Paper short abstract:

Inhanbane town had the liveliest port south of the river Sabi, in southern Mozambique, until the boom of Lourenço Marques in the 1890s. Funded by the Portuguese in the 1720s, it soon became a trading centre where Asians, Malagasies, Brazilians and Europeans met to deal with ivory and slaves.

Paper long abstract:

Inhambane is nowadays one of the poorest Mozambican provinces, and Inhambane town relays in attracting South African tourist to its windy beaches. However, from the IXth century onwards the area welcomed visitors coming by ship, as the archaeological sites along the Inhambane province's coast reveal.

Inhambane is the southernmost port reachable thanks to the monsoons, and there is evidence that Hindus and Muslims trading networks were active in Inhambane before the Portuguese reached the place. In the early XVIIIth century the Dutch from the Cape settled at Inhambane bay as they tried to find the way to the gold mines in the highlands. Few years later the Portuguese decided to settle permanently, and Inhambene soon became very well considered for both the amount of ivory and the quality of the slaves available.

Once the Portuguese settled permanently, all sorts of European and Brazilian traders joined them. In the late 1850s the French Government in Reunion formally asked for the exclusivity to contract labourers, but the proposal was denied. Two decades later the first ship transporting indentured labour from Mozambique actually departed from Inhambane; however its destination was not Reunion but the British colony of Natal. Later on, Inhambane province became one of the labour reserves for the mines in the Witwatersrand. In the XXth century the port decayed overpowered by Lourenço Marques, especially since it was connected by train to Johannesburg in 1895. Today, the local Hindu and Muslim communities have to compete with more trendy Chinese supermarkets.