¹ In the present text, when speaking of southern Mozambique, I am referring to the region of Mozambique situated below the Save River (the Sul do Save, in Portuguese sources), home to significant Shangaan-speaking populations (often identified as “Tsonga”), as well as Chopis, Ngunis and other peoples. In the early twentieth century, the region was divided into three provinces (distritos): Gaza, Inhambane, and Lourenço Marques. Each of the latter was in turn divided into several other smaller administrative sub-divisions (circunscrições). For a discussion of the different ethnic labels and categories used to describe populations in the Sul do Save, namely Tonga and Tsonga, see Gengenbach, Heidi, Binding Memories: Women as Makers and Tellers of History in Magude, Mozambique (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), Google Scholar. See also Newitt, Malyn, A History of Mozambique (London: Hurst, 1995), Google Scholar. On the history of southern Mozambique in the nineteenth century and especially the Nguni invasions and Portuguese military occupation campaigns, see Liesegang, Gerhard, “Notes on the Internal Structure of the Gaza Kingdom of Southern Mozambique,” in Before and after Shaka: Papers in Nguni History, ed. Peires, Jeff (Grahams Town: Rhodes University: Institute of Social and Economic Research, 1981), 178–209Google Scholar; and Newitt, A History, ch. 11.

² Among the Tsonga in the late nineteenth century, cattle were generally the purview of men and boys, while women were entrusted with the bulk of agricultural work. For a discussion of the division of labor in Tsonga society and its evolution, see Young, Sherilynn, “Fertility and Famine: Women’s Agricultural History in Southern Mozambique,” in The Roots of Rural Poverty in Central and Southern Africa, eds. Palmer, Robin and Parsons, Neil, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 66–81Google Scholar. Partly relying on oral history, Benigna Zimba examines the history of female agricultural labor in Southern Mozambique in Mulheres invisíveis: o genéro e as políticas comerciais no sul de Moçambique, 1720-1830 (Maputo: PROMÉDIA, 2003). Heidi Gengenbach also draws heavily on oral history to tell the history of women in this region in Gengenbach, Binding memories. Portuguese authorities in Mozambique created three important categories that informed every aspect of life under colonial rule: the indígenas (natives) were mainly African and lived in rural areas, were subjected to the head or hut tax and forced labor, while having limited rights, namely limited access to land; “civilized” populations were mostly white and had full rights vis-à-vis the state; and “assimilated” populations included Black and mestiço individuals that had abandoned their “traditions” and lived mostly in urban areas. In official statistics, additional categories were used to identify individuals of different ethnic origins. Newitt, A history, 387.

³ State intervention in the cattle sector in the 1930s and 1940s was briefly addressed in Penvenne, Jeanne M., African Workers and Colonial Racism: Mozambican Strategies and Struggles in Lourenço Marques, 1877–1962 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1994), Google Scholar and Hedges, David, ed., História de Moçambique, 1930–1961, 2nd ed. (Maputo: UEM-Livraria Universitária, 1999), .Google Scholar

⁴ This paper will not discuss in detail the questions of meat consumption, bushmeat consumption, and hunting, or milk supply, although relevant sources will be mentioned whenever appropriate.

⁵ The first full report of the veterinary services found thus far in the relevant archives in Portugal and Mozambique is for the 1940-46 period. For earlier years, only excerpts are available. Data from the Lourenço Marques slaughterhouse is also sparse, as are cattle estimates until the 1930s. Documentation written by local-level officials, namely reports from the circunscrições and correspondence with central services, as well as sources from the Swiss mission, proved particularly useful to understand African agricultural and livestock practices, the effects of colonial taxes, the role of cattle traders, and the impacts of the growing presence of European settlers in rural areas. African newspapers are also fundamental to understand the predicaments of African farmers in the south up to the 1930s, when censorship was introduced.

