the Portuguese empire was the Protestant missionaries and their societies that outlined projects to evangelise the African populations living in the regions administered or claimed by Portugal. Set up by Protestant churches or individuals imbued with a deep pietistic zeal and committed to converting the “pagans” to the Christian faith and the supposed “benefits of civilisation”, these organisations fuelled various evangelising journeys beyond Europe and, later, beyond North America, in some cases before those territories were touched by any form of European political rule (Stanley 1990; Etherington 1999; Porter 2004). The emergence of Protestant missionary work from the end of the eighteenth century onwards altered the predominance of Catholicism in the evangelisation of non-Christians, opening up space for intense inter-denominational competition within Protestantism, and inter-confessional competition with the Catholic world, which would mark the growth of Christianity throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Prudhomme and Lenoble-Bart 2011).

Anticipating, in various contexts, the imperial race of the 1800s, the missionaries were nonetheless members of the same metropolitan societies that developed the discourses about European superiority over peoples, often based on arguments of cultural and civilisational superiority and stratification widely accepted at the time (Prudhomme 2004). Many missionaries participating in the Christian evangelising enterprise were imbued with deep “nationalistic and imperialistic longings” (Stuart 2007, p. 103). Since Portugal’s strategies also embraced those same assumptions, the authorities were alarmed by the presence of foreign missionaries (both Protestant and Catholic), regarded as agents of competing powers. While Catholic foreign missionaries could be put under the supervision of the Portuguese episcopacy in the colonies due to the Patronage system, Protestant missionaries (all foreigners) could enter the territories freely and without any ecclesiastical supervision by Portuguese leadership. Bent by diplomatic obligations, as we will see, controlling missionaries became a crucial part of colonial administrations’ tasks. Despite the general apprehension regarding foreign missionaries, mainly British and German (French Catholic missionaries also raised some concerns), the Portuguese empire was receiving Scandinavian, Swiss, Austrian, Polish, American, and Canadian religious workers, frequently related to anti-Portuguese attitudes although they came from states without colonial interests over Portuguese colonial lands. One can mention the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, the Baptist Missionary Society, the Mission Suisse, the Congregation of the Holy Spirit (based in France but with multinational staff), the Society of Jesus (with German and Austrian members), among other entities.

Europe’s scramble for Africa gradually created in the Portuguese authorities an almost pathological distrust and a growing association of the Protestant missionary as a foreign element opposed to Portuguese rule after critical moments such as the war in Southern Mozambique against the Gaza empire in the early 1890s (Butselaar 1984). The traumatic episode of the British Ultimatum of 1890 (Dores et al. 2019, pp. 52–68), in which Scottish missionaries were seen as instigators of a strong anti-Portuguese campaign, aggravated this fear that reverberated until the end of the empire in the 1970s (Dores 2021, pp. 86–96).

Unsurprisingly, the relations between political powers and foreign missionaries were frequently convoluted. The Portuguese tried to restrain their geographical progression and educational activities among local peoples through legal norms contested by the missionaries. For them, those measures clashed with the international law that protected missionaries and their actions in Africa. Every appeal made by the missionaries next to their governments for Portugal to comply with the international legislation deepened the country’s fears and mistrust. However, both sides acknowledged the risks of a straightforward conflict. Diplomatic pressures due to the missionaries’ complaints could raise questions regarding Portugal’s colonial endeavours and sovereignty. Lisbon’s initial inflamed stances towards foreign missionaries eventually faded away under diplomatic correspondence. For the missionaries, persisting in confronting the colonial authorities could only harm their work in the long term. In the Summer of 1910, during the Edinburgh World Missionary Conference (Stanley 2009; Zorn 2011), the British Baptists debated their activities in Portuguese Africa and the delicate relations with the administrative authorities with a critical tone. However, in the end, the Baptists admitted the need to cooperate with the government; otherwise, their permanence in Angola was at risk (Dores 2021, pp. 96–102). Most missionaries were aware of the difficulties a direct confrontation with political power could cause for their evangelising work. Such perception applied to both Protestant and Catholic missionaries (Prudhomme 2004).

