1. “Bolama” is normally used by writers in Portuguese, “Bulama” by writers in English.

2. This paper is an enlarged and revised version of a paper presented in absentia to the Colóquio International “Bolama, Caminho Longe,” organized by the Institute Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisa of the República da Guiné-Bissau, and held at Bolama and Bissau in November 1990. Understandably, some of the papers given at the conference tended to inflate the historical importance of Bulama. This occurs in the published version of an otherwise useful paper, hereafter much cited: Brooks, George E., “Bolama: centro de interesses imperialistas africanos, Europeus, Euro-Americanos e Americanos,” Revista de Estudos Guineenses 11 (1991), 5–38.Google Scholar

3. Brooks postulates that “possibly from the 12th century” an intense commercial network in western Guinea included a long-distance maritime trade undertaken by the Biafada, the people of the mainland district opposite Bolama Island (Brooks, , “Bolama,” 7Google Scholar; cf. Brooks, George E., Landlords and strangers: ecology, society and trade in western Africa 1000-1630 [Boulder, 1993], chap. 5).Google Scholar The cited evidence for the existence of a longstanding maritime trade consists of passages from mainly sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European sources, very freely interpreted. It is worth noting, however, that much of the information in these sources came, at first or second remove, from African informants or African oral traditions, although this does not necessarily increase their credibility or reduce the need to deploy them critically and cautiously.

4. Monod, T., Mauny, R., and Duval, G., De la première découverte de la Guinée récit par Diogo Gomes (fin XVe siècle) (Bissau, 1959), 34–35.Google Scholar

5. Dalby, David and Hair, P.E.H., “A West African Word of 1456,” Journal of West African Languages, 4 (1967), 13–14.Google Scholar The article concludes that it is not possible to be sure which of the modern closely-related languages of the vicinity, in possibly an earlier form, the single term represents.

6. Peres, Damião, ed., Viagens de Luís de Cadamosto e de Pedro de Sintra (Lisbon, 1948) 72–73Google Scholar; Leporace, T.G., Le Navigazione Atlantiche del Veneziano Alvise da Mosto (Venice, 1966), 122–24Google Scholar; Crone, G.R., The voyages of Cadamosto (Hakluyt Society, London, 1937), 75–76.Google Scholar

7. Large canoes among the Biafada were reported in de Almada, André Alvares, Tratado breve dos Rios de Guiné, ed. Silveira, L. (Lisbon, 1946), 64Google Scholar; Bràsio, António, Monumenta missionaria africana: Africa ocidental, 2nd ser., 3 (Lisbon, 1964), 340Google Scholar; An interim edition of Almada's “Brief treatise on the Rivers of Guinea,” trans, and ed. Hair, P.E.H. (Liverpool, 1984), chap. 12/14Google Scholar; and a royal canoe with thirty rowers was noted in 1572 (Donelha, André, Descrição da Serra Leoa e dos Rios de Guiné do Cabo Verde, ed. da Mota, Avelino Teixeira and Hair, P.E.H. (Lisbon, 1977), 350.Google Scholar However, large canoes were also employed by the Bijogo.

8. Peres, , Viagens, 75Google Scholar; Leporace, , Navigazioni, 118Google Scholar; Crone, , Voyages, 78–79.Google Scholar The name “Besgue” continued to be deployed as a toponym on maps and charts, usually in the form “Besegue,” for a century or so, normally located near the mouth of Rio Balola (Donelha, Descrição, 321n304, and the map, fig.12, “Bixegue”).

9. For a representation of a Benincasa map and a list of later references, see da Mote, Avelino Teixeira, Mar, além mar (Lisbon, 1972), 119, 209, 237, 324Google Scholar, and opposite 122: Donelha, Descrição, figure 3.

10. E.g., da Mota, Teixeira, Mar, além mar, 209.Google Scholar

11. Rodney, Walter, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast 1545-1800 (Oxford, 1970), 16.Google Scholar

12. da Mota, Avelino Teixeira, Some Aspects of Portuguese Colonization and Sea Trade in West Africa in the 15th and 16th centuries (Bloomington, 1978), 18.Google Scholar Teixeira da Mota assembled material on this episode but died before he could complete a promised article.