⁶ See, for example, Anderson, David, “Cow Power: Livestock and the Pastoralist in Africa,” African Affairs 92, no. 366 (1993): CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hoag, Colin, “The Ovicaprine Mystique: Livestock Commodification in Postindustrial Lesotho,” American Anthropologist 120, no. 4 (2018): CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kerven, Carol, Customary Commerce: A Historical Reassessment of Pastoral Livestock Marketing in Africa (London: Overseas Development Institute, 1992)Google Scholar; MacKinnon, Aran S., “The Persistence of the Cattle Economy in Zululand, South Africa, 1900–50,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 33, no. 1 (1999): 98–135Google ScholarPubMed; Steele, M. C., “The Economic Function of African-Owned Cattle in Colonial Zimbabwe,” Zambezia 9, no. 1 (1981): 29–48Google Scholar; Allison Shutt, “The Settlers’ Cattle Complex: The Etiquette of Culling Cattle in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1938,” The Journal of African History 43, no. 2 (2002): 263–86; Shaun Milton, “To Make the Crooked Straight: Settler Colonialism, Imperial Decline and the South African Beef Industry” (PhD dissertation, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 1996); Phimister, Ian, “Meat and Monopolies: Beef Cattle in Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1938,” The Journal of African History 19, no. 3 (1978): 391–414CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Waller, Richard, “Pastoral Production in Colonial Kenya: Lessons from the Past?,” African Studies Review 55, no. 2 (2012): 1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷ Lisa Ann Brock, “From Kingdom to Colonial District: A Political Economy of Social Change in Gazaland, Southern Mozambique, 1870–1930” (PhD dissertation, Northwestern University, 1989), 10; Ekblom, Anneli, “A Historical Ecology of Cattle in Mozambique,” in At Nature’s Edge: The Global Present and Long-Term History, eds. Cederlöf, Gunnel and Rangarajan, Mahesh (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019), 81–104.Google Scholar

⁸ For an early twentieth century physical description of the Incomati basin and of existing and potential future agricultural activities in the region, including livestock, written by an official agronomist, see Governo Geral da Província de Moçambique, Repartição de Agricultura, Reconhecimento Agrícola-económico do Distrito de Lourenço Marques – Manhiça, Sabié, Magude e Bilene - Relatórios do Agrónomo do Distrito - 1916-1917 (Lourenço Marques: Imprensa Nacional, 1918). See also Distrito de Lourenço Marques, Relatórios Acerca das Circunscrições das Terras da Coroa - 1907 (Lourenço Marques: Imprensa Nacional de Moçambique, 1908); de Lourenço Marques, Distrito, Relatório das Circunscrições, 1909-1910 (Lourenço Marques: Imprensa Nacional, 1910)Google Scholar. Ferrão, Francisco, Circumscripções de Lourenço Marques (Lourenço Marques: Imprensa Nacional, 1909)Google Scholar.

⁹ Junod, Henri-Alexandre, The Life of a South African Tribe, vol. 2 (Neuchâtel: Imprimerie Attinger Fréres, 1913), 48–51Google Scholar. Manghezi, Alpheus, “Ku thekela: Estratégia de Sobrevivência Contra a Fome no Sul de Moçambique,” Estudos Moçambicanos 4 (1983): 19–39.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Arquivo Histórico Nacional, A Guerra dos Reis Vátuas (Maputo: Arquivo Histórico de Moçambique, 1995), 67. Chewins, Linell, “The Relationship Between Trade in Southern Mozambique and State Formation: Reassessing Hedges on Cattle, Ivory and Brass,” Journal of Southern African Studies 42, no. 4 (2016): CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ de Ornelas, Aires, Coletânea das Suas Principais Obras Militares e Coloniais, vol. 2 (Lisboa: Agência Geral das Colónias, 1934), Google Scholar; Junod, Life 1, 259–61; Patrick Harries, Work, Culture, and Identity: Migrant Laborers in Mozambique and South Africa, c.1860-1910 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1994), 145; Newitt, A History, 253. On how women in the South were forced by the Nguni to become involved in cattle raiding, see Zimba, Mulheres Invisíveis, 61–62. Bushmeat was also an important part of the regional diet and would continue to be so during the twentieth century, albeit in different terms, as colonial regulations progressively restricted the ability of Africans to hunt. Marcos Coelho, “Maphisa & Sportsmen: A Caça e os Caçadores no Sul de Moçambique sob o Domínio do Colonialismo c.1895-c.1930” (PhD dissertation, Unicamp, 2015).

¹² On the changing methods of payment of lobolo, see Junod, Life 1, 259–62; Zimba, Mulheres Invisíveis, 52–53. On drought in Mozambique since the late 1790s and its impact, see Newitt, A History, 253–56.

