|
Portugal maintained control of the region by ceding prazos (land grants) to European colonists. The prazos made their owners virtual lords of African fiefdoms, with nearly complete control over Mozambican labour and resources. In modified form the prazo system lasted until the 1930s. The Portuguese established fortified mining camps in the highlands of western Mozambique and northern Zimbabwe, but Portugal had difficulty attracting European settlers into the area. Partly as a result, the Rozwi chief Changamire was able to lead a revolt in 1693 that succeeded in expelling the Portuguese from most of the highlands.
Ivory and Slaves:
Despite their eviction from the highlands, the Portuguese gradually extended their control up the Zambezi Valley and north and south along the Mozambican coast. In 1727 they founded a trading post at Inhambane, on the southern coast, and in 1781 they permanently occupied Delagoa Bay, an important location farther south on the site of modern Maputo. Dutch and Austrian traders had briefly settled at Delagoa Bay, and English and American traders had hunted Whales and traded ivory with the nearby Nguni and Tonga chiefs. From Delagoa Bay, Portugal controlled a prosperous ivory trade, which in turn attracted caravans from the interior. At roughly the same time as the rise of the ivory trade, climatic changes and the rise of the slave trade had even greater effects on Mozambique. The trade in slaves, which had existed at a low level before the arrival of Europeans, continued throughout the colonial period, under the hand of African and European traders. By the late 1700s, however, demand for slaves had grown. When prolonged droughts started in Mozambique in the 1760s and became endemic from the 1790s, crops failed, cattle suffered, chiefdoms faltered, and traditional patterns of long-distance commerce were disrupted.
Banditry and slave raiding increased, and large numbers of slaves were brought to the coast. By 1800 Mozambique had become one of the world's major slave-trading centers. Hundreds of thousands of Mozambicans were sold to slave traders and sent to the Americans. Until at least the 1870s, no other form of commerce generated as much profit. |