13. da Mota, Avelino Teixeira, “Actividade marítima dos Bijagós nos séculos XVI e XVII” in In memoriam Jorge Dias (3 vols, Lisbon, 1974), 3: 243–77, esp. 243-44.Google Scholar On the proposed conquest, ca. 1606, see Hair, P.E.H., “The Abortive Portuguese Settlement of Sierra Leone, 1570-1625,” in Vice-Almirante A. Teixeira da Mota in memoriam (2 vols.: Lisbon, 1987, 1989), 1:171–208, esp. 179-83.Google Scholar The terms “Bissagos,” “Bijago,” and “Bijogo” are variants, but the first has become the accepted international term for the islands. To describe the islanders, the middle term is used in modern Portuguese sources, while the last term, used in the present essay, seems to be preferred by non-Portuguese scholars. For a discussion of these terms and the self-name of this people, see Scantamburlo, Luigi, Etnologia dos Bijagós da Ilha de Bubaque (Lisbon/Bissau, 1991), 22.Google Scholar The most recent publication on the Bijago, Padre Scantemburlo's book is based on a 1970s thesis written for a North American university and on fieldwork in the islands shortly after the independence of Guiné-Bissau, hence the work reflects appropriate post-colonial ideological caution. It criticizes the general depreciatory depiction of the Bijogo in early sources as “colonial,” a criticism with probably a measure of justification. Brooks goes further and suggests that relations between the Bijogo and Biafada were peaceful until Europeans brought the trade in slaves, which encouraged the Bijogo to attack the Biafada. However, he weakens his case by citing an alleged conquest of the former by the latter “towards the end of the fifteenth century”—his source indicates a pre-1460 date, that is, before the Portuguese reached this district (Brooks, , “Bolama,” 7Google Scholar). Elsewhere he states that the Biafada conquest was “possibly provoked by Bijago commerce raiding” (Brooks, , Landlords, 261Google Scholar).

14. Almada, , Tratado, 52, 55Google Scholar; Bràsio, , Monumenta, 2d ser., 3:315, 321Google Scholar; Almada, Brief treatise, chap. 10/2, 11/1, 11/3. In 1635, however, a Portuguese source firmly listed Bolama among the Bissagos Islands: Thilmans, G. and de Moraes, N.I., “Le routier de la côte de Guinée de Francisco Pirez de Carvalho (1635),” Bulletin de l'Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire, 32B (1970), 350.Google Scholar

15. It is, of course, perfectly possible that “Bulama” was originally a name for the part of the mainland adjoining the island, and was only later applied to the island. The peninsula to which Bulama is nearly attached is, to be more precise, a small and narrow peninsula jutting out slightly from a much longer and wider peninsula, the former lying between Rio da Junqueira and Rio Balola and today the site of the town of São João, the latter being the land running between the east bank of Rio Jeba and the west bank of Rio Balola. The major peninsula is intersected by innumerable creeks and minor waterways, and has sandbanks along some of its shores, which helps to explain why its early mapping was both inaccurate and wildly inconsistent.

16. Almada, , Tratado, 52Google Scholar; Bràsio, , Monumenta, 2d ser., 3:315Google Scholar—my translation in Almada, Brief treatise, chap. 10/2, overlooks the ambiguity; the second reference is in my translation, chap. 11/3, but not in the Portuguese editions cited, which use a different text; see instead the first sentence of chapter 11—(translated) “Bolama Point is the first land of the Biafada” (Almada, , Tratado, 55Google Scholar; Bràsio, , Monumenta, 2d ser., 3:321Google Scholar).

17. Donelha, , Descrição, 173 (my translation prefers “lands”), 321n303.Google Scholar “Mompara” was a Biafada territory lying a little further inland, on the north bank of Rio Balola (ibid., 321n306—the map, Figure 12, shows it extending too far downriver).

