Portuguese slave trading in northern Zimbabwe and middle Zambezi valley in the nineteenth century

Abstract

The depredations caused by Portuguese slaving in Northern Zimbabwe and the Middle Zambezi valley remain one of the lesser written about episodes in Zimbabwean history, and there has been a tendency, even among our foremost authors on Afro-Portuguese relations in Zimbabwe, to think that Portuguese slaving only affected areas north of the Zambezi. This traditional assumption needs to be challenged in light of abundant evidence, especially from the large corpus of published primary sources written by contemporary European observers in the nineteenth century, detailing the impact of the slave trade on the northern regions of Zimbabwe bordering the Zambezi. Other traditional assumptions regarding the nature and extent of Portuguese slave trafficking along the Zambezi, and the market for slave exports from Mozambique, also need to be modified in light of more recent, contrary evidence. To begin with, the conventional picture of the complete isolation of the peoples of the Middle Zambezi valley from the outside world, prior to their first contact with Portuguese traders from the East Coast in 1860, needs modification because, it is now clear that there was direct and indirect contact with West Coast Portuguese traders from Angola that preceded them. Secondly, more evidence has come to light showing that the people of the Middle Zambezi had, through their own efforts, been in contact with the East Coast trade for at least 200 years before 1860. Thirdly, it has now been shown by other scholars that the traditional assumption that the demand for Mozambique slaves was generated predominantly by Brazilian demand needs modification, because new evidence now shows that the French islands of the western Indian Ocean rivaled, and might even have replaced, Brazil as the major export market for Mozambique slaves by 1830. Finally, the internal slave trade of Mozambique, comprising the resale of slaves into the interior, i.e. from Mozambique 'up' the Zambezi, in the 1860s and 1870s, needs more scholarly attention because it marked a significant change both in the direction and nature of the Portuguese slave trade with the Middle Zambezi and Northern Zimbabwe.