The Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Diaspora, The Role of Human Trafficking in Central-Eastern Africa in the 19th Century

Abstract

Given the flow of East Central African captives towards American societies, the aim of the article is to examine the nineteenth-century dynamics of this trade to and in Brazil, as well as. In East Africa, networks of shipowners and merchants of various nationalitieswerecentered around native and Portuguese power centers—such as Mozambique Island, coastal sheikdoms and sultanates, the port of Quelimane, the prazos of Zambezia—accounted for increasing proportion of the trade. With time, compulsory recruitment increased. These historical processes profoundly altered the stability of African societies already weakened by other events. The second part of the article analyzes primary sources and bibliography, the article argues that the trajectories of the “Mozambiques” in the diaspora, summarized in the first part of the paper, were shaped by paths of displacement and rooted in African histories that must be considered.