3. International Law of Missions

One of the novelties of the contemporary missionary process was a set of international law documents that established missionary freedom and religious tolerance principles. The General Acts of the Berlin and Brussels Conferences, in their Articles 6 and 2, respectively, laid the foundations for these rules, which were later renewed and reaffirmed in the Covenant of Nations and the 1919 Convention of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, which committed the signatory powers to guarantee protection and freedom of action for Christian missionaries, regardless of nationality or religious denomination. This international missionary law became a key regulator of missionary activity because of the possibilities it gave missionaries and how it impacted the formulation of Portugal’s mission policies. The General Acts of Berlin and Brussels established freedom of conscience and religious tolerance for all in Central Africa (initially in Conventional Congo Bassin, later extended to all the continent) and imposed “special” protection and aid for religious missions by the colonial powers (Prudhomme 1994, p. 451).

The provisions of the General Act of Berlin on missionary matters raised several protests in Portugal by equating Protestant and Catholic missionaries, making it impossible for the government to intervene in establishing and controlling religious organisations and clearly contradicting the constitutional rule in Article 6 of the 1826 Constitutional Charter.3 Furthermore, non-Catholic public practices were strictly regulated by the Penal Code, not being allowed any non-Catholic religious propaganda, which included non-Catholic evangelisation, despite political ambiguity towards Protestant communities (Leite 2012).4 Berlin’s Article 6 seemed apparently unconstitutional, allowing the free exercise of Protestant worship. In the mid-1880s, with the increasing European interest towards Africa, missions could work against Portuguese intents in territories claimed by Portugal (Jerónimo 2010). Article 6 became the central expedient in the missionaries’ claims against the Portuguese colonial administration (Dores 2021).

Besides, this legal framework could also facilitate the settlement of Catholic missionaries outside the national ecclesiastical structure, that is, under the control of the Patronage and, ultimately, of the government in Lisbon. Such freedom weakened this organisation. Since the missionaries were allowed to move around and act freely, the imperial government would not intervene in matters that were decisive and constitutive of the mission and could not, for example, choose their leadership (Dores 2021).

After the Great War, new international agreements again prescribed missionary freedom tenets. The 1919 Pact of Nations and, above all, the Convention of Saint-Germain-en-Laye partly restored the assumptions of missionary freedom and religious tolerance in the colonial world. However, the post-war situation would bring a novelty to these premises that aligned with Portuguese expectations in developing its own missionary policy, which did not lose the intention of affirming its nationalising character. Article 22 of the Pact of Nations determined that the power that took over the administration of former German territories in Africa guaranteed “freedom of conscience and religion, without restrictions other than those which may be imposed for the maintenance of public order and good morals”, which brought into the post-war context the provisions that had marked the missionary context before 1914 and which went back as far as 1885.

More significant was the document signed on 10 September 1919 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye: the Convention revising the General Act of Berlin of 26 February 1885 and the Brussels General Act and Declaration of 2 July 1890.5 Aiming at the renewal of the two African conferences regarding freedom of trade and condemning and suppressing slavery and the slave trade, the convention reviewed the missionary issue, largely transcribing the guidelines settled in Berlin. Article 11 of the Convention stipulated that the signatory powers should protect and favour “without distinction of nationality or religion, the religious, scientific or charitable institutions […] which aim at leading the natives in the path of progress and civilisation” and guarantee “freedom of conscience and the free exercise of all forms of religion”, whereby “missionaries shall have the right to enter into, and to travel and reside in, African territory with the view to pursuing their religious work”.

The article includincludeded a further clause, suggested by the Portuguese delegation present at the discussions: “The application of the provisions of the two preceding paragraphs shall be subject only to such restrictions as may be necessary for the maintenance of public security and order, or as may result from the enforcement of the constitutional law of any of the Powers exercising authority in African territories”. The amendment, “painstakingly” achieved, “safeguarded Portuguese interests” (Pacheco 1999, p. 34).

