Arriving to the east African coast in the 16th century, Portuguese faced an important and well-structured commercial network dominated by Muslim merchants. Operating throughout the Indian Ocean and in articulation wit...Arriving to the east African coast in the 16th century, Portuguese faced an important and well-structured commercial network dominated by Muslim merchants. Operating throughout the Indian Ocean and in articulation with the inland African trade routes by way of the coastal settlements from Bazaruto up to the north of Mozambique, this network bustled luxury goods and basic goods benefiting either from a network of inter-personal relationships and kinship that supported the whole business, or from an ancestral knowledge on the techniques and particular procedures indispensable to navigating in the Indian Ocean. This trade made the prosperity of small southern ports, like Sofala or Mozambique long before the Portuguese arrival. However, this trade was so much dependent on the network＇s capacity of organisation and the supply demand relation of the goods involved, as well as on other factors such as the political stability of the African kingdoms, the environmental changes that shaped flows and trade routes or the actual knowledge of the region and of the different forms of organization of local communities. By focusing in the ports of Sofala and Mozambique and the information provided by the Portuguese documents we intend to analyse its evolution during the 16th century in order to understand its role in the Indian Ocean commercial network under Portuguese rule.展开更多
文摘Arriving to the east African coast in the 16th century, Portuguese faced an important and well-structured commercial network dominated by Muslim merchants. Operating throughout the Indian Ocean and in articulation with the inland African trade routes by way of the coastal settlements from Bazaruto up to the north of Mozambique, this network bustled luxury goods and basic goods benefiting either from a network of inter-personal relationships and kinship that supported the whole business, or from an ancestral knowledge on the techniques and particular procedures indispensable to navigating in the Indian Ocean. This trade made the prosperity of small southern ports, like Sofala or Mozambique long before the Portuguese arrival. However, this trade was so much dependent on the network＇s capacity of organisation and the supply demand relation of the goods involved, as well as on other factors such as the political stability of the African kingdoms, the environmental changes that shaped flows and trade routes or the actual knowledge of the region and of the different forms of organization of local communities. By focusing in the ports of Sofala and Mozambique and the information provided by the Portuguese documents we intend to analyse its evolution during the 16th century in order to understand its role in the Indian Ocean commercial network under Portuguese rule.
