Overview
Until the 20th century the land and peoples of Mozambique were barely affected by the outsiders who came to its shores and penetrated its major rivers. As the Muslim traders, mostly Swahili, were displaced from their coastal centers 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 meager. 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 civilization 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 recognized by other European powers as belonging to Portugal, pacification of the tribes of the interior was completed and the traditional holders of political power were subordinated to the Portuguese. 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 neighbors to the west were made.
Portugal never had a racist policy or sanctioned discrimination based on race. Its concept of what it calls a multiracial society envisaged complete racial integration, including intermarriage, as well as cultural adaptation. The historically determined position of the Portuguese as conquerors and governors of the Africans, however, resulted in barriers to the formation of this ideal. The fact that most Africans were not cultivated in the Portuguese sense, and that many participated in what were considered by the Portuguese to be pagan beliefs and uncivilized behavior, tended to create a low opinion of Africans as a group. The uneducated Portuguese immigrant peasants in urban areas were frequently in direct competition with Africans for jobs and demonstrated jealousies and prejudices with racial overtones.
The society was divided into two peripherally interrelated sectors. The urban-based modern sector, comprising altogether between 2 and 2.5 percent of the population, consisting mostly of Europeans but including a few thousand Europeanized Africans, Indians, and Chinese, was dominant in the economic, political, and social realms. Communication between this sector and the large majority of rural Africans was limited; only a small proportion of the Africans could speak Portuguese, the language of the administration and the modern economic sector. Communication between members of the 10 different major ethnolinguistic groups was also difficult.
Economically and socially, all but a few educated and Europeanized Africans were at a disadvantage vis-a-vis the Europeans. Access to education above the primary level was limited by lack of means, by age limitations, or by lack of sufficient preparations. Access to economic opportunity was limited by lack of adequate training.
Between the modern urban and traditional rural sectors of the society was a steadily increasing group of Africans who were loosening their ties with the village and starting to participate in the money economy, to settle in suburbs, and to adopt new customs. This transitional group included individuals who had acquired a modicum of education or skills and some of the aspirations associated with a modern European way of life. Many of them, especially those who had an education beyond the primary level, were more alert politically than the majority of the population, who are either unaware of or uninterested in political issues. It was members of this group, allied with forward-looking European leaders and intellectuals, who had shown the greatest interest in reforms and benefits for the African population. Some among them left the country to become active participants in the independence movement.
Read more about this topic: Portuguese Mozambique