¹³ On the emerging land tensions in the region, see Arquivo Histórico de Moçambique, Maputo (AHM), Fundo dos Negócios Indígenas (FNI), cota 1274, maço reservas indígenas, processo 49 – Ano de 1912, Note from the chief of Magude to the Native Affairs division, 31 May 1912, and Gengenbach, Binding Memories, ch. 6. In the oral testimony Gengenbach collected in Magude in the 1990s, women described the different soils of Magude and their preferred agricultural practices. Gengenbach, Binding Memories, ch. 6.

¹⁴ Patrick Harries examined the history of the Swiss Mission in Mozambique in Work, Culture and especially in Butterflies and Barbarians: Swiss Missionaries and Systems of Knowledge in South-East Africa (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2007). On the origins, goals, and workings of the Antioka scheme, see a report by its founder, Frank Paillard: Archives Cantonales Vaudoises Lausanne (ACV), DM - Echange et mission, PP 1002 C 0119 0130 boite 10, dossier 120, “Rapport présenté par M. F. Paillard sur l’opportunité d’une oeuvre sociale missionaire à Antioka,” [1914]. On the evolution of the scheme, see Gengenbach, Binding Memories, ch. 6. On similar missionary schemes in colonial Africa, see, for instance, Etherington, Norman, “African Economic Experiments in Colonial Natal 1845-1880,” African Economic History 5 (1978): 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁵ Rinderpest is an infectious disease of wild and domestic ungulates marked by high mortality. For a history of this disease in late nineteenth century Africa, see Sunseri, Thaddeus., “The African Rinderpest Panzootic, 1897–1898,” in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History, ed. Spear, Thomas (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018)Google Scholar, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.375, accessed 22 Feb. 2023.

¹⁶ Capitão G. da Costa, Gaza: 1897-1898 (Lisboa: M. Gomes, 1899), 124; AHM, Fundo da Administração Civil, seção A, caixa 768, maço 1900-1907, pasta “Vários relatórios 1900 a 1905,” 2a circunscrição das Terras da Coroa (Manhiça). Administrador de Manhiça, Relatório sobre a administração desta circunscrição durante o ano civil de 1904, 1904; Junod, Life 2, 48; Eberhardt, Aristide, “Lettre d’Antioka,” Bulletin Missionaire des Églises Libres de la Suisse Romande (BMELSR) 11, no. 139, Oct. 1897.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Campbell, Gwyn, ‘Disease, Cattle, and Slaves: The Development of Trade between Natal and Madagascar, 1875-1904’, African Economic History 19 (1990–91): Google Scholar; Alpers, Edward A., “Cattle on the Hoof: The Mozambique Channel Provisioning Trade in the Nineteenth Century,” in Cargoes in Motion Materiality and Connectivity Across the Indian Ocean, ed. Schnepel, Burkhard and Verne, Julia (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2022), .Google Scholar

¹⁸ On the origins and evolution of labor agreements between the Transvaal (and later South Africa) and the Portuguese, but also trade agreements, see Luís A. Covane, “Migrant Labour and Agriculture in Southern Mozambique with Special Reference to Lower Limpopo Valley, 1920-1992” (PhD dissertation, SOAS, 1996), ch. 3; Luís A. Covane, As Relações Económicas entre Moçambique e a África do Sul, 1850-1964: Acordos e Regulamentos Principais (Maputo: Arquivo Histórico de Moçambique, 1989); and Katzenellenbogen, Simon E., South Africa and Southern Mozambique: Labour, Railways and Trade in the Making of a Relationship (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1982), Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Milton, “To Make the Crooked,” 42.

²⁰ Direcção Geral do Ultramar (DGU), Annuário Estatístico dos Domínios Ultramarinos Portugueses – 1899 e 1900 (Lisboa: Direcção Geral do Ultramar, 1905), 646–47, 675–76.

²¹ David Hedges, “Trade and Politics in Southern Mozambique and Zululand in the Eighteen and Nineteenth Centuries” (PhD dissertation, University of London, 1978); Newitt, A History, 159–60.

²² Chewins, “The Relationship.”

²³ Sources show different commodities like maize, groundnut, sorghum, and cattle were regularly exported to the capital, but also that the circunscrições traded wine and salt and cattle among themselves. Ferrão, Circunscripções, 15, 72–73, 99–100; Governo Geral de Moçambique, Reconhecimento, 9.