Shortly before the convention’s signature, Afonso Costa, head of the Portuguese representation at the Paris Conference, former prime minister, and a leading figure in the Republican Party, informed the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Melo Barreto, that the Portuguese delegation had achieved “many advantages”, including the intended amendment to Berlin’s Article 6. Costa’s satisfaction was not surprising. According to the writings of the last paragraph of the convention’s Article 11, Article 3 (nº 12) of the 1911 Constitution—which stated that the legislation that had extinguished the Society of Jesus and all other religious congregations would remain in force—was assured. Costa’s initial worries vanished. External laws would not hamper the Republican Constitution and the anti-congreganist legal framework.6

The 1911 Constitution, approved after the establishment of the republican regime (October 1910), maintained the previous legislation against the religious congregations despite the monarchical usual condescendence in practice. Portuguese republicanism, highly inspired by its French counterpart, extrapolated nineteenth-century anti-clericalist (and anti-congreganist and anti-Jesuit) stances and opened a controversial conflict with the Catholic Church right after coming to power. The government could oppose Catholic missionaries belonging to congregations without facing complaints or diplomatic pressures since their presence was unconstitutional. On the other hand, the article gave the Portuguese an internationally recognised premise to be used against Protestant missionaries. As they were frequently accused of anti-Portuguese actions, working with local (or external) powers to undermine Portugal’s imperial rule, their attitudes would fall under an attack on “public security and order”, accusations usually raised by the colonial administration. That was why Afonso Costa spoke of “advantages”. Article 11 could benefit Portugal’s missionary policies: promoting a nationalising mission and minimising foreign influence towards local populations (Dores 2021, pp. 140–44).

In previous decades, Protestant missionaries often used the Portuguese authorities’ disregard for the rules established in Berlin to support their claims. These same reasons continued to be invoked during the Republic, not only by Protestants but also by Catholic missionaries. Portuguese governments’ replies to these accusations always derived from the possible (not always imagined, but often exacerbated) threats that foreign missionaries posed to the political and social order in the colonies. With the apparent advantages brought by Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Portugal could circumvent the conditions outlined in Berlin, Brussels and, perhaps, in the Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1891, the agreement that settled the inter-imperial crisis of the British Ultimatum of 1890 (Teixeira 1990; Coelho 2006; Howes 2007).

The Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1891 is one of the several bilateral agreements signed between European powers while defining and dividing the African continent among them, establishing Africa’s colonial borders with (often dramatic) effects that continue to this day. These negotiations also took place between European representatives and local leaders in the African hinterland, drawing the map of colonial and post-colonial Africa. The 1891 accord drew the limits of Anglo-Portuguese territories in Eastern Africa, between Mozambique and British-claimed territories in what would become Nyasaland and Rhodesia.

Like the General Acts of Berlin and Brussels, these agreements often comprise clauses on missionary activity. Article 10 of the 1891 treaty guaranteed “religious tolerance, the free exercise of all cults and religious teaching” to missionaries of both nations. Defended by the British diplomats as unnegotiable and objected to by the Portuguese, it would usually be mentioned by British missionaries when colonial authorities hindered their activities.7 Although the article conceded the same rights and possibilities to nationals of the two countries, it was clear to contemporary eyes that British missionaries would be the ones who could benefit from those propositions. Britain had a well-known capacity to export missionaries beyond their imperial boundaries—Angola and Mozambique, Portugal’s main colonies, had large numbers of British missionaries. Conversely, Portugal suffered from a chronic shortage of national missionaries, so exporting clerics to other imperial spaces would be virtually impossible (Dores 2021, pp. 47–50).

The colonial authorities’ resistance, or even refusal, to respect the provisions of these rules led to various complaints from Protestant and Catholic missionaries to their national governments. Invariably, the less receptive attitude of the colonial administrations against some missionaries took a diplomatic turn. Not even Portugal’s Catholic confessionality avoided Pontifical criticism towards a mission associated with the state and far from the “ultramontane” dependence of the Roman Curia. These international conventions might become weapons against the national imperial project and weaken the country’s external image as a colonial power. Portugal’s longstanding fears and mistrust of foreign missionaries thrived. When the Portuguese government’s decision to enforce legal measures against the Society of Jesus reached Mozambique in late 1910, several voices defended missionary freedom, calling for the fulfilment of the international law of missions. The Jesuit missionaries were Catholics, but almost all were non-Portuguese (mostly from Germany and Austria-Hungary).

