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Mightier than the Sword: The Portuguese Pen in Ndau History1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Elizabeth MacGonagle
Elizabeth MacGonagle*
Affiliation:
Michigan State University, macgonagle/macgonag@msu.edu
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Extract

For scholars of southeastern Africa interested in the early history of the region, the pen of the Portuguese was indeed mightier than the sword. Although most of the first Portuguese arrivals carried either the sword or the cross, they put these down to wield the pen and leave a written record of their triumphs and travails. The documents left by Portuguese soldiers, religious men, and others in the service of the crown provide details that are relative not only to the Portuguese experience but also to African life. This paper focuses on Portuguese writings that describe the area around the port of Sofala and its hinterland, home to the Shona who live south of the Zambezi river on the central Mozambican coastal plain and the Zimbabwe plateau. Both around Sofala and further west in the interior the inhabitants speak Ndau, a dialect of the Shona language. The wealth of evidence left by the Portuguese since the sixteenth century sheds light on changes and continuities in Ndau history.

The materials that have survived are amazingly detailed and informative despite their inherent biases. Historians have long recognized the prejudices of the colonizer either creeping into the documents or jumping off the page in a more blatant manner. The examples provided here are no different. The Portuguese, like other Europeans, had certain notions stemming from a Eurocentric mentality that was an integral part of their worldview. In these records, we see how the quest for gold and a ‘civilizing’ mission coalesced into systematic exploitation.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 28 , 2001 , pp. 169 - 186
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2001

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Footnotes

1

I am grateful for comments from fellow calabashers Jeremy Cyrier and Tim Carmichael when this essay was first presented at the Fifth Annual Midwest Student Conference in African Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, 2 April 2000. Research for this paper, which is part of a larger project on Ndau history, was carried out with support from Fulbright-Hays, the Social Science Research Council, the National Library of Lisbon, and the Luso-American Foundation for Development.

References

2 These are all part of the mixed bag of source material about the early history of the Ndau region.

3 Tuchman, Gaye, “Historical Social Science: Methodologies, Methods and Meanings” in Handbook of Qualitative Research, ed. Denzin, Norman K. and Lincoln, Yvonna S. (Thousand Oaks, CA, 1994), 321.Google Scholar

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5 In the monsoon wind system the prevailing direction of the wind reverses itself from season to season. In the Indian Ocean, travel from Mozambique to India was possible during the summer monsoon between April and September. Ships could reverse their course and sail to Mozambique from India in the winter months between November and February.

6 Sousa, Manuel de Faria e, Asia Portuguesa, extracts in Theal, George McCall, Records of South-Eastern Africa (9 vols.: Cape Town, 1964), I:16Google Scholar, hereafter cited as Theal/RSEA.

7 Newitt, Malyn, A History of Mozambique (Bloomington, 1995), 4.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., 10-11.

9 Ibid., 10. The shift in trade routes to the north was probably accelerated by the Swahili traders and their local partners as they moved to escape the new presence of the Portuguese at Sofala. The Portuguese did not cooperate well with Muslim traders and tended to assert their power through violence.

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29 The return trip to India would have been during the summer monsoon between April and September. Conceição did indeed return to Goa and make corrections on his manuscript, changing the date on it to Goa, 12 December 1696. It was originally written in Mozambique at Sena and dated 20 June 1696.

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33 “Contract of the Trade of the Rivers of Cuama and Sofala with Rui de Melo de Sampaio” (17 March 1614), in DPMAC, 9:339.Google Scholar

34 Ibid., 339-41.

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41 Conceição, , “Tratado,” 63.Google Scholar

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43 Monclaro in Theal/RSEA, 3:238.

44 Barreto, , “Informação” in Theal, /RSEA, 3:481.Google Scholar

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61 Ibid., 30.

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67 Ibid., 68-69; Mavura was also known as Manuza, according to Theal, and as D. Filippe, according to Friar Luis Cacegas in Theal/RSEA, 1:397.

68 Newitt, , History, 46, argues this point.Google Scholar

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76 Monclaro, ibid., also followed this line. See Barreto, , “Informação,” in Theal, /RSEA, 3:482Google Scholar for exaggerated accounts of the Mutapa's power, including the claim that his overrule reached to the Cape of Good Hope. Early maps supported this view as well.

77 Monclaro, , “Relação,” in Theal, /RSEA, 3:227.Google Scholar

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85 Ibid., 4-6.

86 Santos, Dos, Etiópia Oriental, 112Google Scholar, and English translation in Theal/RSEA, 7:207. Dos Santos notes that women performed this task when they were not out working in their fields.

87 Monclaro, , “Relação,” in Theal, /RSEA, 3:229.Google Scholar

88 Ibid. Machira is the Ndau word for pieces of cloth (sing., jira).

89 Ibid., 234; Barreto, , “Informação,” in Theal, /RSEA, 3:481.Google Scholar

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91 Monclaro, , “Relação,” in Theal, /RSEA, 3:235.Google Scholar

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94 Monclaro, , “Relação,” in Theal, /RSEA, 3:229.Google Scholar

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96 Ibid., 252.

97 Ibid., 234.

98 Ibid., 253.

99 Ibid.

100 Ibid., 235.

101 Santos, Dos, Etiópia Oriental, 112Google Scholar; English translation in Theal/RSEA, 7:207. A lupanga, also known as a “panga,” is from the Shona word for knife (sing.) banga, (pl.) mapanga.

102 Santos, Dos, Etiópia Oriental, 114.Google Scholar

103 Monclaro, , “Relação,” in Theal, /RSEA, 3:231.Google Scholar I am still trying to identify “nacqueny.”

104 Santos, Dos, Etiópia Oriental, 115–16.Google Scholar

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106 Monclaro, , “Relação,” in Theal, /RSEA, 3:230.Google Scholar

107 Ibid., 229.

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109 Lobato, “Introdução” to Santos, dos, Etiópia Oriental, 22.Google Scholar

110 Ibid., 37.