Turning the Maputo river into a borderline: Amathongaland and the definition of the south Mozambique border (19th-20th century)

• Autor(a) principal: Roque, Ana
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10451/42838
• topic: Colonialismo; Fronteiras; Amathongaland; Moçambique

Defining and implementing borderlines in southern Mozambique was not a homogeneous process. Although resulting from the need to specify the different spheres of European influence in the region and ensure the effective occupation of the areas historically attributed to Europeans, each border section was discussed separately and had its own process, which cannot be considered as automatically resulting from the Berlin Conference (1885). Using the documents produced by the Commission of Borders Delimitation involved in the border definition between the former district of Lourenço Marques and the Maputaland (AmaThongaland), this article discusses how this process was implemented and its resulting impacts, particularly the division of the AmaThonga territories, in 1887, as this decision meant that the territories north of the river Maputo stayed under Portuguese sovereignty, while those south of the river would be, from then on, under British rule.