²⁴ According to Covane, by 1907 Gaza alone had over 2,000 shops that sold mainly wine to Mozambican laborers returning from the mines. Covane, “Migrant Labour,” 64. On the trajectories of Asian merchants — originating from different parts of the Indian subcontinent and with different religions — in Mozambique and their presence in the Sul do Save, see Joana P. Leite, “Indo-britanniques et Indo-portugais: La Présence Marchande Dans le Sud du Mozambique au Moment de l’Implantation du Système Colonial Portugais (de la Fin du XIXe Siècle aux Années 1930),” Outre-mers 88 (2001): 330-331, 13-37.

²⁵ Ferrão, Circumscripções, 72–78.

²⁶ Ferrão, Circumscripções, 100–102; “C.”, “Charruas,” O Brado Africano, 14 Feb. 1931; Brock, “From Kingdom,” 202; Covane, “Migrant Labour,” 35–36; Liesegang, “Notes,” 198. Southern Mozambique suffered with droughts in 1908, 1912, 1918, and 1922; floods in 1913, 1915, 1917, 1925, 1937, and 1939; and a hurricane in 1931. Penvenne, African Workers; AHM, FGG, 1916-1948, cota 146, Capilhas “Calamidades” 1925 to 1948. Many of these crises were followed by famines, denounced in the African press. Swiss missionaries stationed in Rikatla and Antioka frequently documented the droughts, floods, and famines they witnessed in their accounts. See, for example, “Chronique mensuelle,” Bulletin de la Mission Romande 34, no.442 (Feb. 1923): 31, on the 1922 famine.

²⁷ Paillard, Frank, “Oeuvre sociale d’Antioka – Rapport du directeur M. Paillard,” BMELSR 30, no. 395 (Mar. 1919): .Google Scholar

²⁸ Covane, “Migrant Labour,” 35–36, 153, 212. On the dissemination of ox-ploughs in the Limpopo valley in the 1930s, the increase of agricultural outputs and the emergence of a class of “progressive farmers,” see Covane, “Migrant Labour,” ch. 4. On the tensions between the young and elders caused by the expansion of the plough in Mozambican rural society, see Covane, “Migrant Labour,” 148. On the expansion of ox-ploughs in African reserves and in missionary agricultural schemes for instance in colonial Zimbabwe, see Phimister, Ian, “Peasant Differentiation in Southern Rhodesia, 1898-1938,” in The State and the Market: Studies in the Economic and Social History of the Third World, ed. Dewey, Clive (New Delhi: Manohar, 1987), Google Scholar; Davis, Benjamin and Döpcke, Wolfgang, “Survival and Accumulation in Gutu: Class Formation and the Rise of the State in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1900–1939,” Journal of Southern African Studies 14, no. 1 (1987): 75–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁹ Ferrão, Circumscripções, 89; Theodorico Botte, Memórias e autobiografia, vol. 2 (Maputo: Oficinas Gráficas da Minerva Gráfica Central, 1985/86), 7–9; Louis Cattaneo, “À Antioka, récit de M. L Cattaneo,” Bulletin de la Mission Suisse dans l’Afrique du Sud 38, no. 494 (Sep.– Oct. 1929): 397. On similar motives for African owners to sell cattle in colonial Zimbabwe, see Steele, “The Economic Function,” 43–44.

³⁰ R. A. I. Norval, Brian D. Perry, and A. S. Young, The Epidemiology of Theileriosis in Africa (London: Academic Press, 1992). Though the few statistics detailing the functioning of the Lourenço Marques slaughterhouse do not allow for a systematic analysis of the cattle sent there in the context of ECF measures, in Nov. 1913 a total of 249 head arrived from Magude, Sabié, Maputo, Marracuene, Namaacha, and Guijá. “Mapa dos animais importados nesta província durante o mês de novembro de 1913” and “Mapa dos bovídeos indígenas entrados no matadouro municipal desta cidade, durante o mês de novembro de 1913,” Boletim Agrícola e Pecuário 10 (Jan. 1914): 21–22. In 1914, Sabié sent 408 head to the slaughterhouse, while Marracuene exported 430 head to Lourenço Marques and 193 head to other circunscrições for restocking purposes. AHM, Fundo do Governo Geral [FGG], 1915-1925 cota 87, capilha sem identificação, Circular 146 aos governos dos distritos e administradores das circunscrições sobre produtos da província, 12 Mar. 1915.

