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The Massingire Rising of 1884

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2012

M. D. D. Newitt
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Extract

The Massingire acquired an identity separate from that of the other Maganja peoples under the leadership of a family of Indian origin called Vas dos Anjos. During the 1870s they became involved in a series of wars with the Makololo chiefs of the Shire, and the raids carried out by the Makololo on Portuguese territory threatened to implicate the Scottish mission in the Shire Highlands. In 1882 the Portuguese annexed Massingire after the deposition of the Vas dos Anjos chief, and in 1884 the whole area rose in rebellion supported by dissident elements on the prazos of the lower Zambezi. The Portuguese thought that the Makololo were responsible for the rising and that they had been aided by the Church of Scotland mission. The Massingire had, in fact, made many attempts to obtain official or unofficial British protection, and it is possible that they may have thought that their connections with the British would grant them the same sort of immunity as that enjoyed by the Makololo. When the frontiers were finally drawn in 1891, Massingire was divided, the larger part falling to the Portuguese.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , January 1970 , pp. 87 - 105
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1970

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References

1 The documents concerning Moçpambique in the Arquivo Historico Ultramarino (A.H.U.) in Lisbon are partly bound and partly unbound. The official correspondence of various government departments and officials and the various registers of patents, licences and land grants are all bound. The miscellaneous correspondence collected in the Caixas, Maços and Pastas from the beginning of the seventeenth century to the end of the nineteenth century are all loose. Papers are continually being removed from the boxes to be photographed or for exhibition purposes, and most of them are now in great confusion. From some of the boxes almost all the documents have disappeared, and many papers cited by scholars who have recently worked in Lisbon are now no longer to be found.

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