1899: the secret declaration that revived the Anglo-Portuguese alliance

On Saturday 14 October 1899 two men put their names to a single document in London. One was Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, Britain's prime minister, who also ran the Foreign Office. The other was Luís de Soveral, Portugal's minister at the British court, who wrote his letters from 12 Gloucester Place.1 source

The text ran in English and Portuguese, side by side in parallel columns. The two signatures stretched across the foot of the page. It was marked secret, and it stayed secret for years: Britain did not show it to the German government until 1913.1 source

Its timing was no accident. Three days earlier, at the expiry of a Boer ultimatum on 11 October, Britain had gone to war with the two Boer republics of southern Africa, the South African Republic (the Transvaal) and the Orange Free State. On 12 October Boer commandos crossed into the British colonies of Natal and the Cape.1 source

The Transvaal had no coast of its own. Its nearest port was Lourenço Marques, today's Maputo, on Delagoa Bay in Portuguese Mozambique. Whatever Portugal did there would matter to the war.2 sources

England and Portugal were already old allies by 1899. On 16 June 1373, at St Paul's Cathedral in London, Edward III of England and King Fernando and Queen Leonor of Portugal agreed a treaty of perpetual friendship. Its first article bound the two crowns to be 'friends to friends and enemies to enemies'.2 sources

The better-known Treaty of Windsor followed on 9 May 1386, between Richard II and John I of Portugal, the founder of the Avis dynasty, who had beaten Castile at Aljubarrota the year before. It covered mutual defence and trade, and let the subjects of each kingdom live in the other. In 1387 John married Philippa of Lancaster, daughter of John of Gaunt, which tied the alliance to the English royal family.2 sources

The seventeenth century renewed the bond three times. A treaty of 29 January 1642 between Charles I and John IV promised that neither king would 'consent nor adhere unto any war, counsel, or Treaty, in prejudice of the other'. A treaty signed at Westminster on 10 July 1654 with Oliver Cromwell's government opened Portuguese trade, including most of the trade with Brazil, to English merchants.2 sources

Then, on 23 June 1661, came the marriage treaty of Charles II and the Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza. Portugal handed over Tangier and Bombay. In a secret article England promised to defend all of Portugal's colonies. In 1899 the first part of that article would be quoted word for word.2 sources

Nine years before the declaration, the alliance had nearly broken. In the 1880s Portugal claimed the interior of Africa between Angola on the west coast and Mozambique on the east, land that is now in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi. The claim was drawn on a map of 1886 that coloured it pink, and Portuguese still call it the Mapa Cor-de-Rosa, the Pink Map.2 sources

Britain had other plans for the same ground. On 11 January 1890 Lord Salisbury sent Lisbon a memorandum demanding that Portuguese troops withdraw from Mashonaland and the Shire–Nyasa region. Portugal gave way. A treaty of 11 June 1891, negotiated in London by the same Soveral, fixed the new borders.2 sources

In Portugal the retreat felt like a national humiliation. The composer Alfredo Keil wrote a march of protest that year, with words by Henrique Lopes de Mendonça. It was called A Portuguesa, and on 19 June 1911 the young Republic's Constituent Assembly made it the national anthem.2 sources

The bitterness lasted. In November 1899 the British minister in Lisbon, Sir Hugh MacDonell, reported that the 'ill-feeling caused throughout the country by the events of 1891' still coloured the attitude of all classes in Portugal, with the exception of the king and perhaps a few people involved in foreign policy.1 source

By 1898 Portugal was in desperate straits for money. It had discussed raising a loan in London secured on the revenues of its colonies, and Germany demanded a share in any such deal. British officials debated letting Germany in while keeping France out. On 30 August 1898 Arthur Balfour, standing in for Salisbury at the Foreign Office, and the German ambassador Count Paul von Hatzfeldt signed two conventions and a secret note in London.1 source

The first convention dealt with a loan to Portugal secured on the customs revenues of Mozambique, Angola and Portuguese Timor. If either government agreed to lend, the other had the right to lend a share. Britain's share would rest on the customs of Mozambique south of the Zambezi, which included Lourenço Marques, and of a strip of central Angola. Germany's would rest on all the other customs, including Timor's. If Portugal defaulted, each lender would take over the custom houses in its zone.1 source

The second, secret convention went further. It opened by admitting that 'it may unfortunately not be found possible to maintain the integrity of the African possessions of Portugal'. Both powers would keep any third power out of Mozambique, Angola and Timor, and neither would claim the other's zone. One article dealt with trade if Portugal gave up or lost those colonies.1 source

The word partition appears nowhere in the text. But in June 1898, by Salisbury's own record, Hatzfeldt had explained that in choosing where each loan's customs were collected the two powers would be fixing a footing which, 'in case of certain eventualities, would decide the destiny of the territories in question'.1 source

In the event Portugal never borrowed on those terms, and the 1898 conventions never came into operation. Lisbon had not been shown the text: Balfour told Soveral only that an arrangement about a possible loan had been reached. In September 1899 MacDonell wrote privately that what preoccupied the Portuguese government most was 'the fear that we may fall back upon the Secret Convention', whatever it might be, and leave them in the lurch.1 source

In 1895 the Transvaal president, Paul Kruger, opened a railway from Pretoria to Delagoa Bay. It gave the landlocked republic a route to the sea that did not pass through the British ports of Natal and the Cape.1 source