³¹ Mozambique, often relying on the services of military officers during the last years of the nineteenth century, had a limited administrative structure until the 1910s, when several departments and offices were established, and even then, it was often under-resourced and short-staffed. Formed in 1908 amidst the ECF crisis and following pressure from neighboring territories for Mozambique to deal with cattle disease, the veterinary services aimed to fight current and future epizootics and stimulate cattle restocking. Portaria provincial no. 113, 5 Mar. 1908, in Boletim Oficial de Moçambique [BOM] 11 (14 Mar. 1908).

³² Paul Conacher, “Da Criação de Gado na Província,” Boletim da Repartição de Agricultura 1 (1910): 75–78; Joāo Botelho, “Estado Sanitário Atual no Distrito de Lourenço Marques (30 de maio de 1913)” Boletim da Repartição de Agricultura 5 (1913): 37. For a detailed discussion of the measures put in place to control ECF in southern Mozambique and their social impacts, see Direito, Bárbara, “Livestock and Veterinary Health in Southern Mozambique in the Beginning of the Twentieth Century: The Case of the Fight Against East Coast Fever,” História, Ciências, Saúde – Manguinhos 28, no. 4 (2021)Google ScholarPubMed, https://doi.org/10.1590/S0104-59702021000400003.

³³ Joāo Albasini, “O gado do distrito,” O Africano, 7 Apr. 1909, 2: Albasini, “O génio da destruição,” O Africano, 6 Dec. 1913, 1. On cattle traders and speculators in Natal, see MacKinnon, “The Persistence,” 116–26.

³⁴ AHM, FNI, cota 1267, maço Processo n.º 62 – Sobre a venda do gado pertencente aos indígenas – 1909, Nota 4 from the Marracuene administration to the Negócios Indígenas services, 15 Jan. 1909.

³⁵ Albasini, “Calmaria Podre,” O Africano, 16 Sep. 1914. Though not all cattle traders were cantineiros, sources show how African populations in the South had an ambiguous relationship with the latter. On the one hand, cantineiros bought their maize for what they felt were very low prices and sold it for high prices. On the other hand, farmers often benefitted from store credit in the cantinas in periods of famine and natural calamities. Ferrão, Circumscripções, 72–76, 100; Covane, “Migrant Labour,” 231, 259.

³⁶ Veterinary policies to deal with cattle disease in this period, mainly aimed at defending settler livestock interests, led to different forms of protest and resistance from African owners in Southern Africa. On the political consequences of stamping out measures against African cattle in the region ruled by the British South Africa Company in the 1890s, see Sunseri, “The African Rinderpest.” On the more overt and covert forms of resistance of African populations to cattle dipping in regions of the Union and colonial Zimbabwe, see Bundy, Colin, “We Don’t Want Your Rain, We Won’t Dip: Popular Opposition, Collaboration and Social Control in the Anti-Dipping Movement, 1908-1916,” in Hidden Struggles in Rural South Africa, eds. Beinart, William and Bundy, Colin (London: James Currey, 1987), Google Scholar.

³⁷ C. Themudo, “Câmara Municipal – Uma sessão útil” and J. R. Jorge, “Alimentação pública – Questão das carnes,” O Africano, 12 Sep. 1914. On the situation in Portugal in this period, the subsistence crisis and the intervention of the state through municipal butchers and price fixing in Lisbon, see Maria Fernanda Rollo and Ana Paula Pires, “Food and Nutrition (Portugal),” in 1914-1918 Online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. Ute Daniel et al., (Berlin: Freie Universität, 2016), 10.15463/ie1418.11018 accessed 15 June 2022; and Ana Paula Pires, “Lisboa e a Grande Guerra: Subsistências e Poder Municipal, 1916-1918,” Ler História 73 (2018): 169–92.

³⁸ “Questão das carnes,” O Africano, 30 Sep. 1914; “Questão das carnes,” O Africano, 3 Oct. 1914.

