Slavery, Indenture and Migrant Labour: Maritime Immigration from Mozambique to the Cape, c.1780–1880

Abstract

In the 1770s the Cape became an important destination for slaves from East Africa. This trade ended in 1808 with the implementation of the Act of Abolition but was quickly replaced by the importation of freed slaves seized from ships going to South America, who were subjected to 14-year apprenticeships. International treaties aimed at suppressing the slave trade brought an end to this forced immigration in 1818 but did little to curb the trans-Atlantic trade that soon turned Mozambique into a major supplier of slaves. With the rapid growth in the demand for slaves in Brazil and the Mascarenes Islands, southern Mozambique came to rival the northern ports in this trade. As the trade mushroomed, the Portuguese administration and its personnel quickly came to depend on the profits of this commerce. The emancipation of slaves at the Cape was followed by the entry of a new wave of freed slaves as the Royal Navy started to stop and search Portuguese ships in the southern hemisphere. By the 1860s pressure on the Portuguese shifted from halting the slave trade to demanding an end to slavery as an institution. In the following decade the Portuguese found a new market for the sale of Mozambique's labour in the British colonies of South Africa. The terms of service of these contracted, migrant labourers retained many aspects of the earlier systems that had brought forced immigrants and slaves to the Cape. This experience would exercise an important influence on the development of labour relations in South Africa for the next hundred years.