As war loomed in 1899, arms and ammunition for the Transvaal kept arriving at Lourenço Marques. Portugal said a treaty it had signed with the Transvaal in 1875 obliged it to let them through. Salisbury put the British case bluntly in a private letter to Soveral: 'it is essential that we should stop the supply of arms through Lourenço Marques.' Otherwise, he warned, Britain's only other means would be a blockade.1 source

The Admiralty had its own worry. If Portugal declared itself neutral, British warships might be refused coal at Delagoa Bay. On 6 October Salisbury asked Soveral to add a promise that Portugal would not proclaim neutrality at all.1 source

The idea of a formal agreement came from the Portuguese side. On 17 September 1899, when Salisbury pressed him to stop the arms traffic, Soveral proposed instead that the two governments sign an engagement binding each to close alliance in case of war with the Transvaal. On 23 September Salisbury told him the cabinet would be willing to form an offensive and defensive alliance with Portugal against the Transvaal if war came.1 source

Soveral sent a draft on 2 October in which each side promised to defend the other's territory. Salisbury turned it down. He wanted something more useful from Portugal, and he preferred the exact words of the old treaties for Britain's side.1 source

Soveral would not go that far. A declaration of war, he said on 6 October, would stir comment in Lisbon and the ill-will of other powers. He offered instead what Britain most needed: no more supplies would pass from the coast through Portuguese territory to the Transvaal. Salisbury accepted, and added his request about neutrality.1 source

The finished text is short. It declared the 'ancient treaties of alliance, amity and guarantee' between the two crowns still in force. It then quoted in full Article 1 of the 1642 treaty and the first part of the secret article of 1661.1 source

Portugal's side took two sentences. Its government undertook 'not to permit, after the declaration of war between Great Britain and the South African Republic, or during the continuance of the war, the importation and passage of arms, and of munitions of war destined for the latter'. And it 'will not proclaim neutrality in the war between Great Britain and the South African Republic'.1 source

The Orange Free State is not mentioned, and Portugal promised no troops. Britain promised nothing new: it restated the secret article of 1661, whose 'conquests or colonies' now meant Mozambique, Angola and Portugal's other territories. British governments had not always read it that way. In 1825 the foreign secretary George Canning had denied that the guarantee covered Portugal's colonies.1 source

Luís Maria Pinto de Soveral was born in 1851 at São João da Pesqueira, in the Douro valley of northern Portugal. He joined the legation in London in 1885 and became a fixture of high society there. He was a close friend of the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII, and a regular guest at Sandringham.2 sources

He was more than a society figure. MacDonell reported in 1899 that Soveral had his own 'scheme of upsetting the Anglo-German Agreement by a direct convention with us'. Lichnowsky later credited the 1899 declaration to 'the endeavours of Marquis Soveral, who was presumably aware of the Anglo-German agreement'. Sir Edward Grey went further, writing that Soveral knew all about the secret agreement and had made no secret of it to Salisbury.2 sources

Portugal made him a peer in 1898 and Marquis of Soveral in 1901 (one account says 1900), so in October 1899 he signed simply as Luiz de Soveral. When the monarchy fell in 1910 he was still in London. He stood by the exiled King Manuel II and Queen Amélia, left public life, and died in Paris in 1922.3 sources

Britain now held two secret commitments that pulled different ways. One, with Germany, planned for the day Portugal lost its colonies. The other, with Portugal, promised to defend them against all enemies. Portugal was a party only to the second.1 source

In public Portugal looked neutral. In November 1899 MacDonell complained that ministers tolerated violent anti-British articles in the press, and noted that if Britain ever asked for more active help they 'would be virtually lost in public opinion by being forced to disclose its existence'.1 source

In December 1900 the British Channel Fleet visited Lisbon. King Carlos gave a state banquet and pressed for the alliance to be stated openly. At a second banquet MacDonell told his hosts that the old treaties 'have been recently strengthened by late events', without saying what those events were.1 source

Berlin noticed. On 20 December 1900 a German diplomat asked whether the Lisbon speeches changed the 1898 agreement. Lord Lansdowne, Salisbury's successor at the Foreign Office, said they 'left the secret agreement exactly where it was'.1 source

When Britain and Germany reopened talks on Portugal's colonies before the First World War, Sir Edward Grey would sign a new deal only if the agreements of 1898 and 1899 were published with it. Berlin's Foreign Office objected. One argument, Lichnowsky recalled, was that publishing the 1899 text might damage the Chancellor, Bethmann Hollweg, as 'a proof of British hypocrisy and perfidy'. The new agreement was initialled in August 1913 but never signed.2 sources

Portugal kept its African colonies, and the alliance was invoked again. On 23 February 1916 Portugal seized the German merchant ships lying in its ports. On 9 March 1916 Germany declared war, saying the Portuguese government regarded itself as 'the vassal of Great Britain'. Portugal's minister in Washington, the Viscount de Alte, replied that his country was 'drawn into the war as a result of her long-standing alliance with England'.1 source

On 12 October 1943 Winston Churchill told the House of Commons that Britain, 'basing themselves upon this ancient Alliance', had asked neutral Portugal for facilities in the Azores to protect Atlantic shipping, and Portugal had agreed. In his list of the treaties behind the request he included 'a secret declaration of 1899'.1 source

In 1982, during the Falklands War, Britain asked again. A US State Department memorandum of 26 May 1982 records that Portugal agreed in principle to let up to one RAF Nimrod a day stage and refuel at Lajes in the Azores, with a written request for each flight.3 sources