4. Republic, Jesuits, and Diplomacy

Throughout the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, the Society of Jesus was in Portugal, as in other Catholic countries and elsewhere, understood as the ultimate expression of Catholicism’s backwardness and resistance to the aimed progress represented by the liberalizing process of the day. The pinnacle of the Church’s attitude towards the liberal new society was the publication of the Syllabys errorum by Pope Pius IX in 1864, seen by different sectors as an overall Catholic rejection of the modern world. (Chadwick 2003, pp. 168–81; O’Malley 2018, pp. 101–7) Behind this conservative and anti-liberal drive were, many perceived, the Jesuits. Targeted by the Enlightenment philosophy and suppressed by the Holy See herself in 1773, which was the culmination of a process that started with the expelling of the Society from Portugal and its empire, ordered by the future Marquis of Pombal (1759) (Caeiro 1991; Colombo and Guasti 2015, pp. 117–38), the Jesuits became the champions of Catholicism’s tradition and anti-liberal assertions in the nineteenth century; ultimately, the leading Catholic force against the modern world, as claimed by its detractors. The Jesuits came to embody the perceived traditionalist and anti-liberal reasonings of the Catholic Church. In addition, the Society of Jesus was also seen as the leading supporter of Papal infallibility, challenging the increasing control of the states over the Church and religious affairs.

Such considerations, rooted in the eighteenth-century anti-Jesuit political positions (Pombal’s laws against the Jesuits remained in force at the beginning of the twentieth century), fed Portuguese politics and intelligentsia. In Portugal, the critical attitude towards the Catholic Church can be expressed by three different positions: Anti-clericalism, anti-congreganism (against religious orders and congregations)8, and anti-Jesuitism (Neto 1998; Marques 2010, pp. 54–59). It goes from a more general criticism towards the Catholic Church’s social and political role and impact, that is, anti-clerical, usually related to the most radical sects of Portuguese politics, to an opposition against specific segments of the Church, above all, the religious congregations (Ferreira 2008). Anti-congreganism expressed a rejection of the need for or even the social validity of such institutions in a so-called liberal and modern society, reverberating long-lasting criticism towards religious orders. In 1834, the newly victorious liberal power suppressed all religious orders from Portugal (law of Mouzinho da Silveira) as a political measure to ensure the country’s righteous progress towards a liberal society. While its former male members were forced to secularisation (became secular clerics), the female members were allowed to remain in their convents and monasteries until their death but prevented from accepting new nuns. After the death of the last resident, most buildings were nationalised (as a significant share of the Church’s assets had been in 1834) (Clemente 1994).

This decision had significant impacts across areas where the religious institutes had an important role, such as education, charity, and assistance. And the state could not replace the Church in the short term. From the mid-century, an increasing number of religious orders started to return and re-establish in the country. Despite its illegal status, the Portuguese governments progressively allowed their return, and they rapidly expanded throughout the country and overseas (the Spiritans arrived in Angola in 1866; the Jesuits, invited by the governor-general of Mozambique, installed there from 1880 onwards, settling in their former sixteenth-century areas of Tete; as the Franciscans established in Mozambique in 1898; following or anticipating some of these fluxes, were female congregations that came to occupy relevant places in the educational, charitable, and assistance fields amongst local populations). Anti-congreganist protests arose across the country, pointing out its illegal situation. Many critics argued that religious congregations represented an undermining force against the liberal society and their activities could harm the youth and women, seen as the more fragile and exposed to the perceived subversive goals of the Church.

