Portuguese Mozambique

Designation

During its history as a Portuguese colony, the present-day territory of Mozambique had the following formal designations:

1505–1569: Captaincy of Sofala (Portuguese: Capitania de Sofala); Dependency of the Portuguese State of India.

1569–1752: Captaincy of Mozambique and Sofala (Capitania de Moçambique e Sofala); Dependency of the Portuguese State of India.

1752–1836: Captaincy-General of Mozambique, Sofala and Rivers of Sena (Capitania-Geral de Moçambique, Sofala e Rios de Sena); Separate government, independent from that of the Portuguese State of India.

1836–1891: Province of Mozambique (Província de Moçambique)

1891–1893: State of Eastern Africa (Estado da África Oriental)

1893–1926: Province of Mozambique (Província de Moçambique)

1926–1951: Colony of Mozambique (Colónia de Moçambique)

1951–1972: Province of Mozambique (Província de Moçambique)

1973–1975: State of Mozambique (Estado de Moçambique)

Overview

Until the 20th century, the land and peoples of Mozambique were barely affected by the Europeans who came to its shores and entered its major rivers. As the Muslim traders, mostly Swahili, were displaced from their coastal centres and routes to the interior by the Portuguese, migrations of Bantu peoples continued and tribal federations formed and reformed as the relative power of local chiefs changed. For four centuries the Portuguese presence was meagre. Coastal and river trading posts were built, abandoned, and built again. Governors sought personal profits to take back to Portugal, and colonists were not attracted to the distant area with its relatively unattractive climate; those who stayed were traders who married local women and successfully maintained relations with local chiefs.

In Portugal, however, Mozambique was considered to be a vital part of a world empire. Periodic recognition of the relative insignificance of the revenues it could produce was tempered by the mystique which developed regarding the mission of the Portuguese to bring their civilisation to the African territory. It was believed that through missionary activity and other direct contact between Africans and Europeans, the Africans could be taught to appreciate and participate in Portuguese culture.

In the last decade of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th century, integration of Mozambique into the structure of the Portuguese nation was begun. After all of the area of the present province had been recognised by other European powers as belonging to Portugal, administrators waged wars against African polities to assert control over the territory. Civil administration was established throughout the area, the building of an infrastructure was begun, and agreements regarding the transit trade of Mozambique's land-locked neighbours to the west, such as Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, were made.

Colonial legislation discriminated against Africans on cultural grounds. Colonial legislation submitted Africans to forced labour, to pass laws and to segregation in schools. That most Africans were perceived to engage in "uncivilised behaviour" by the Portuguese created a low opinion of Africans as a group among Europeans. The uneducated Portuguese immigrant peasants in urban areas were frequently in direct competition with Africans for jobs and demonstrated jealousies and racial prejudice.

History

When Portuguese explorers reached East Africa in 1498, Swahili commercial settlements had existed along the Swahili Coast and outlying islands for several centuries. From about 1500, Portuguese trading posts and forts became regular ports of call on the new route to the east.

The voyage of Vasco da Gama around the Cape of Good Hope into the Indian Ocean in 1498 marked the Portuguese entry into trade, politics, and society in the Indian Ocean world. The Portuguese gained control of the Island of Mozambique and the port city of Sofala in the early 16th century. Vasco da Gama having visited Mombasa in 1498 was then successful in reaching India thereby permitting the Portuguese to trade with the Far East directly by sea, thus challenging older trading networks of mixed land and sea routes, such as the spice trade routes that used the Persian Gulf, Red Sea and caravans to reach the eastern Mediterranean.