³⁹ Created by the Black and mestiço elites of Lourenço Marques, O Africano (1908–20) and O Brado Africano (1918–74) were high circulation newspapers published in Portuguese but also in Ronga, one of the main languages spoken in the South, and were mostly aimed at the non-white educated population. Until censorship was put in place in the 1930s, these newspapers were frequently critical of colonial policies, including veterinary policies. Zamparoni, Valdemir, “A Imprensa Negra em Moçambique: A Trajetória de ‘O Africano’, 1908-1920,” África 11 (1988): 73–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the trajectory of João Albasini, one of O Africano’s founders, see Penvenne, Jeanne, “João dos Santos Albasini (1876-1922): The Contradictions of Politics and Identity in Colonial Mozambique,” The Journal of African History 37, no. 3 (1996): .CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁰ Somar, “Alimentação pública – História d’uma Companhia,” O Africano, 3 Oct. 1914.

⁴¹ Portaria provincial no. 777, BOM 5, 31 Jul. 1915.

⁴² “Feira de Magude – Um passeio agradável,” O Africano, 22 Sep. 1915.

⁴³ In one announcement, the veterinary services were looking to purchase 2580 head of cattle. “Anuncio,” O Africano, 7 Apr. 1917. In the same year the câmara needed 200 or 300 head per month, or 50–60 per week, specifically for the municipal butcher: “Câmara Municipal de Lourenço Marques – Edital,” O Africano, 6 Jun. 1917.

⁴⁴ John Overton, “War and Economic Underdevelopment? State Exploitation and African Response in Kenya 1914-1918,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 22, no. 2 (1989): 201–21. Karin Pallaver, “Organization of War Economies (Africa),” in Daniel et al., 1914-1918 Online. On the participation of Mozambique in the war and its consequences, namely the recruitment of thousands of men to serve in the North, see Newitt, A History, 415–21.

⁴⁵ Coelho, “Maphisa,” 182. Bushmeat had been regularly supplied to the capital, often illegally, which led a group of meat traders to complain to the Hunting Commission. “Caça,” O Africano, 23 Apr. 1913. On the Hunting Commission, created in 1903 to draft a hunting regulation and to control hunting activities in the south and whose members were colonial officials and hunters, see Coelho, “Maphisa,” 15 and ch. 3.

⁴⁶ Guyer, Jane, “Introduction,” in Feeding African Cities: Studies in Regional Social History, ed. Guyer, Jane (London: Routledge, 1987), 30–33.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ This cooperation between municipalities and the government for the provisioning of foodstuffs was similar to the system in place in Portugal during the war. Pires, “Lisboa.”

⁴⁸ “A vil calúnia,” O Africano, 16 Dec. 1914; “Gado,” O Africano, 24 Jan. 1917.

⁴⁹ Joāo Albasini, “Dificuldades previstas,” O Africano, 1 Aug. 1917. Albasini’s claims were rebuked a few days later by Moura, who claimed that the Companhia had sold much less cattle than the municipal butcher and denied that traders had formed a cartel. A. Moura, “Carnes verdes,” O Africano, 8 Aug. 1917.

⁵⁰ Cristiano Sheppard da Cruz, “Sobre os Serviços Veterinários da Colónia,” Boletim da Agência Geral das Colónias [BAGC] 50 (1929): 156–63; Albino Fernandes, “O Problema Pecuário da Colónia,” BAGC 50 (1929): 149–55; de Moçambique, Colónia, Anuário Estatístico – Ano de 1929 (Lourenço Marques: Imprensa Nacional, 1929), 86–87.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Ribeiro, Sousa, Anuário de Moçambique – 1917–1918 (Lourenço Marques: Imprensa Nacional, 1918).Google Scholar

⁵² On the slump in cattle prices in postwar South Africa and its consequences, see Morrell, Robert, “Farmers, Randlords and the South African State: Confrontation in the Witwatersrand Beef Markets, c. 1920-1923,” The Journal of African History 27, no. 3 (1986): .CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵³ For similar debates on the possible responses to the post-war cattle price depression, namely cattle export markets and canning factories, see Phimister, “Meat,” 401–2.

⁵⁴ AHM, FGG, 1915–1925, cota 87, Letter from the cattle owners of the southern districts, 17 Mar. 1919. On the question of cattle quality and similar negative perceptions of local cattle breeds, see Wesley Mwatwara and Sandra Swart, “‘Better breeds?’ The Colonial State, Africans and the Cattle Quality Clause in Southern Rhodesia, c.1912–1930,” Journal of Southern African Studies 42, no. 2 (2016): 333–50. On how the argument of overstocking was used from the 1910s to limit the size of herds inside native reserves in colonial Zimbabwe, see Mwatwara and Swart, ‘“Better Breeds?’”; and Shutt, “The Settlers’ Cattle Complex.”