18. de Figueiredo, Manuel, Hydrographia…com os Roteiros… (Lisbon, 1614), f. 42v.Google Scholar

19. da Mota, Teixeira, “Actividade marítima,” 245n11Google Scholar; Bràsio, , Monumenta, 2d ser., 4 (Lisbon, 1968), item 45Google Scholar; Jesuit documents on the Guinea of Cape Verde and the Cape Verde Islands 1585-1617 in English translation, trans, and ed. Hair, P.E.H. (Liverpool, 1989)Google Scholar, item 13. The Jesuits most probably obtained their information from the Cape Verde Islands trading community and may even have read Almada's manuscript. Although two Jesuit missionaries made contact with the rulers of several Biafada kingdoms, the kingdoms did not include Bulama, which was probably small and unimportant. An unpublished Jesuit account of the region written ca.1615 discusses the Bijogo and Biafada but does not refer to Bulama: Ãlvares, Manuel, Ethiopia Minor, trans, and ed. Hair, P.E.H. (Liverpool, 1990).Google Scholar

20. In the 1790s there was still discussion as to whether the peninsula was an island or not: Beaver, Philip, African Memoranda: relative to an attempt to establish a British Settlement on the Island of Bulama…in the year 1792… (London, 1805), 97, 102.Google Scholar

21. Donelha, , Descrição, 158/159.Google Scholar

22. See the discussion in da Mota, Avelino Teixeira, “Un document nouveau pour l'histoire des Peuls au Sénégal pendant les XVème et XVIème siècles,” Boletim Cultural da Guiné Portuguesa, 24 (1969), 781–860.Google Scholar

23. Brooks, , “Bolama,” 7.Google Scholar But it is suggested that the islands were controlled in order “to assure safe passage for Biafada commercial vessels making their way through the Bissagos Islands to Sape markets in the South,” which even topographically and navigationally strains belief. Possibly Donelha had in mind the supposed conquest when he stated that Bolama was “now belonging to the Biafada.”

24. The same tradition was reported as having been picked up by the French ca.1700 (Labat, Jean-Baptiste, Nouvelle Relation de l'Afrique Occidentale [5 vols.: Paris, 1728], 5: 150Google Scholar), and was repeated by a Biafada ruler to the Englishman, Beaver, in 1792 (Beaver, , African Memoranda, 103Google Scholar), both instances being noted below. Since Almada's account was unpublished until 1733, and then appeared only in Portuguese, it is certain that the French obtained the story from African informants, and almost certain that Beaver did the same. The persistence of the tradition over a period of two hundred years is interesting, but it is difficult to decide whether this strengthens or weakens its credibility as representing an actual historical event.

25. Coelho, Francisco de Lemos, Duas descrições seiscentistas da Guiné, ed. Peres, D. (Lisbon, 1953), 50–52Google Scholar; Description of the Coast of Guinea (1684), trans, and ed. Hair, P.E.H. (Liverpool, 1985), chap. 8/1-7.Google Scholar The 1684 text is a slightly enlarged version of the 1669 text. Lemos Coelho had visited Bulama and in a launch sailed through the narrow channel between the island and the mainland. Modern navigational instructions for the Canal de Bolama and the Porto de Bolama (“on the site of Port Beaver”) refer to “good temporary anchorage in Baia das Prainhas” Africa Pilot, Volume I, 1(12th ed.: London, 1967), 332–35.Google Scholar

26. Bulama was the capital of Portuguese Guinea from 1879 to 1941.

27. Almada, , Tratado, 52Google Scholar; Bràsio, , Monumenta, 2d ser., 3:315Google Scholar; Almada, Brief treatise, chap. 10/2; Coelho, Lemos, Duas descrições, 42, 175–76Google Scholar; Lemos Coelho, Description, chap. 7/2.