The Republic of Venice had gained control over much of the trade routes between Europe and Asia. After traditional land routes to India had been closed by the Ottoman Turks, Portugal hoped to use the sea route pioneered by da Gama to break the Venetian trading monopoly. Initially, Portuguese rule in East Africa focused mainly on a coastal strip centred in Mombasa. With voyages led by Vasco da Gama, Francisco de Almeida and Afonso de Albuquerque, the Portuguese dominated much of southeast Africa's coast, including Sofala and Kilwa, by 1515. Their main goal was to dominate trade with India. As the Portuguese settled along the coast, they made their way into the hinterland as sertanejos (backwoodsmen). These sertanejos lived alongside Swahili traders and even took up service among Shona kings as interpreters and political advisors. One such sertanejo managed to travel through almost all the Shona kingdoms, including the Mutapa Empire's (Mwenemutapa) metropolitan district, between 1512 and 1516.

By the 1530s, small groups of Portuguese traders and prospectors penetrated the interior regions seeking gold, where they set up garrisons and trading posts at Sena and Tete on the Zambezi River and tried to gain exclusive control over the gold trade. The Portuguese finally entered into direct relations with the Mwenemutapa in the 1560s.

They recorded a wealth of information about the Mutapa kingdom as well as its predecessor, Great Zimbabwe. According to Swahili traders whose accounts were recorded by the Portuguese historian João de Barros, Great Zimbabwe was an ancient capital city built of stones of marvellous size without the use of mortar. And while the site was not within Mutapa's borders, the Mwenemutapa kept noblemen and some of his wives there.

Government

At least since the early 19th century, the legal status of Mozambique always considered it as much a part of Portugal as Lisbon, but as a província ultramarina (overseas province) enjoyed special derogations to account for its distance from Europe.

From 1837, the highest government official in the province of Mozambique has always been the Governor-General, who reported directly to the Government in Lisbon, usually through the Minister of the Overseas. During some periods in the late 19th and the early 20th century, the governors-general of Mozambique received the status of royal commissioners or of high commissioners, which gave them extended executive and legislative powers, equivalent to those of a government minister.

In the 20th century, the province was also subject to the authoritarian Estado Novo regime that ruled Portugal from 1933 to 1974, until the military coup in Lisbon, known as the Carnation Revolution. Most members of the government of Mozambique were from Portugal, but a few were Africans. Nearly all members of the bureaucracy were from Portugal, as most Africans did not have the necessary qualifications to obtain positions.

The Government of Mozambique, like the Portuguese Government itself, was highly centralised. Power was concentrated in the executive branch, and all elections, where they occurred, were carried out using indirect methods. From the Prime Minister's office in Lisbon, authority extended down to the remotest posts and regedorias of Mozambique through a rigid chain of command. The authority of the government of Mozambique was residual, primarily limited to implementing policies already decided in Europe. In 1967, Mozambique also sent seven delegates to the National Assembly in Lisbon.

The highest official in the province was the Governor-General, appointed by the Portuguese Council of Ministers on recommendation of the Overseas Minister. The Governor-General had both executive and legislative authority. A Government Council advised the Governor-General in the running of the province. The functional cabinet consisted of five secretaries appointed by the Overseas Minister on the advice of the Governor-General. A Legislative Council had limited powers and its main activity was approving the provincial budget. Finally, an Economic and Social Council had to be consulted on all draft legislation, and the Governor-General had to justify his decision to Lisbon if he ignored its advice.

Geography

Portuguese East Africa was located in south-eastern Africa. It was a long coastal strip with Portuguese strongholds, from current day Tanzania and Kenya, to the south of current-day Mozambique.

In 1900, the part of modern Mozambique northwest of the Zambezi and Shire Rivers was called Moçambique; the rest of it was Lourenço Marques. Various districts existed, and even issued stamps, during the first part of the century, including Inhambane, Lourenço Marques, Mozambique Colony, Mozambique Company, Nyassa Company, Quelimane, Tete, and Zambésia. The Nyassa Company territory is now Cabo Delgado and Niassa.

In the early- and mid-20th century, a number of changes occurred. Firstly, on 28 June 1919, the Treaty of Versailles transferred the Kionga Triangle, a 1,000 km2 (390 sq mi) territory south of the Rovuma River from German East Africa to Mozambique.

