VII.

History

The first written record of Mozambique dates from the 10th century ad, when Arab writer al-Mas’ūdi mentioned the town of Sofala (south of present-day Beira) and the iron-using people called the Wak Wak who lived there. Long before that time, perhaps as early as the 3rd century ad, Bantu-speaking peoples from central Africa migrated to the region, where they grew crops and raised cattle. Their settlements took on increasing complexity. By the 10th century, settlements featured stone enclosures, and their inhabitants played an important role in intra-African trade to the west. Over the next several centuries, traders from northeastern Africa and later from the Middle East and Asia arrived by sea, prompting ports along the Mozambican coast to flourish. Sofala, among the most prominent ports, developed as a trade center for gold from the interior. Commercial settlements also developed to the north of Sofala at Angoche, Moçambique Island, the Querimba Islands, and the mouth of the Zambezi River. The beads, cloth, and other goods brought by Arab and Asian traders attracted caravans of agrarian-based traders from inland Mozambique. They in turn distributed the goods to the African interior. A struggle for control of this trade developed, and it was soon won by the cattle-owning chiefs of the Karanga in the south and the Makua in the north. Slave trading was also common throughout this period, in both the coastal and interior regions.

A.

Europeans Arrive

In 1498 Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and stopped in Mozambique en route to becoming the first European to visit India by sea. His arrival initially made little impact on Mozambique, but soon afterward a small stream of European traders began to visit the coast of Mozambique. In 1505 the Portuguese occupied Sofala, establishing a fort and installing a friendly Arab ruler there. However, the gold trade was already in decline and Sofala was ill-suited as a port, so the Portuguese moved their base north to Moçambique Island. Over the ensuing years the island developed as an important seaport and way station on the route to India.

By the mid-16th century, European settlers had begun to penetrate the Mozambican interior, occasionally encountering stern resistance from inhabitants. In 1561, for example, Gonçalo da Silveira, leader of the first Jesuit mission to eastern Africa, was killed by Shona people whom he had tried to convert. In response, the Portuguese sent a large army, which from 1569 to 1575 attempted to conquer the central African gold-mining region. Most of the soldiers died of disease, and little was achieved beyond the occupation of the lower Zambezi Valley and the establishment of two new bases on the Zambezi at Sena and Tete. Thus by the close of the 16th century, much of Mozambique was still beyond Portuguese control. In fact, despite Portuguese presence along the Zambezi, Maravi chiefs had established the powerful chiefdoms of Karonga, Undi, and Lundu in the region north of the river.

In 1607 and 1608 the Dutch twice tried to seize Moçambique Island from the Portuguese, failing both times. The assaults nonetheless made the Portuguese aware of their precarious hold on Mozambique and prompted them to try again to subdue the interior. This time the Portuguese used locally recruited armies and by 1632, after prolonged warfare, they occupied a wide swath of land from the Mozambican coast to the northern half of present-day Zimbabwe. 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 labor 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 (see Rozwi Empire).

B.

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 markedly in response to European colonization of Mauritius and Réunion. 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 Americas. Until at least the 1870s, no other form of commerce generated as much profit.

C.

The Gaza Empire

In the 1820s, during a period of severe drought, Nguni armies began to invade Mozambique from what is now South Africa. One Nguni chief, Nxaba, established a short-lived kingdom inland from Sofala, but in 1837 he was defeated by Soshangane, a powerful Nguni rival. Soshangane established the Gaza Empire, which at its height in the 1860s covered the whole of Mozambique between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. From this area, Nguni armies invaded the north and established cattle-owning military states along the edges of the Mozambican highlands. Although not within the borders of modern-day Mozambique, these military states nonetheless served as effective bases for raids into Mozambique.

With the prolonged drought, the rise of Gaza, the dominance of the slave trade, and the expansion of Portuguese control in the Zambezi Valley, the once-mighty African chieftaincies of the Zambezi region declined. In their place, valley warlords established fortified strongholds at the confluence of the major rivers, where they raised private armies and raided for slaves in the interior. The most powerful of these warlords was Manuel Antonio de Sousa, a settler from Portuguese India, who by the middle of the 19th century controlled most of the southern Zambezi Valley and a huge swath of land to its south. North of the Zambezi, Islamic slave traders rose to power from their base in Angoche, and the Yao chiefs of the north migrated south to the highlands along the Shire River, where they established their military power.