⁵⁵ “Cooperativismo industrial e agrícola,” O Africano, 20 Sep. 1919; “Comércio e indústrias – Cooperativas,” O Africano, 24 Sep. 1919.

⁵⁶ AHM, FGG, 1915–1925 cota 103, maço 1915–1924, Note from the Associação do Fomento Agrícola da Província de Moçambique, 27 Oct. 1923,. On the complaints against the effects of cattle imports into colonial Zimbabwe and state regulations on this matter, see Wesley Mwatwara, “A History of State Veterinary Services and African Livestock Regimes in Colonial Zimbabwe, c.1896-1980” (PhD dissertation, Stellenbosch University, 2014), 137. Import restrictions on Swazi cattle were also introduced in South Africa in the 1920s to avoid lowering cattle prices. Randall Packard, “Maize, Cattle and Mosquitoes: The Political Economy of Malaria Epidemics in Colonial Swaziland,” The Journal of African History 25, no. 2 (1984): 199.

⁵⁷ AHM, FGG, 1915–1925, cota 88, Telegram from the Magude district administrator, 10 Mar. 1922. In a second telegram, dated 10 Jul. 1922, Magude cattle owners asked to sell their cattle because of the drought felt in the region.

⁵⁸ For the negative reply of the veterinary division to the requests made by the Magude owners, see AHM, FGG, 1915–1925, cota 88, Informação 427, 12 Jul. 1922.

⁵⁹ de Moçambique, Colónia, Anuário Estatístico – Ano de 1929 (Lourenço Marques: Imprensa Nacional, 1929), 86–87.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Associação do Fomento Agrícola de Moçambique, BAGC 54 (1929): 165–66.

⁶¹ Fernandes, “O problema,” 149–55. On similar debates about the industrialization of the cattle sector in neighboring territories, see Milton, “To Make the Crooked”; Phimister, “Meat”; and Sunseri, Thaddeus, “A Political Ecology of Beef in Colonial Tanzania and the Global Periphery, 1864–1961,” Journal of Historical Geography 39, no. 1 (2013): 29–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶² On the meat producers’ exchange see Morrell, “Farmers,” and Phimister, “Meat.”

⁶³ Conselho do Governo, Actas do Conselho do Governo, 13ª sessão, 21 Jun. 1928 (Lourenço Marques: Imprensa Nacional, 1928).

⁶⁴ Composed of heads of administrative services and representatives of local chambers of commerce and agriculture, the Conselho, created in 1926, was a body with deliberative and consultative functions that assisted the governor general of Mozambique. Newitt, A History, 388–89.

⁶⁵ Conselho do Governo, Actas, 21 June 1928.

⁶⁶ Amadeu Neves, “As Possibilidades da Indústria Pecuária na Colónia,” Boletim da Sociedade de Estudos de Moçambique 5 (1932): 116. On the similar situation of African farmers in neighboring territories in South Africa, see MacKinnon, “The Persistence.” Packard argues that during the Great Depression the Swazis were also forced to deal with traders on a barter basis, exchanging cattle for maize at a rate of one head per bag (when in the past they had sold one head for more bags). Packard, “Maize,” 199.

⁶⁷ de Moçambique, Colónia, Anuário Estatístico – Ano de 1934 (Lourenço Marques: Imprensa Nacional, 1935), .Google Scholar

⁶⁸ C., “Charruas”; Neves, “As Possibilidades,” 115. The milk cooperative’s statutes were approved by portaria 1247 of 17 Jan. 1931: BOM 3, 17 Jan. 1931.

⁶⁹ The Meat Cooperative’s statutes were approved by portaria 2044 of 29 Jul. 1933: BOM 30, 29 Jul. 1933.

⁷⁰ Conselho do Governo, Actas do Conselho do Governo, 1ª sessão ordinária, 18 Jan. 1934 (Lourenço Marques: Imprensa Nacional, 1934).

⁷¹ José Nunes de Oliveira, interim governor of Mozambique in the late 1930s, was one of the members who opposed the proposal.

⁷² The arroba is a unit of weight still used today in Portugal and Brazil. One arroba is equal to 15 kg.

