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Portuguese Settlement on the Zambesi
Exploration, Land Tenure and
Colonial Rule in East Africa
M. D. D. Newitt
(apc)
Africana Publishing Company • New York
Published
in the United States of America 1973
by Africana Publishing Company,
Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc.
101 Fifth Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10003
© Longman Group Ltd 1973
All rights reserved. No part of this
publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or
by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the Copyright owner.
Library of Congress catalog card no. 72-86888
isbn 0-8419-0132-5
Printed in Great Britain
PT
73 00925
Contents
1 The background to the Portuguese settlement in page
East Africa i
2 The environment 17
3 The Portuguese penetration of Central Africa 32
4 The foundation of the prazos and the prazo dynasties 48
5 Portuguese Zambesia in the eighteenth century 70
6 The prazos as a system of land tenure 87
7 The government and the prazo-h.o\&zxs> 112
8 Prazo society 131
9 Luabo and Cheringoma 154
10 The Portuguese and their relations with the African
peoples. Part One: The colonos 169
11 The Portuguese and their relations with the African
peoples. Part Two: The slaves 187
12 The prazos of Sofala and the Querimba Islands 204
13 The nineteenth century 217
14 The Pereiras of Macanga 234
15 The da Cruz family and the Zambesi Wars 251
16 The Massingire and the Maganja 275
17 The Portuguese on the middle Zambesi 295
18 Manuel Antonio de Sousa, the kingdom of Barue and
international politics 312
19 The prazo system in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries—1 341
20 The prazo system in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries—2 362
Appendix 1 377
Appendix 2 378
Glossary 379
Bibliography and references 386
Index 417
Maps and Illustrations
Portuguese influence in East Africa i6th-20th centuries 15
Zambesia in the 17th century 65
Zambesia in the 18th century 77
Zambesia in the 19th century 219
Plan of Massangano 253
The prazos of Tete, Quelimane and Manica 259
The aringa of the Capitao-mar of Macanga 244
The prazos of Zumbo 307
Plates
Between pages go and gi
The aringa of Massangano
The grave of Mrs Livingstone under the Baobab tree, near
Chupanga House
Old-style Zambesi house in Tete
Between pages 122 and 123
The gateway to the Fort at Sena erected by Joao Fernandes de
Almeida in 1704
The Portuguese supply base at Guengue, 1888
The Fort at Sofala
Between pages 282 and 283
Macombe Chavunda, Cambuemba’s son and other prisoners
of the 1902 Barue war on the way to the Cape Verde Islands
An enormous Baobab tree inside the aringa of Missongue at Barue
African weaver smoking a huge tobacco-pipe
Blacksmith’s forge and bellows of goatskin
A wedding procession at Tete
Between pages 314 and 313
Part of Tete looking up the Zambesi river
Manufacture of sugar at Latimo: making the panellas or pots
to contain it
Manuel Antonio de Sousa
Joao Jose de Oliveira Queros
Captain A. de Portugal Durao
Guilherme Frederico de Portugal e Vasconcelos
Preface
When this book appears, it will be over three years since most of
it was written. A number of important advances have been made
in the field of Mofambique history in that time and some of
these I would like to mention. Dr H. Bihla’s thesis on Manyika
and the Portuguese was accepted by London University in 1971
and contains a great deal of original material on Portuguese
trade with Manica. Important work has been done by Mr S.
Mudenge on Zumbo and the Rosvi empire, upsetting many of
the accepted ideas on the subject. In 1968 Allen Isaacman
published the preliminary results of his research on the prazos in
Studia under the title ‘The Prazos da Coroa 1752-1830 - a
functional analysis of the Political System’. For those who want
a short introduction to the prazos in English, this is by far the
best thing available. I have also had the privilege of seeing
unpublished work by Professor Isaacman and Father W. Rea SJ
on the Chicunda and the Jesuit prazos respectively. Finally there
is the highly important publication of a book on the prazos by
Giuseppe Papagno, La Questione dei Prazos da Coroa nel
Mozambico alia fine del Secolo xix, Biblioteca Einaudi, (Turin
1972).
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the very generous financial assistance
I received from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, which
enabled me to make two journeys to Lisbon and carry out the
research necessary to complete this book.
I would like also to thank Professor Dauril Alden, Herr
Gerhard Liesegang and Professor C. R. Boxer for the help and
advice they gave me at different stages of this work, and my
sister, Hilary, who impersonated the general public and pains¬
takingly went through the text making me explain myself
clearly.
The publishers are grateful to the following for permission to
reproduce copyright material:
Cambridge University Press for the Plan of Massangano from
‘The “Aringa” at Massangano’ by M. D. D. Newitt and P. S.
Garlake, Journal of African History, VIII, I (1967) and the Royal
Geographical Society for the paintings by Thomas Baines
‘Manufacture of Sugar at Latimo: making the panellas or pots to
contain it’ and ‘Part of Tete looking up the Zambesi river’.
Photographs have also been reproduced from the following
books: Relatorio da guerra de Zambesia by A. de Castilho (Plate 1);
Relatorio da viagem da Canhoneira Rio Lima de Lisboa a Mocam-
bique by A. Castilho (Plate 7); Memorias de urn Velho Marinheiro
e Soldado de Africa by Joao de Azevedo Coutinho (Plates 8 and
9); Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi and its Tributaries by
David and Charles Livingstone (Plates 3, 10, n and 12); Historia
das Guerras no Zambeze by F. G. Almeida De Ea (Plates 15, 16
and 18) and Zambezia by R. C. F. Maugham (Plate 17). Plates 2,
4 and 5 were taken by the author.