D.

British Influence

In 1856 Scottish explorer David Livingstone reached the mouth of the Zambezi after exploring its upper reaches. Livingstone returned to the Zambezi in 1858, attempting to open a river route into central Africa. Livingstone’s endeavors and, more to the point, the political designs of Britain, troubled Portugal deeply. To fend off British interest in the region, Portugal tried to exert further control over the various Arab and African chieftaincies in Mozambique. In 1861 the Portuguese wrested the slaving port of Angoche from its Arab holders, and then embarked on a string of largely disastrous wars against the interior warlords. Under pressure from Britain, Portugal outlawed the slave trade in Mozambique in 1842, finally abolishing slavery altogether in 1878.

By the 1870s European interest in Africa was focused on raw materials and the labor needed to extract them. Although Mozambique had little mineral wealth compared with diamond-rich land in what would become South Africa, it attracted speculators who wanted to grow sugar, cotton, and oil seeds. The Portuguese welcomed these private companies, which would develop the region’s infrastructure, pay tariffs on exports, and most important, counter the influence of the British. In 1875, when Scottish missionaries established themselves in the Shire highlands, Portugal’s enthusiasm for granting concessions to private companies grew greater still. Several colonial companies were established, the most important of which was started by Paiva de Andrade in 1878 and in 1888 became the Mozambique Company.

In January 1890, with the control of East Africa still unresolved, Britain threatened war against Portugal if its border demands were not met. No match for the British Navy, Portugal conceded to most of Britain’s demands, and in May 1891 the frontiers of modern Mozambique were drawn. Much of the western highlands passed into British hands, but Portugal was left in control of the lengthy coast with its numerous ports and trade stations, as well as the lowlands between the coast and the highlands.

Soon thereafter, Portugal undertook a series of campaigns against the African kingdoms within Mozambique’s borders. Portugal finalized its occupation of the south in a series of rapid strikes against the Gaza Empire, which surrendered in 1895. The final defeat of the warlords along the Zambezi was achieved in 1902, but the entirety of Mozambique was not fully under Portuguese control until the 1920s. In 1902 Portugal established the capital of Mozambique at Lourenço Marques, now Maputo.

E.

Control by the Concessions

In the early 20th century, Portugal continued to allow private concession companies broad control of the colony. A handful of concessions controlled almost all of Mozambique’s production of goods and supply of labor. Workers were often forced to labor under brutal conditions, with extremely low (and sometimes no) wages, and with few political rights. In the south, companies were given the rights to recruit people and send them to work the diamond and gold mines in South Africa. In 1907 the colonial government codified these abuses and established separate labor laws for natives and nonnatives. The growth of the forced labor economy was greatly aided by completion of two railroads in the late 1890s. By the early 20th century, the railroads and the ports to which they were linked became Mozambique’s biggest source of foreign exchange.

In 1916 Portugal entered World War I (1914-1918), and the following year a serious rebellion broke out in the province of Zambezia. The Barue Rising, as it is known, was quelled, but not without great effort. Later that year, in November, German troops further destabilized Mozambique by invading and overrunning most of the region north of the Zambezi River. The German troops were not expelled until near the end of the war in 1918.

After World War I, the Portuguese government continued to allow private companies to exert enormous power over Mozambique society, a condition that changed only after the 1926 coup in Portugal. In 1932 António de Oliveira Salazar began a long dictatorship of Portugal, and under his influence the government established direct rule over Mozambique. Salazar ended the power of the private companies and in their place established a planned economy (a system in which the government controls every aspect of the economy). Such changes, however, often did little to improve life for the people of Mozambique. For example, Mozambican farmers were forced to grow crops such as cotton and rice for export, and very little consideration was given to the crops needed for Mozambique’s subsistence. The government also continued the practice of sending Mozambicans to labor in South African mines. Under Salazar, white settlement was encouraged, especially in the irrigated regions around the Limpopo River. Partly as a result, the number of white settlers in the country grew from a few tens of thousands to nearly 200,000 by 1970.