Throughout the nineteenth century, several controversies inflamed widespread disapproval of religious congregations and their supposed detrimental action (Neto 1998). Popular upheavals in 1901, which led to the so-called “Religious Crisis of 1901” (Neto 1998, pp. 342–54; Dores 2010, pp. 8–13), forced the conservative government (Regenerator Party) of Hintze Ribeiro to promulgate an “association law” that gave the congregations a kind of legal attire, without properly legalising them as religious congregations (the 1834 anti-congreganist laws remained valid), displeasing both sides. The Church, under attack by radical groups, realised that the monarchical governments were incapable of solving the Congreganist Question (a significant part of the larger Religious Question—the debates around the Catholic Church and religion’s role in the nineteenth-century Portuguese society) (Marques 2010, pp. 48–52). The congregations would remain illegal and exposed to their critics’ campaigns. On the other side, their opponents blamed the government for this concession regarding outlawed organisations. The Republicans were particularly active and outspoken. Three days after the Republic’s proclamation, the new Provisional Government repealed this law while reaffirming that the 1759 and 1834 legislations against the Jesuits and all religious orders, respectively, were still in force. The Republic aimed to fulfil the monarchical legal framework that most monarchical governments frequently overlooked (Ferreira 2010; Dores 2015, pp. 55–58).

Within the anti-congreganist criticism was a more specific and narrow insight: the Jesuits. Anti-clericals generally rejected the Church, while anti-congreganists focused on these organisations without rejecting the Church overall. Anti-Jesuits put the Society of Jesus under the spotlight. The Jesuits were also looked at sideways within the secular and regular clergies (as elsewhere). Anti-Jesuitism was far from being an attitude coming from outside the Church. Jesuits’ direct connections with the Holy See, particularly their defence of the Papacy, raised concerns within the episcopacy. Some assumed that the presence of the Jesuits could only harm the Church’s place in Portuguese society. The spread of the “dark legends” regarding the Jesuits filled the minds of religious and non-religious sectors. Curiously, anti-Jesuitism usually fuelled most criticism and opposition towards the Catholic Church. Their detractors claimed that the Jesuits were behind the controversies involving religious congregations in Portugal (such as the abovementioned 1901 Religious Crisis)—which none involved the congregation directly—as part of an extensive process to change Portuguese society, reverting the ongoing liberalising transformations. Eventually, the whole Church was confused with the Jesuits, especially to their most ardent critics, including almost every republican.

Anti-clericalism and anti-Jesuitism fuelled Portuguese republicanism, which was widely influenced by its French cousin. Unsurprisingly, one of the first decisions of the Republican Provisional Government set up after 5 October 1910 was, therefore, to reinstate the laws on religious congregations and orders, forcing the expulsion of Jesuits and foreign congreganists, and the secularisation of Portuguese members of all other institutes (Decree of 8 October 1910) (Neto 1998, pp. 342–61; Ferreira 2011, pp. 38–55; Dores 2021, pp. 103–4). The application of the norm reached the imperial borders. However, the overseas reality and the religious—missionary—issue had threads beyond Lisbon’s ruling circles. Soon, the newly established Republic was forced to assume that the process it intended to implement in Portugal would inevitably differ in the empire (Dores 2015, 2021). On missionary affairs, the overseas reality was not solely dependent on the national decision-making process. A set of international regulations protected missionary activities.

Committed to its anti-clerical agenda, the Republican regime was determined to implement a legal political system to control the Church’s influence in Portuguese society. As a result, the Decree of 8 October regarding congregations was applied overseas. The Provisional Government, seemingly showing little knowledge of the complexity of the colonial world, forgot that missionaries of all nationalities, regardless of their religious confession, were protected by international agreements signed by Portugal (and still endorsed by the new regime) and their own governments. However, the undifferentiated expulsion of Portuguese and foreign regulars left open possible reactions to the legislative decision. In this scenario, the expulsion of Jesuits from Mozambique took place, which would be more complex than the wishes of the metropolitan leaders at the time or the subsequent historiographical discourse. In fact, by 1914, there were still Jesuit priests in the Zambezia missions, which reveals the complexity of a process only understandable if we consider the multi-layered reality of Christian missions in the imperial space.