During World War II, the Charter of the Mozambique Company expired, on 19 July 1942; its territory, known as Manica and Sofala, became a district of Mozambique. Mozambique was constituted as four districts on 1 January 1943 — Manica and Sofala, Niassa, Sul do Save (South of the Save River), and Zambézia.

On 20 October 1954, administrative reorganization caused Cabo Delgado and Mozambique districts to be split from Niassa. At the same time, the Sul do Save district was divided into Gaza, Inhambane and Lourenço Marques, while the Tete district was split from Manica and Sofala.

By the early 1970s, Mozambique was bordering the Mozambique Channel, bordering the countries of Malawi, Rhodesia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, and Zambia. Covering a total area of 801,590 km2 (309,500 square miles, slightly less than twice the size of California). With a tropical to subtropical climate, the Zambezi flows through the north-central and most fertile part of the country. Its coastline had 2,470 km (1,530 miles), with 4,571 km (2,840 miles) of land boundaries, its highest point at Monte Binga (2,436 metres, 7,992 ft). The Gorongosa National Park, founded in 1920, was the main natural park in the territory.

The districts with their respective capitals were:

Demographics

At close to the eve of independence in 1973 there were 200,000 white settlers in Mozambique making it smaller than Angola in terms of its settler population. The colony experienced a sizable level of growth in terms of its settler population in the 20th century which was during a period of sizable immigration for Portugal; with a small number of them coming to Mozambique.

By 1970, the Portuguese Overseas Province of Mozambique had about 8,168,933 inhabitants. Nearly 300,000 were white ethnic Portuguese. There was a number of mulattoes, from both European and African ancestry, living across the territory. However, the vast majority of the population belonged to local tribal groups which included the Makua–Lomwe, the Shona and the Tsonga. Other ethnic minorities included British, Greeks, Chinese and Indians. Most inhabitants were black indigenous Africans with a diversity of ethnic and cultural backgrounds, ranging from Tsonga and Makonde to Yao or Shona peoples. The Makua were the largest ethnic group in the north. The Sena and Shona were prominent in the Zambezi valley, and the Tsonga dominated in the south. In addition, several other minority groups lived a tribal lifestyle across the territory.

Mozambique had around 250,000 Europeans in 1974 that made up around 3% of the population. Mozambique was cosmopolitan as it had Indian, Chinese, Greek and Anglophone communities (over 25,000 Indians and 5,000 Chinese by the early 1970s). The capital of Portuguese Mozambique, Lourenço Marques (Maputo), had a population of 355,000 in 1970 with around 100,000 Europeans. Beira had around 115,000 inhabitants at the time with around 30,000 Europeans. Most of the other cities ranged from 10 to 15% in the number of Europeans, win contrast with Portuguese Angola, where cities had European majorities ranging from 50% to 60%.

Society

Starting in 1926, Portugal's colonial authorities abandoned conceptions of an innate inferiority of Africans, and set as their goal the development of a multiethnic society in its African colonies. The establishment of a dual, racialised civil society was formally recognised in Estatuto do Indigenato (The Statute of Indigenous Populations) adopted in 1929, which was based on the subjective concept of civilization versus tribalism. In the administration's view, the goal of civilising mission would only be achieved after a period of Europeanisation or enculturation of African communities.

The Estatuto established a distinction between the colonial citizens, subject to the Portuguese laws and entitled to all citizenship rights and duties effective in the metropole, and the indígenas (natives), subjected to colonial legislation and customary African laws. Between the two groups there was a third small group, the assimilados, comprising native blacks, mulatos, Asians, and mixed-race people, who had at least some formal education and not subjected to paid forced labour. They were entitled to some citizenship rights, and held a special identification card, used to control the movements of forced labour. The indígenas were subject to the traditional authorities, who were gradually integrated into the colonial administration and charged with solving disputes, managing the access to land, and guaranteeing the flows of workforce and the payment of taxes. As several authors have pointed out, the Indigenato regime was the political system that subordinated the immense majority of Africans to local authorities entrusted with governing, in collaboration with the lowest echelon of the colonial administration, the native communities described as tribes and assumed to have a common ancestry, language, and culture. The colonial use of traditional law and structures of power was thus an integral part of the process of colonial domination.