F.

Resistance and Independence

Salazar’s Portugal kept tight control over all aspects of African life. Until the late 1960s blacks were routinely denied opportunities in education, employment, and government, and political dissent was met with swift imprisonment or exile. In 1962 a group of exiled Mozambicans led by Eduardo Mondlane met in Tanzania and formed the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo, from Frente de Libertação de Moçambique). Two years later, Frelimo launched a guerrilla war against Portuguese Mozambique. The Portuguese countered the insurrection with arms and, in an attempt to pacify the people of Mozambique, a major development program. Many roads, schools, and hospitals were built, stimulating rapid economic growth. In 1969 work began on the Cabora Bassa Dam, which was to be the showpiece of Portuguese development policies.

These efforts notwithstanding, the war with Frelimo continued, even after Mondlane was assassinated in 1969. By the early 1970s the war reached a stalemate. Only after Portugal underwent a tumultuous revolution in April 1974 did the colonial regime in Mozambique begin to crumble. In July 1975 power was formally transferred to Frelimo, and Mozambique became independent.

G.

Civil War

The Frelimo government introduced far-reaching reforms, including rights for women and the collectivization of agriculture. It also introduced a Marxist-Leninist constitution that brought the economy under the control of the state, and it supported the liberation movements of blacks in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa. In return, Southern Rhodesia and South Africa sponsored an anticommunist Mozambican guerrilla movement seeking the overthrow of the Frelimo government. This guerrilla group became known as the Mozambique National Resistance (Renamo, from Resistência Nacional Mocambiçana). Beginning in 1980 Renamo targeted and destroyed government installations, industries, schools, and infrastructure. Within a short time, the government could be certain of control over only a few cities, and travel about the country could be undertaken safely only by air. In time Renamo gained control over much of the country as increasing numbers of Mozambicans grew disaffected with government policies or were intimidated by a wide range of Renamo terror tactics.

In 1984, with his country’s economy in ruins and tens of thousands of his citizens killed, President Samora Moises Machel sought to end South Africa’s logistical and military support for Renamo by signing the Nkomati Accord. Under the accord, Mozambique agreed to end its support for the African National Congress, which was battling South Africa’s rigid policy of racial segregation known as apartheid. In return, South Africa vowed to stop supplying Renamo. Machel also began to move Frelimo away from its outright Marxist orientation that had antagonized Western and internal critics. The war continued nonetheless, and thousands of people died yearly in the fighting or from associated disease and malnutrition. In 1986 President Machel died in an airplane crash, and Joachim Chissano, the foreign minister, was elected to succeed him.

In 1990 the government adopted a new constitution that firmly disavowed Marxism-Leninism, established Mozambique as a multiparty democracy, and guaranteed the freedom of expression. The new constitution paved the way for peace talks between Frelimo and Renamo, and in October 1992 the two groups signed an accord that ended the civil war. In the 1994 elections that followed the accord, Frelimo won by what many observers believed was a surprisingly narrow margin, and Chissano was reelected. Renamo, to the relief of many, agreed to recognize Frelimo’s victory.

H.

Recent Developments

With the help of foreign aid donations, the postwar government led the reconstruction of Mozambique’s railways, ports, factories, and hospitals. The civil war’s most brutal legacy was the hundreds of thousands of unexploded land mines that remained buried throughout rural areas of the country and continued to kill and maim civilians into the 21st century. In the 1990s the United Nations established training programs in Mozambique to help people safely identify, remove, and destroy unexploded land mines.

In December 1999 presidential elections Chissano defeated Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama. Legislative elections held at the same time renewed Frelimo’s hold on the Assembly of the Republic. Dhlakama and Renamo claimed that electoral fraud had tainted the results of both elections, but the Supreme Court of Mozambique disagreed and certified the elections in January 2000. Frelimo dominated December 2004 elections, winning almost two-thirds of the seats in the legislature. Frelimo secretary general Armando Guebuza was elected to succeed Chissano as president.