Life and Death of a Prince of the Kongo

Nicolau de Água Rosada and the End of the Slave Trade in West Central Africa

Abstract

This article analyzes the end of the transatlantic slave trade in Angola and the Kongo by reconstructing the trajectory of Prince Nicolau de Água Rosada. In 1845, Água Rosada was sent as an emissary to Lisbon by his father, Henrique II, king of the Kongo, after the signing of an anti-slave-trade treaty with Portugal. After about two years in Portugal, he returned to Angola, becoming an official in the colonial administration. The African prince then achieved notoriety for speaking out publicly against a treaty of allegiance signed by King Pedro V of the Kongo in 1859. Yet he was later assassinated by Africans who were opposed to Portuguese expansionist plans in the lower Kongo and saw him as an ally of the Portuguese. While Nicolau never spoke out against or in favor of the slave trade, his life can only be understood from a perspective that considers the slave trade’s central role in the geopolitics of West Central Africa.