In the 1940s, the integration of traditional authorities into the colonial administration was deepened. The Portuguese colony was divided into concelhos (municipalities), in urban areas, governed by colonial and metropolitan legislation, and circunscrições (localities), in rural areas. The circunscrições were led by a colonial administrator and divided into regedorias (subdivisions of circunscrições), headed by régules (tribal chieftains), the embodiment of traditional authorities. Provincial Portuguese Decree No. 5.639, of July 29, 1944, attributed to régulos and their assistants, the cabos de terra, the status of auxiliares da administração (administrative assistants). Gradually, these traditional titles lost some of their content, and the régulos and cabos de terra came to be viewed as an effective part of the colonial state, remunerated for their participation in the collection of taxes, recruitment of the labour force, and agricultural production in the area under their control. Within the areas of their jurisdiction, the régulos and the cabos de terra also controlled the distribution of land and settled conflicts according to customary norms. To exercise their power, the régulos and cabos de terra had their own police force.

Urban centres

The largest coastal cities, the first founded or settled by Portuguese people since the 16th century, like the capital Lourenço Marques, Beira, Quelimane, Nacala and Inhambane, were modern cosmopolitan ports and a melting pot of several cultures, with a strong South African influence. The Southeast African and Portuguese cultures were dominant, but the influence of Arab, Indian, and Chinese cultures were also felt. The cuisine was diverse, owing especially to the Portuguese cuisine and Muslim heritage, and seafood was also quite abundant.

Lourenço Marques had always been a point of interest for artistic and architectural development since the first days of its urban expansion and this strong artistic spirit was responsible for attracting some of the world's most forward-thinking architects at the turn of the 20th century. The city was home to masterpieces of building work by, Pancho Guedes, Herbert Baker and Thomas Honney amongst others. The earliest architectural efforts around the city focused on classical European designs such as the Central Train Station (CFM) designed by architects Alfredo Augusto Lisboa de Lima, Mario Veiga and Ferreira da Costa and built between 1913 and 1916 (sometimes mistaken with the work of Gustav Eiffel), and the Hotel Polana designed by Herbert Baker.

Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, Lourenço Marques was yet again at the centre of a new wave of architectural influences made most popular by Pancho Guedes. The designs of the 1960s and 1970s were characterised by modernist movements of clean, straight and functional structures. However, prominent architects such as Pancho Guedes fused this with local art schemes giving the city's buildings a unique Mozambican theme. As a result, most of the properties erected during the second construction boom take on these styling cues.

Economy

Since the 15th century, Portugal founded settlements, trading posts, forts, and ports on the Sub-Saharan Africa's coast. Cities, towns, and villages were founded all over East African territories by the Portuguese, especially since the 19th century, like Lourenço Marques, Beira, Vila Pery, Vila Junqueiro, Vila Cabral and Porto Amélia. Others were expanded and developed greatly under Portuguese rule, like Quelimane, Nampula and Sofala. By this time, Mozambique had become a Portuguese colony, but the administration was left to the trading companies (like Mozambique Company and Niassa Company) who had received long-term leases from Lisbon.

By the mid-1920s, the Portuguese succeeded in creating a highly exploitative and coercive settler economy, in which African natives were forced to work on the fertile lands taken over by Portuguese settlers. Indigenous African peasants mainly produced cash crops designated for sale in the markets of the colonial metropole (the centre, i.e. Portugal). Major cash crops included cotton, cashews, tea and rice. This arrangement ended in 1932 after the takeover in Portugal by the new António de Oliveira Salazar's government — the Estado Novo. Thereafter, Mozambique, along with other Portuguese colonies, was put under the direct control of Lisbon. In 1951, it became an overseas province. The economy expanded rapidly during the 1950s and 1960s, attracting thousands of Portuguese settlers to the country. It was around this time that the first nationalist guerrilla groups began to form in Tanzania and other African countries. The strong industrial and agricultural development that did occur throughout the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s was based on Portuguese development plans, and also included British and South African investment.

