Mozambique
  Mozambique is situated alongside the Indian Ocean, and characterised by a variety of landscapes. It is heavily influenced by the mixing of the country’s African populations together with other groups who crossed the Indian Ocean, like the Europeans, Indians and Arabic nations. Until the 17th century, the northern coast of Mozambique, from Moma to the Quirimbas islands, was under strong Arabic influence and a trade in slaves flourished under Muslim rule. From the 18th century, the number of both European and Arabic posts increased substantially and Africans were traded into slavery on French sugar and coffee plantations in some of the Indian Ocean islands as well as Brazil, Cuba and North America. As international demand for African slaves increased, so did Mozambique’s involvement in the trade, both across the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. Mozambique’s secret slave trade continued until the early 20th century, providing enslaved Africans to the island São Tomé, to French ruled plantations in the Indian Ocean or to the old Rhodesian (now Zimbabwe) or South African mines. Today there are some very visible and tangible legacies of enslavement that stand as living testimony to the violence and exploitation of Mozambique’s population.



Zambezi Valley

By the end of the 16th century, the Portuguese had ‘settled’ on the island of Mozambique directing trade southwards to the port of Inhambane. Later they moved to the Zambezi Valley, and the nearby towns of Sena and Tete and settled there to trade via the port of Quelimane. These ruins were once the Carinde Fort, which stood by the Zambezi River in Tete, to protect Portuguese trading interests.

The Portuguese also built churches like Cabaceira Grande as early as the 16th century.

It was also in the 17th century in the Zambezi Valley, that the Portuguese set up a new system of large estates, called prazos, which were intended to develop an economic base and exploit African land. The estates used the main rivers in the surrounding areas to export their produce to the coast. Enslaved Africans were forced to work on these prazos until the early 19th century. This was how the owners of the 18th century prazos – the prazeiros – posted at Quelimane, became involved in exporting Africans, selling both the enslaved and the free, who worked on their land. This is Quane do Marral Prazo (1888). Thousands of Africans worked in agricultural production, in conditions exactly like slavery, on prazos like these.

Island of Mozambique

Mozambique island (about 4 km from the coast), was settled many times by people wanting to exploit the continent and its riches, including its population, and to exchange them for products brought in from the outside. To show how powerful they were, the Portuguese built forts like S. Sebastião.

Between the 17th – 20th centuries, the island was home to the main Portuguese colonial administration. The island was divided into two sections. In one, the buildings were made from lime-stone. This was where the Europeans lived and traded and many of these buildings still stand as reminders of Portuguese domination, for example the churches, forts, slave ‘warehouses’ or places where Africans would take refuge to resist their enslavement or to revolt.

The other section was known as macuti, the African village, where buildings were made from mud, wood, clay and palm leaves.
Ibo Island

Quelimane, Angoche, Inhambane, the Quirimbas islands and Ibo island were the ports where most Africans were exchanged for food products, arms, gun powder and patacas, Spanish currency, in the 18th century. This is S. João Baptista fort, on Ibo Island.



Many nations of people have travelled in and out of Mozambique and these blue waters contain many histories. They also carry many reminders of the violence that took place on these shores during centuries of enslavement in this country.