Paper short abstract:

The decline of maritime trading from Diu, in the late 1800s, exposed the weak Portuguese control on the trading in this territory. Analysing migration to Mozambique of the weavers’ community we observe how lives across the Indian Ocean navigated relatively apart colonial intentions

Paper long abstract:

Diu, on the coast of Saurashtra in Western India and under Portuguese dominance until 1961, was a strategic port connecting the subcontinent hinterland with Eastern Africa and home to a multiplicity of communities engaged in oceanic trade. For centuries, diverse maritime routes developed by a constellation of communities belonging to different social, religious and linguistic backgrounds. Diu became, thus, a place of convergence of this fluid cultural landscape until the industrialization of cotton weaving promoted by the British the decline of its maritime trade. This deeply affected the communities of Gujarati or Portuguese India origin established in Mozambique, the main connection between Diu and Eastern Africa.

Although these maritime routes were seen as crucial nodes of Portuguese empire in Asia and Africa, the colonial state struggled to order and control the highly dynamic networks established in the Indian Ocean.

Sustained by ethnographic and archival research, this presentation shows how the decline of maritime trading from Diu exposed the lack of Portuguese control on the trading routes, commodities and even in the taxes collected in this territory. Local communities were able to respond to a fast changing panorama though their own initiative with new migratory connections with Mozambique. One of those social groups is the weavers' community, Vanza, whose role in Mozambican trade, and later postcolonial connections with European countries, is still to be studied examined. Though their migratory initiatives we observe how lives across the Indian Ocean navigated relatively apart colonial intentions, pursuing different winds and tides