In Portuguese Africa, the Jesuit missions had resettled in Mozambique after 1880 following an invitation from the governor-general to resume their former functions in Zambezia (Correia 1992).9 However, the Portuguese province could hardly train and provide the needed missionaries. Consequently, the Society had to turn to other provinces to fill the posts to continue evangelising. In 1910, most of these missionaries were German and Austrian subjects who, facing imminent expulsion, appealed to the German consul in Lourenço Marques (nowadays Maputo, Mozambique’s capital), protesting against the violation of international agreements, mimicking a practice used by Protestant missionaries (Dores 2021).10

Progressively, the missionaries’ complaints involved different sectors of their metropolitan societies and, of course, the Holy See itself. Berlin and Vienna, closely followed by Rome, pressured Portugal to comply with the international law of missions, particularly regarding freedom of movement and action. Colonial authorities could not expel the Jesuit missionaries. However, the ideological obstinacy of the republican government systematically refused to accept any demands favouring the unwanted missionaries. When it became clear that Portugal would not accept the permanence of any Jesuits, even foreign ones, following international treaties, the Germanic governments demanded that their subjects, forced to leave their internationally protected activities, be replaced by missionaries of the same nationality. In this way, the Germanic chancelleries assured that the interests of their nationals would not be jeopardised. If the Portuguese government insisted on banning the Society of Jesus, it would have to accept other German and Austrian missionaries. For Berlin and Vienna, the Jesuit missions, relying on their fellow citizens’ financial support, could not simply be handed over to Portuguese missionaries (from the secular clergy) as Lisbon planned. In March 1911, an Austrian Foreign Ministry official informed the Austrian Jesuit Provincial that it had not been possible “to get the Portuguese government to consent to the Jesuits continuing to work” in Mozambique (Rodrigues 1926; Schebesta [1966] 2011, pp. 395–99).

Portugal eventually condescended and accepted the replacement proposal. The Jesuits would leave, but the missions would pass into the hands of other religious workers of the two nationalities, who would invariably belong to a religious congregation, an organisation illegal in the country. The day after the publication of the Law on the Separation of the State and the Churches (20 April 1911) (Pinto 2011; Matos 2011), the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bernardino Machado, sent a note to the diplomatic corps in Lisbon, informing about the Jesuits’ issue:

“With regard to the German and Austro-Hungarian Jesuits who were in the missions in northern Mozambique, the Provisional Government agreed, in view of the representations addressed by the respective governments, to grant them a period of two to three months to leave, and for them to be replaced by other missionaries of the same nationalities, with the stipulation that they not wear monastic habits, nor in any way divert the work of the respective mission from the legal purpose for which it is destined […]”.11

The Provisional Government and its fierce opposition towards religious congregations could not resist diplomatic pressure from Berlin and Vienna. In this sense, an openly anti-congreganist cabinet went further than any former monarchical governments, allowing the entry of a congreganist entity made up exclusively of foreigners and without any national hierarchical framework. When the Spiritans settled in Angola in 1865, they promptly planned to open a training house for Portuguese missionaries, responding to the government’s nationalising purposes. Now, due to the legal framework that prevented the functioning of such institutions, the new organisation would not be able to follow in the Spiritans’ footsteps and train national missionaries.

In Lisbon, the compromising decision was widely criticised by the most radical sectors of Portuguese republicanism. In the National Constituent Assembly, Sebastião Baracho suggested to the Minister for Foreign Affairs that instead of looking for ways to replace the Jesuit missions, he should extinguish all religious missions, “entering into diplomatic negotiations for this purpose, if necessary”12 (Dores 2021, p. 106). Thundering support came from the chamber. However, Portuguese diplomacy was unprepared to adopt a position that would harm the country’s external image. Moreover, extinguishing religious missions carried risks: if only the Catholic ones were extinguished, the field would be cleared for Protestantism and their perceived anti-national attitudes; if the measure were applied to all, it would be a diplomatic headache with the inevitable complaints and accusations of non-compliance with international agreements. At the time of this discussion, of the main world powers with missionary interests in Portuguese territories, only the United States had officially recognised the new regime. Even if London had recognised it in November 1910, the official recognition was still far off. France, the Republic’s greatest model, only recognised the new regime after the Constitution had been approved and the election of the President of the Republic in August 1911. Germany and Austria-Hungary only did so in the following September, when the British did. The extreme ideological stance towards religion did not seem worth a conflict.

