Consolidation of Portuguese control

By the 1880s the Portuguese controlled trade and collected tribute in coastal enclaves from Ibo in the north to Lourenço Marques in the south, but their ability to control events outside those areas was quite limited; that situation, however, was about to change. Increasingly, as neighbors of the Gaza state were raided periodically for refusing to pay tribute, they began to ally themselves with the Portuguese, which the Portuguese both encouraged and exploited. In the 1890s a coalition of Portuguese troops and African armies marched against the state. When the Gaza leadership was finally defeated in 1897, southern Mozambique passed into Portuguese control. Two decades later the Portuguese, who had mounted dozens of military campaigns by that time, directly controlled the Barue of central Mozambique, the African Portuguese of the Zambezi and Maganja da Costa prazos, the Yao of Mataka, the northern Makua chiefdoms, and the northern coastal sheikhdoms of Angoche.

Trade in ivory, gold, slaves, rubber, oilseeds, and a broad range of European goods continued throughout the 19th century. However, European economic interest and influence in the region changed rapidly by mid-century in response to developments in both Africa and Europe. African labor was needed on the sugar plantations and at South African ports and mines after diamonds (at Kimberley in the 1860s) and gold (at Witwatersrand in the 1880s) were discovered. Because of the need for labor, Europeans were determined to gain greater control over tracts of land and their inhabitants at the expense of African leadership. The combined struggle for access to mineral-bearing lands and the labor force to work them fueled the so-called “scramble” in Southern Africa.

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Portugal claimed a swath of territory from present-day Mozambique to Angola. Although the Germans, whose territory bordered Mozambique to the north, accepted the Portuguese claims—establishing Mozambique’s northern boundary—British claims to the region contradicted those of Portugal, leading to prolonged negotiations. However, the Portuguese crown was heavily in debt to British financiers, and the small country was no match for Britain’s military; in 1891 Portugal was forced to accept Britain’s definition of Mozambique’s western and southern boundaries.

Portugal had little hope of developing the entire region on its own, and so it turned to its familiar colonial strategy of leasing large tracts of land to private companies. Chartered companies were granted the privilege of exploiting the lands and peoples of specific areas in exchange for an obligation to develop agriculture, communications, social services, and trade. The Mozambique Company, the Niassa Company, and the Zambezia Company were all established in this manner in the 1890s. Any economic development and investment in infrastructure was related directly to company interests and usually undertaken at African expense. Sugar, copra, and sisal plantations depending largely on conscripted labor and railways linking Beira with the British South Africa Company territory and British Nyasaland to the west and northwest were all developed and built at a high cost to the African workforce.

The Portuguese government eventually terminated the charters of the major concession companies, bringing all of Mozambique under direct Portuguese rule. Between the 1890s and the 1930s, Portuguese rule in Mozambique was characterized by the exploitation of African people and resources by private parties, whether they were foreign company shareholders or colonial bureaucrats and settlers. The most egregious colonial abuses—forced labor, forced crop cultivation, high taxes, low wages, confiscation of the most promising lands—occurred regardless of which group of Europeans was in control.