28. See Scantamburlo, , Etnologia, 18–22.Google Scholar The linguistic arguments produced to explain the “origins” of the Biafada and Bijogo, and even to provide different “origins” for the various Bijogo groups, are lacking in sound scholarship. Scamburlo justly concludes that present-day linguistic and cultural differentiation within the Bijogo is to be explained, not by different “origins,” but by the geographical separation between the various islands operating over a long period.

29. Les voyages du Sieur he Maire aux Isles Canaries, Cap-verd, Senegal, et Gambie (Paris, 1695), 104.Google Scholar

30. Labat, , Nouvelle Relation, 5:141–56Google Scholar; Cultru, Pierre, ed., Premier voyage du Sieur de La Courbe fait à la coste d'Afrique en 1685 (Paris, 1913), 225–27.Google Scholar For a discussion of Labat's treatment of the La Courbe accounts, see Cultru, , Histoire du Sénégal du XVe siècle à 1870 (Paris, 1910).Google Scholar

31. da Mota, Avelino Teixeira, As viagens do Bispo D. Frei Vitoriano Portuense à Guiné e a cristianização dos reis de Bissau (Lisbon, 1974), 37.Google Scholar

32. Bulama Island, though of no great size, was larger than existing fortified islands in western Guinea,—Gorée Island in Senegal, James Island in the Gambia, and Bunce Island in Sierra Leone.

33. Labat, , Nouvelle Relation, 87–89.Google Scholar

34. Cultru, , Voyage, 225.Google Scholar

35. Labat, , Nouvelle Relation, 150Google Scholar, and “Carte de la Cote & des Isles…” Labat's map is reproduced, together with a manuscript original, in Teixeira da Mota, Viagens, figures 26 and 28. These maps misrepresent the size and shape of Bulama, but are the earliest to supply depths in the channels around the island. A feature of the Labat/Brue account and the accompanying map is the earliest designation of the mainland as a peninsula, “Presqu'isle des Beafares.”

36. Brooks, , Bulama, 10–11Google Scholar, for the 1727 attempt, citing a conference paper by Jean Boulègue.

37. “Documentos acêrca de Serra Leôa”, Arquivo das Coloniais 1 (1917), 112–13.Google Scholar

38. Golbéry, S.M.X., Fragmens d'un voyage en Afrique (Paris, 1802)Google Scholar; and for references to French interest in Bolama in the mid 1760s, and again in 1779, see (Abbé) Demanet, , Nouvelle Histoire de l'Afrique Française (2 vols.: Paris, 1767), 1: 211Google Scholar (the passage cited in translation in Wadstrom, C.B., An essay on Colonization… (2 vols, London, 1794–1795), 2: 130–31.Google Scholar Demanet, however, wrongly stated that “the natives of Bissao…at present possess the island”); Machat, J., ed., Documents sur les établissements français de l'Afrique occidental au XVlIIe siècle (Paris, 1906), 92-93, 134Google Scholar; Brooks, , “Bolama,” 10–12.Google Scholar

39. Wadstrom, , Colonization, 2:132Google Scholar; Beaver, , African Memoranda, 345.Google Scholar Although Beaver's work provides the fullest account of the Bulama settlement, much of the material had already been cited or summarized, often from Beaver's letters from Bulama, in the earlier work by Wadstrom. The project of a French settlement on Bolama was allegedly proposed by Barber, a Liverpool slave trader with bases in the lies de Los and the Sierra Leone estuary. For connections at this date between French and Liverpool traders, see Rodney, , Upper Guinea, 251.Google Scholar Documents probably of 1788, apparently produced by or for Blanchot de Verly, the governor of Gorée from 1786 to 1789, discuss the Bissagos Islands and a proposed colony on Bolama (Sources de l'histoire de l'Afrique au Sud de Sahara dans les Archives et Bibliothèques françaises (3 vols.: Zug, 1971–1976)Google Scholar, item 6401, listed documents in Versailles Memorial Library). Not having seen these documents, I cannot say whether they are a response to the Barber proposal or an independent move by the French.

