Dark Lisbon: The Empire That Turned People Into Cargo

You are outside the Museu do Aljube, a few steps from the cathedral. It is a plain building. For almost forty years it was a political prison. We begin at the end of the Portuguese empire, not the beginning. From 1933, Portugal lived under a dictatorship, Salazar's Estado Novo. The political police, the PIDE, locked up opponents here. If you go in, you will see the isolation cells, the curros. They are just over a meter wide. They have no window. Many prisoners came from the colonies or were fighting for their independence. The regime presented itself as heir to the discoveries and defended…

You are in Alfama, in what was one of Lisbon's Jewish quarters. Look at the sloping alleys, the stairways, the washing hung out to dry. Find the sign for Rua da Judiaria. For centuries, Lisbon's Jewish community was large and influential. Physicians, astronomers, mapmakers. Much of their knowledge served the navigators. In 1492, when Spain expelled its Jews, tens of thousands crossed into Portugal. They paid to get in. In 1496, King Manuel I wanted to marry a Spanish princess. The condition was to expel the Jews from Portugal as well. But Manuel did not want to lose such useful people. In …

Look at this facade covered in stones carved into diamond points. It is the Casa dos Bicos, the House of Points. It was built around 1523. It was commissioned by Brás de Albuquerque, son of Afonso de Albuquerque, the great Portuguese conqueror in Asia. Afonso was not an explorer. He was a military strategist. He understood that ships alone could not control the spice trade: you had to seize ports. In 1510 he conquered Goa, in India. After the victory, he ordered the killing of the city's Muslim population: men, women and children. In 1511 he took Malacca, the key to trade with the spice is…

You are in the Mouraria. Look at the peeling facades, the photos of fado singers on the walls, the shops run by traders from Bangladesh, India and China. This district was born of a defeat. In 1147, King Afonso Henriques took Lisbon from the Muslims with the help of crusaders from northern Europe. The city was sacked. The Muslims who stayed were made to live outside the walls, on this hillside. Here they remained, with their own laws and their mosque, for more than three centuries. In 1496, the same decree that struck the Jews reached them too. Expulsion or conversion. The Mouraria became …

You are in Largo de São Domingos. Look at the church and, in the square, a memorial with a Star of David and a phrase written in many languages: Lisbon, city of tolerance. That memorial recalls something that happened here on 19 April 1506. In this church, during Mass, some worshippers believed they saw a miracle: a light on a crucifix. A New Christian, a Jew converted by force, said it was only a reflection. He was dragged outside and killed. Some Dominican friars stirred up the crowd. Foreign sailors from the port joined in. For three days they hunted New Christians across the city. Betw…

You are in Rossio, the great square with its black and white wave-patterned paving. Look at the theater with columns on the north side. Where that theater stands today rose the Estaus Palace. From the late sixteenth century it was the seat of the Portuguese Inquisition. The Inquisition reached Portugal in 1536. Its main target was the New Christians, suspected of secretly still practicing Judaism. Denunciations by neighbors, secret jails, torture, seizure of property. Every so often, an auto-da-fé in this very square or by the river. The condemned were paraded, sentences were read out, and …

You are in Largo do Carmo. Look at the convent's Gothic arches, roofless, open to the sky. They have been ruins since 1755. On 1 November 1755, All Saints' Day, an earthquake destroyed Lisbon. Then came a tsunami and a fire. Tens of thousands died. The Lisbon of the discoveries vanished that day. The royal palace, the India House, the archives, the harbor warehouses. Much of what you see downtown today came afterward. This square also saw another ending, much more recent. Look at the Guard barracks to one side. On 25 April 1974, a group of army captains, weary of thirteen years of war in A…

You are in Praça do Comércio, open to the river. Before the earthquake, the royal palace stood here, over the water, beside the empire's warehouses. One of those warehouses was the India House: spices, silks, porcelain. Another was the House of Guinea and Mina: gold, ivory and people. The story began in 1444, in the port of Lagos, in southern Portugal. A chronicler described the first large sale of captured Africans: more than two hundred, separated from their families on the beach. He said himself that he wept to see it. What followed knew no limit. Portugal took Africans to Lisbon, to the…

You are at Cais do Sodré, on the bank of the Tagus. Look at the water, the ferries crossing to the far shore, the quays. For centuries this was Lisbon's working waterfront. Shipyards, fish markets, warehouses. And the bodies that kept all of it moving. In sixteenth-century engravings of this riverside, Africans appear everywhere. Oarsmen, dockers, street vendors, water carriers with jugs on their heads. Some were slaves of great lords. Others belonged to small craftsmen, who hired them out by the day. There were also freed people, who had bought their freedom or received it in a will. Blac…

Look for the street sign: Rua do Poço dos Negros. The street of the pit of the Blacks. It is a real name, more than five hundred years old. In 1515, King Manuel I received a complaint. In Lisbon, the bodies of dead African slaves were being left lying in the street or on rubbish heaps, in full view. They had no right to a normal Christian burial. Their owners did not want to pay for one. The king's solution was to order a large pit dug, outside the walls of the time, to throw the bodies into. With lime, to prevent the smell and disease. That pit was in this area. The street kept the name l…

You are in Madragoa. Look at the low houses, the narrow streets, the flowerpots in the windows. It feels like a village inside the city. For centuries, this area was called Mocambo. The word comes from a language of Angola and means refuge, or village. At the end of the sixteenth century, a royal decree recognized the Mocambo quarter by that name. It was one of the first organized African communities in Europe. Living here were slaves who worked elsewhere, freed people, their families. They had their festivals, their religious brotherhoods, their music. Some of the dances they danced became…

You have reached the Museu do Oriente, in Alcântara. Look at the building: a great block from the 1940s, built by the dictatorship as a salt cod warehouse. Inside it keeps the memory of the Portuguese presence in Asia. Japanese screens showing the Portuguese in baggy trousers with huge noses. Chinese porcelain. Images of Goa, Macau, Timor. The screens are interesting for how they saw them. To sixteenth-century Japanese, the Portuguese were the southern barbarians. Strange, loud, rich. Portugal was the first modern European colonial empire. It was also the last to leave. Goa was Portuguese …