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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Canarens in the Rios de Cuama, 1501-1576 |
Author: | Hromnik, Cyril A. |
Year: | 1979 |
Periodical: | Journal of African Studies (UCLA) |
Volume: | 6 |
Issue: | 1 |
Period: | Spring |
Pages: | 27-37 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | Mozambique Africa |
Subjects: | Indians traders history 1500-1599 History and Exploration |
Abstract: | Historians have tended to treat the history of Mozambique and Rhodesia in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries as a bilateral process of conflict and development between the Africans and the Portuguese. Existing source material reveals that such an interpretation lacks one dimension -the dimension provided by the Indian element, which was deeply involved from the beginning of the process. In the Portuguese period, the most important representation of this element were the Canarins (the Konkani people from Goa, converted to Christianity). The Canarins penetrated the basin of the Lower Zambezi alongside the Portuguese traders, and once in the Rios de Cuama, as the Zambezi river basin was called at the time, they found themselves in the position of middlemen whose role it was to make the desires of the Portuguese and the needs of the Africans meet. The process of their getting into this position took more than seventy years and is the subject of this article. Notes, map. |