40. In 1752 the Portuguese crown ordered the formal annexation of Bolama and in 1753 a padrão (territorial claim marker) was erected on the island, although it was not settled by Portuguese civilians until 1828, not formally visited by a military detachment until 1830, and did not possess an official residence until 1837 (Barcellos, Christiano José de Senna, Subsidios para a história de Cabo Verde e Guiné (7 parts: Lisbon, 1899–1913), 4:203-04, 217-18, 252Google Scholar; “Documentos,” 106, 111-12). Whatever form the padrão took, it must soon have disintegrated since its presence was not indicated in any later source. According to Senna Barcellos, the 1752 event was a by-product of the donation of territory to Portugal by an alleged “king of/at Sierra Leone.” For this puzzling donation, see de Andrade, António Alberto, “Bernardino Alvares de Andrade, um ‘guineense’ esquecido (achegas para a história da Guiné e da Serra Leoa),” Boletim Cultural da Guiné Portuguesa, 25 (1970), 117–215.Google Scholar I hope to publish an account of the events leading up to the 1752-53 episode.

41. de Andrade, Bernardino António Alvares, Planta da Praça de Bissau e suas adjacentes [1796] ed. Peres, Damião (Lisbon, 1952), 44–45.Google Scholar Alvares de Andrade was a military officer stationed at Bissau from 1766 to 1775. He gave the size of Little Bulama as “not more than 3.5 leagues in circumference” and that of Great Bulama as “4 leagues across and 3.5 long”, which makes the latter ten times the area of the former, which, if the former is Ilha das Cobras, is approximately correct. Note that when he wrote a report in 1777 discussing Portuguese commercial activities in named localities to the south of Bissau, he made no mention of Bolama: Andrade, , “Bernardino Alvares de Andrade,” 191–94.Google Scholar

42. In 1669 and 1684 Lemos Coelho commended the timber on Bolama as suitable for ship-repairing and shipbuilding, but did not claim that the timber was actually cut and used (Coelho, Lemos, Descrições, 51, 189Google Scholar; Description, chap. 8/3). A similar commendation was made in 1796, but in relation to Little Bulama (de Andrada, Alvares, Planta, 44Google Scholar).

43. Beaver, , African Memoranda, 111, 135,160, 162, 166, 230, 241, 274.Google Scholar Note, however, that some of the cutting of timber was done on the mainland shore, which Beaver claimed also required his permission.

44. Ibid., xiv, 2. The promoter in question, Henry Dalrymple, had probably read Labat while stationed for six months in 1779 at the captured French island of Gorée, where he had collected information on Bulama. Wadstrom gave a less damaging account of the choice: the promoters had been particularly influenced by the alleged Brue account and had not known the Demanet reference, but had studied “other descriptions, oral and historical,” and Dalrymple while at Gorée had talked to the son of a former French governor who had “frequently visited Bulama” (Wadstrom, , Colonization, 2:130, 143Google Scholar).

45. Hair, P.E.H., “Beaver on Bulama,” Boletim Cultural da Guiné Portuguesa, 15 (1960), 360–83.Google Scholar For footnotes relating to certain of the promoters and to the intentions of the venture, see Wood, A. Skeffington, “Sierra Leone and Bulama: a Fragment of Missionary History,” Sierra Leone Bulletin of Religion, 3 (1961), 16–22Google Scholar; Hair, P.E.H., “Sierra Leone and Bulama 1792-4: Further Notes,” Sierra Leone Bulletin of Religion, 6 (1964), 26–31.Google Scholar For the idealist and Utopian background to the expedition, see the chapter on “New Jerusalems” in Curtin, P.D., The image of Africa (Madison, 1964).CrossRefGoogle Scholar More recently, the 1792-93 British settlement and the subsequent 1870 arbitration have been briefly discussed in Pelissier, René, Naissance de la Guinée (Paris, 1988).Google Scholar

46. Beaver, African Memoranda, [i].

47. Ibid., 473. So named because some scholars thought that the Bissagos Islands were the Hesperides of the Ancients (Wadstrom, , Colonization, 143Google Scholar).