Facing the unified position of the German and Austrian governments and the intervention of the Holy See backstage, the authorities in Lisbon had no way of fully implementing the Decree of 8 October and the Law of Separation concerning the congregations overseas. If they had expelled the Jesuits, as legally demanded, on the other hand, they ended up accepting other regulars. Not only did they accept the entry of a congregation, but they also accepted foreign congreganists. The political and diplomatic situation of the young Portuguese Republic left no room for further manoeuvring. The Provisional Government had consistently shown that, despite any pressure, it would not allow the Jesuits to continue in territories administered by Lisbon, which should be free of their alleged negative influence. When Berlin and Vienna eventually accepted this decision, they imposed a solution contrary to the Republic’s ideological script. The Jesuits would give way to another congregation.

The choice of a new congregation was long and troubled, predicting an eventual extension of the deadlines given to the Jesuits’ withdrawal from Mozambique. In order to safeguard their missions’ assets and to guarantee that they would be handed to their replacements, the superior of the missions stated that he would remain in his post in Quelimane, their missions’ headquarters, coordinating his priests’ departure until the new congregation’s arrival (Rodrigues 1926, p. 125). In Europe, the search for an institute that would accept work in Mozambique was essentially in the hands of the Holy See, particularly Propaganda Fide, which would have to fulfil German and Austro-Hungarian demands. The Portuguese government would have no intervention.

At the beginning of 1911, it became clear that replacing the Jesuits would be a challenging endeavour. Propaganda Fide had a hard time finding a religious institute that not only met the conditions imposed by Berlin and Vienna—they had to supply nationals of both countries—but had to agree to go to Mozambique, a territory administered by an avowedly laic regime, sustaining a Separation and anti-congreganist legislation. Convincing clerics to accept the missions in this political climate would be problematic. Having initially accepted the proposal from Rome, the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI) backed down, expecting a complicated relationship with the Portuguese authorities. Apparently, the real reason for this refusal was an indication from Paris that the congregation should avoid any German protection. The Jesuit General, Wlodimir Ledochowski, who was also involved in the process of replacing his religious, tried to calm down the possible candidates by claiming that the congregation that filled the position would have the protection of the German and Austro-Hungarian governments.13 To complicate matters, religious affairs in Mozambique, as in other Portuguese colonies, did not depend on Propaganda due to the Patronage system, even though Propaganda was coordinating the sending of the institute to Africa (Correia 1992, pp. 321–30; Schebesta [1966] 2011, pp. 399–412; Dores 2021, pp. 107–9). Propaganda Fide was only managing the case because the new republican power in Lisbon had assumed an apparent neutral stance regarding ecclesiastical issues. More radical republican sectors would hardly accept that the regime, aimed to challenge the Church’s place in Portuguese society, was negotiating with the Holy See the establishment of an illegal organization, that is, a religious congregation. The new regime should expel the congregations and their members and not allow the entry of new ones.

Faced with the Oblates’ refusal, the prefect of Propaganda, Cardinal Girolamo Gotti, tried to convince the Spiritans, who had a strong presence in Angola and an already long and shaky relationship with the Portuguese authorities. However, the congregation’s General, Alexandre Le Roy, declined because his institute did not have enough personnel to take over the Jesuit missions, even more so if they had to be of German nationality. Le Roy suggested to Gotti the Society of the Divine Word (also known as the Verbites), which, although based in Steyl (Netherlands), had been founded by German religious during the years of the Bismarckian Kulturkampf and had a significant number of members of German and Austrian origin, corresponding to the requirements of Berlin and Vienna.14 Eventually, and despite the indecision and fears raised by the SVD, Pope Pius X stepped in and asked his Secretary of State, Rafael Merry del Val, to intervene and settle the matter: the Verbites would replace the Jesuits in Mozambique. That should settle the matter. And the Portuguese government did not take any part in it.15