⁷³ Diploma 404, BOM 7, 14 Feb. 1914; Portaria 2197, BOM 9, 28 Feb. 1934.

⁷⁴ For a discussion of different forms of resistance to forced labour and forced cash crop production in Mozambique, see Bridget O’Laughlin, “Proletarianisation, Agency and Changing Rural Livelihoods: Forced Labour and Resistance in Colonial Mozambique,” Journal of Southern African Studies 28, no. 3 (2002): 511–30. A seminal work focused on northern Mozambique prominently identified different forms of resistance to forced cotton production among African peasants: Allen Isaacman, Cotton is the Mother of Poverty: Peasants, Rural Struggle in Colonial Mozambique, 1938–61 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1996).

⁷⁵ The Notícias was founded in Apr. 1926 by a lawyer, farmer, industrialist, and merchant. The Democracia, a “republican weekly” created in 1933, was closed in 1935, as the freedom of the press was progressively curtailed in Mozambique. O Brado Africano continued along the lines launched by O Africano as a newspaper primarily directed at urban Black and mestiço populations. Ilídio Rocha, A Imprensa de Moçambique: História e Catálogo, 1854-1975 (Lisboa: Livros do Brasil, 2000).

⁷⁶ “O monopólio das carnes,” Democracia, 27 Apr. 1934, 11 May 1934, and 25 May 1934.

⁷⁷ Botte, Memórias 2, 7–9.

⁷⁸ Basela is Shangaan for small gift given by traders after a sale. Gengenbach, Binding Memories, glossary.

⁷⁹ Manuel G. Caruço, “O monopólio das carnes – tem a palavra um comerciante de gado,” Democracia, 1 Jun. 1934.

⁸⁰ Ibid., 6 Jun. 1934 and 15 Jun. 1934. For an account of the 1930 locust outbreak in Magude, see Botte, Memórias, II, 21.

⁸¹ ‘Cooperativa de Criadores de Gado de Lourenço Marques’, O Brado Africano, 28 Jun. 1934. According to the cooperative, contrary to Caruço, the regulation was already having positive effects in the region and in the cattle sector: because of Africans’ greater purchasing power, trade in general had improved, and owners were investing in the betterment of their cattle and in the improvement of infrastructure.

⁸² Manuel G. Caruço, “O monopólio das carnes – o Sr. Caruço fala de novo à ‘Democracia,’” Democracia, 13 Jul. 1934 and 20 Jul. 1934.

⁸³ “F. A.”, “Feiras de gado,” O Brado Africano, 19 May 1934.

⁸⁴ Joāo Albasini, “O monopólio de carnes,” O Brado Africano, 14 Jul. 1934.

⁸⁵ AHM, Fundo da Administração do Concelho de Manhiça, cota 305, maço 36, Nota 148/33 of the administrator of Manhiça to the provincial director of civil administration of the Sul do Save, 26 Feb. 1936.

⁸⁶ “X.”, “O Monopólio das Carnes e os Interesses dos Criadores Indígenas,” O Brado Africano, 22 Feb. 1936. On the pervasiveness of clandestine cattle trade, see Actas do Conselho de Governo, 15ª sessão, 30 Jul. 1936 (Lourenço Marques: Imprensa Nacional, 1936) and Estácio Dias, “O Gado dos Indígenas nas Feiras,” O Brado Africano, 29 Feb. 1936. On clandestine sales in wartime Kenya, see Overton, “War,” 217.

⁸⁷ Diploma 520, BOM 32, 12 Aug. 1936. The members of the board were: the director of veterinary services, the director of native affairs services, the chief veterinary officer of the Lourenço Marques district, representatives of cattle producers’ cooperatives and traders’ cooperatives, and a delegate of the trade association. On the creation of the Meat Control Board and the quota policy put in place in South Africa in the 1930s, see Milton, “To Make the Crooked,” 111–12.

⁸⁸ Penvenne, African Workers, 133.

⁸⁹ Hedges, História, 108; AHM, FGG, 1926-1948, cota 296, maço L/7 -1926-1948 – Gado reprodutor Ofício 1707/D/13, Correspondence to the governo geral, 28 Ap. 1947,

⁹⁰ Kerven, Customary, 7–11.

⁹¹ On the “tactical approach” of African pastoralists in the ways they engage with cattle markets, see Kerven, Customary, 3. See also Waller, “Pastoral Production,” 14.