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Portuguese Musketeers on the Zambezi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Richard Gray
Richard Gray
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
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Extract

The Portuguese historian of Mozambique, Alexandre Lobato, has referred to the ‘arms and powder, which guaranteed an overwhelming military superiority’ in the Zambezi hinterland, but a rapid survey of the evidence most easily available would suggest that, until the introduction of the maxim gun, the use of firearms seldom, if ever, constituted a decisive military advantage in Central Africa. Guns might sometimes decide the fate of battles, but by themselves they were insufficient to win a campaign. Yet cannon and muskets were undoubtedly the most valuable, and probably the most envied, commodity possessed by the Portuguese on the Zambezi, and the political and commercial role of firearms may well have been quite considerable.

Type
Papers on Firearms in Sub-Saharan Africa, II
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , October 1971 , pp. 531 - 533
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1971

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References

1 Lobato, A., Evoluçâo administrativa e económica de Moçambique 1752–1763 (Lisbon, 1957), 25.Google Scholar

2 Botelho, J. J. T., História Militar e Política dos Portugueses em Moçambique da Descoberta a 1833 (Lisbon, 1934), 187–94.Google Scholar

3 Dos Santos, in Theal, G. M., Records of South Eastern Africa VII, 297.Google Scholar

4 Newitt, M. D. D., ‘The Portuguese on the Zambezi’, J. Afr. Hist. x, no. 1, 1969, 67–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Axelson, E., Portuguese in South-East Africa 1600–1700 (Johannesburg, 1960), 34.Google Scholar

6 Theal, , R.S.E.A. III, 296–9. Bocarro went on to comment: ‘the Kafirs who used to be terrified at the discharge of a firelock today fire them themselves; and most of the Kafir chiefs of these parts have a better armoury of firearms than is to be found in the captain's factory.’ Quoted in Axelson, 40.Google Scholar

7 ‘Memorias da Costa d'Africa Oriental…’ in de Andrade, A. A., Relaçōes de Moçambique setecentista (Lisbon, 1955), 193; letter from Zumbo, 29 Mar. 1781 in A.H.U. Lisbon, Caixa 18.Google Scholar

8 Axeon, , 76–7, 97.Google Scholar

9 Baião left a small guard of musketeers with the King of Butua whom he had restored to power. ‘Viagem que fez o Padre Ant. Gomes …’, Studia, III (1959), 197.Google Scholar

10 Theal, , R.S.E.A. III, 470–4.Google Scholar

11 Fr. Antonio, da Conceição, ‘Tratado dos Rios de Cuama …’, in O Chronista de Tissuary, ed. da Cunha Rivara, J. H. (Goa, 1866–1869), paras. 105–11.Google Scholar

12 Ibid. pars 63.