At a time when the external recognition of the new regime was not completely assured, and the rivalry of the great powers could be cooled by resorting to the territories of smaller nations, the choice of an institute with a predominance of Germans was a concern overseas. In Lourenço Marques, the authorities feared that the arrival of the German missionaries would be the first step towards a territorial claim by Germany. Shortly afterwards, to add to the fears in Mozambique, the Kaiser’s government and the British entered into negotiations for a new and possible partition of the Portuguese colonies (Almada 1946, pp. 94–120; Langhorne 1973, pp. 361–87; Vincent-Smith 1974, pp. 620–29; Teixeira 1998, pp. 508–13). Unsurprisingly, when Portugal and Germany exchanged declarations of war in 1916, the governor-general of Mozambique ordered the immediate arrest of missionaries from the central empires as a preventative measure, following similar decisions taken by other belligerents against German missionaries. A German missionary, whether Protestant or Catholic, was still a German subject. And amid the war, with its exacerbated nationalist exaltations, that missionary was, above all, German (Pierard 1993, pp. 4–17; Lehmann 2003; Schebesta [1966] 2011, pp. 431–33; Dores 2021, pp. 136–37).

A government that enacted the Law of Separation (April 1911) and wanted the end of religious congregations and the expulsion of foreign congreganists condescendingly accepted the entry into the empire of a group of regulars with no connection to the country, who did not speak the language and could hardly contribute to what was the essential function of a missionary for Portuguese power: to serve the empire’s nationalising cause. The Austro-German pressure and the consequent acceptance of the SVD to replace the Jesuits was a further example of the complexity of the missionary issue during the Republic, which had quickly realised that the empire required different options, as expelling a German Jesuit might cause a diplomatic incident.

5. Conclusions

Overseas territories had a legislative collection that did not depend on domestic parliamentary approval. The Monarchy had accepted the unconstitutionalities of international conventions, and the Republic, having learnt its lesson, did the same. The imperial stage remained unchanged, as it had not undergone any changes after 5 October 1910. The external obligations of the monarchical governments passed untouched to the republican ones. Just as the Monarchy had done, the Republic’s decisions had to be adjusted to the colonial environment despite its representatives’ passionate speeches and ideological reasonings. Acknowledging that the empire had its particularities bonded to international dimensions meant that the previous ambiguous strategy towards religious missions had to continue. As before, ideology and legality clashed with international obligations and the imperial needs of the state. Religious missions continued to be seen as essential for affirming and consolidating Portuguese sovereignty in Africa.

The articulation between the obligations of international law, the diplomatic relations with the foreign missionaries’ countries, and the combined efforts of different players are indispensable to understanding the various co-constituting dimensions and dynamics at stake in the missionary question throughout the Portuguese empire, which is not the same as the question of Portuguese missions in the Portuguese empire. The advantages of an approach to this subject that includes the assumptions or methodologies of a global or transnational history are necessary since its elements, aspects, and processes were not exclusively national. The strategic decisions of the missionaries also passed through their home headquarters, be it the Baptist Missionary Society in London, the mother house of the Spiritans in Paris, or Propaganda Fide in Rome. Defining and organising missionary strategies or discourses, real or rhetorical, did not depend exclusively on the governments that administered the territories where the missionaries worked. Their networks and influence included the Ministries of the Colonies and Foreign Affairs and public opinion. They all interacted with each other, with their own interests and purposes. The mission cannot be seen as a watertight reality dependent on the national context without considering broader and encompassing transnational perspectives. The examples listed in this text make it clear that in analysing Portuguese missionary policy, we have to consider what was not restricted to the country, but which had more or less direct implications for this historical process.

The missionary question in the Portuguese empire, far from being uniquely Portuguese since the Christian missionary movements were global processes, can only be understood in its true breadth when its study considers the diversity of the elements and dimensions that make it up. Obviously, there was a national project regarding the place of the mission in the imperial project—a mission policy—but it was conditioned by external factors that need to be questioned and integrated into the history of the missions and empire (Jerónimo and Dores 2018).