In 1959–60, Mozambique's major exports included cotton, cashew nuts, tea, sugar, copra and sisal. Other major agricultural productions included rice and coconut. The expanding economy of the Portuguese overseas province was fuelled by foreign direct investment, and public investment which included ambitious state-managed development plans. British capital owned two of the large sugar concessions (the third was Portuguese), including the famous Sena states. The Matola Oil Refinery, Procon, was controlled by Britain and the United States. In 1948 the petroleum concession was given to the Mozambique Gulf Oil Company. At Maotize, coal was mined; the industry was chiefly financed by Belgian capital. 60% of the capital of the Compagnie de Charbons de Mozambique was held by the Société Minière et Géologique Belge, 30% by the Mozambique Company, and the remaining 10% by the Government of the territory. Three banks were in operation, the Banco Nacional Ultramarino, Portuguese, Barclays Bank, D.C.O., British, and the Banco Totta e Standard de Moçambique (a partnership between Standard Bank of South Africa and mainland's Banco Totta & Açores). Nine out of the twenty-three insurance companies were Portuguese, which included insurance companies related to Fidelidade throughout its history. 80% of life assurance was in the hands of foreign companies which testifies to the openness of the economy.

Education

Mozambique's rural population was largely illiterate. However, some thousands of Africans were educated in religion, the Portuguese language, and Portuguese history by Catholic and Protestant missionary schools established in cities and in the countryside.

In 1930, primary schooling became racially segregated. Africans who did not hold assimilated status had to enroll in "rudimentary schools," whereas whites and the few thousand assimilated Africans had access to "primary schools" of better quality.

Starting in the early 1940s, access to education was expanded in all levels. Nevertheless, "rudimentary schools" retained their poor quality. In 1956, there were 292,199 African students enrolled in first grade. Of these, only 9,486 had successfully passed third grade in 1959. By 1970, only 7.7% of Mozambique's population was literate.

A comprehensive network of secondary schools (the Liceus) and technical or vocational education schools were implemented across the cities and main towns of the territory. However, access to these institutions was largely limited to whites. In 1960, only 30 out of 1,000 students of the Liceu Salazar were Africans, in spite of whites making up only 2% of the Mozambican population.

In 1962, the first Mozambican university was founded by the Portuguese authorities: the Universidade de Lourenço Marques.