48. Teixeira da Mota noted that a few other toponyms deriving from the 1792-93 settlement survived for a time on British maps: Calypso Island, Hippo Creek, Dalrymple Bay, Benison Point, Hankey Point (da Mota, Avelino Teixeira, Topónimos de origem portuguesa na costa ocidental de Ãfrica (Bissau, 1950), 169–73.Google Scholar More than one hundred of the original settlers abandoned the island and returned to Britain at an early stage.

49. “Plan of the Island of Bulama,” in Wadstrom, Colonization; and the map discussed, 154. For French eighteenth-century maps see Teixeira da Mota, Viagens, figures 24-29, 31.

50. I hope to examine the relations between the local Portuguese and the British settlers in 1792-93 in a future paper. A Portuguese writer, while condemning the “extreme tolerance of our authorities [at Bissau], explicable only by their lack of conscientiousness in respect of their-duties and the sovereign rights of Portugal,” goes on to suggest that by the 1790s the Bissau authorities had lost any record or other recollection of the 1752-53 annexation of Bulama: Barreto, João, História da Guiné (Lisbon, 1938), 172Google Scholar).

51. The treaty, in English, was first given in Wadstrom, , Colonization, 39Google Scholar, and then in Beaver, , African Memoranda, 72–73.Google Scholar In 1856 the Bijogo chiefs of Canhabaque declared that Bulama Island had never been sold to the British but had been rented to them to farm and to use as a commercial base (Barcellos, Senna, Subsidios, 6:73Google Scholar). It is very plausible that this was in fact the perception of the transaction among the Africans.

52. Ibid., 66, 343.

53. This reference to “Great Bulama” as part of the mainland, or at least as an island on the mainland side of Bulama, contradicts the Portuguese reference to Bulama Grande cited earlier. Perhaps the English map which influenced Beaver was inaccurate in this respect.

54. Ibid., 97,101-02. According to Wadstrom, the intention was also to buy “the Island of Areas,” an uninhabited and waterless small island in the Rio Jeba estuary, lying to the north of Bulama Island, and its cession was thought to have been included in the mainland land purchase (Wadstrom, , Colonization, 140, 142, 310Google Scholar).

55. The treaty was printed in ibid., 140; Beaver, , African Memoranda, 466–68.Google Scholar

56. Beaver, , African Memoranda, 342–3.Google Scholar

57. Wadstrom, , Colonization, 141.Google Scholar

58. Barcellos, Senna, Subsidios, 3:385–86.Google Scholar That the Portuguese bothered to make local treaties in 1828 suggests that they had little confidence in the status of their annexation of the island in 1752-53, and perhaps weakens their later case against the British claim of effective treaties of cession made in 1792.

59. Brooks, , “Bolama,” 18–35Google Scholar, deals in detail with this period; see also his other publications on the period, as there cited. Two Sierra Leone governors tried to extend British influence from the island to part of the mainland, possibly influenced by knowledge of Beaver's treaty with the Biafada, but this extension was not supported by the Colonial Office and Foreign Office in London (Hargreaves, John D., Prelude to the Partition of West Africa [London, 1963], 48Google Scholar).

60. The British kept taking down the Portuguese flag on the moral grounds that the Portuguese still permitted slave trading (ibid., 47-49).

61. Brooks, George E., “Bolama as a Prospective Site for American Colonization in the 1820s and 1830s,” Boletim Cultural da Guiné Portuguesa, 28 (1973), 5–21.Google Scholar

62. Hargreaves, , Prelude, 138–40.Google Scholar

63. Ibid., 83-85.

64. Hertslet, E., The Map of Africa by Treaty (2nd ed.: 2 vols, London, 1896), 2:688–90Google Scholar; Beaver, , African Memoranda, 214–16.Google Scholar

65. da Mota, Teixeira, Mar, além mar, 103.Google Scholar