Sports

The Portuguese-ruled territory was introduced to several popular European and North American sports disciplines since the early urbanistic and economic booms of the 1920s and 1940s. This period was a time of city and town expansion and modernization that included the construction of several sports facilities for football, rink hockey, basketball, volleyball, handball, athletics, gymnastics, and swimming. Several sports clubs were founded across the entire territory, among them were some of the largest and oldest sports organizations of Mozambique like Sporting Clube de Lourenço Marques, that was established in 1920 and became the branch number 6 of Lisbon-based Sporting Clube de Portugal (Sporting CP). Other major sports clubs were founded in the following years like Grupo Desportivo de Lourenço Marques (1921), Clube Ferroviário de Lourenço Marques (1924), Sport Club de Vila Pery (1928), Clube Ferroviário da Beira (1943), Grupo Desportivo da Companhia Têxtil do Punguè (1943), Sport Lourenço Marques e Benfica (1955) and Grupo Desportivo e Recreativo Textáfrica (1957). Several sportsmen, especially football players, that achieved wide notability in Portuguese sports were from Mozambique and excelled in the Portugal national football team. Football was a very popular sport in Portuguese Mozambique. The Portuguese enthusiasm for football led to the spread of the sport into its overseas territories. Eventually, Portugal would attempt to integrate their colonies, which would lead to them having many African players in the teams on the mainland. Introduced in the colonies as early as the 19th century, football became increasingly popular. Mozambique saw a sizable population of white Portuguese people immigrate there during the 20th century. This was a byproduct of the policies of the Estado Novo and how they saw their colonies. There was widespread infrastructure in Mozambique to prepare the players to play football professionally. This would allow many players from the colonies to easily play for the national teams. Starting in the 1950s, many black Africans from Portuguese Africa would sign for football teams on the mainland. The popularity of the game in the colonies also meant that there were many people who wanted to play it professionally. Many top players from Portuguese Mozambique represented Portugal at the international level, as well as playing for many clubs in the various tiers of the local, national and international leagues, most notably the likes of Matateu, Hilário, Costa Pereira, Coluna and Eusébio became highly regarded in the history of football in Portugal. But Eusébio's impact in Portuguese football stood out among them all to such an extent that when Eusébio arrived in Lisbon in December 1960 still as a player of Sporting Lourenço Marques, Lisbon-based Sporting CP had won ten league titles, which was as many as its rival SL Benfica's, and when, 15 years later, Eusébio, recognised as Benfica's best player of all time, left Benfica, Benfica had won 21 championships to just 14 for Sporting CP. Although being a black player from Mozambique, he is considered one of the greatest Portuguese football players ever. Eusébio's contribution to Portuguese football was tremendous, and his role in the 1966 FIFA World Cup is still remembered today as a significant milestone in Portugal's football history.

Carnation Revolution and independence

As communist and anti-colonial ideologies spread out across Africa, many clandestine political movements were established in support of Mozambique's independence. These movements claimed that policies and development plans were primarily designed by the ruling authorities for the benefit of the ethnic Portuguese population, affecting a majority of the indigenous population who suffered both state-sponsored discrimination and enormous social pressure. Many felt they had received too little opportunity or resources to upgrade their skills and improve their economic and social situation to a degree comparable to that of the Europeans. Statistically, Portuguese Mozambique's whites were indeed wealthier and more skilled than the black indigenous majority, in spite of decreasing legal discrimination of Africans starting in the 1960s.

The Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO), headquartered in Tanzania, initiated a guerrilla campaign against Portuguese rule in September 1964. This conflict, along with the two others already initiated in the other Portuguese overseas territories of Angola and Portuguese Guinea, became part of the Portuguese Colonial War (1961–74). Several African territories under European rule had achieved independence in recent decades. Oliveira Salazar attempted to resist this tide and maintain the integrity of the Portuguese empire. By 1970, the anti-guerrilla war in Africa was consuming an important part of the Portuguese budget and there was no sign of a final solution in sight. This year was marked by a large-scale military operation in northern Mozambique, the Gordian Knot Operation, which displaced the FRELIMO's bases and destroyed much of the guerrillas' military capacity. At a military level, a part of Portuguese Guinea was de facto independent since 1973, but the capital and the major towns were still under Portuguese control. In Angola and Mozambique, independence movements were only active in a few remote countryside areas from where the Portuguese Army had retreated. However, their impending presence and the fact that they wouldn't go away dominated public anxiety. Throughout the war period Portugal faced increasing dissent, arms embargoes and other punitive sanctions imposed by most of the international community. For the Portuguese society the war was becoming even more unpopular due to its length and financial costs, the worsening of diplomatic relations with other United Nations members, and the role it had always played as a factor of perpetuation of the Estado Novo regime. It was this escalation that would lead directly to the mutiny of members of the FAP in the Carnation Revolution in 1974 – an event that would lead to the independence of the former Portuguese colonies in Africa. A leftist military coup in Lisbon on 24 April 1974 by the Movimento das Forças Armadas (MFA), overthrew the Estado Novo regime headed by Prime Minister Marcelo Caetano.

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