Mozambique Emigration and Immigration

Online Sources

 * 1878-1960 UK and Ireland, Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878-1960, at Ancestry.com, index and images. ($)
 * 1890-1960 Passenger Lists Leaving UK 1890-1960 at Findmypast; index & images($)
 * 1892-1924 New York Passenger Arrival Lists (Ellis Island), 1892-1924 Search results for Mozambique

British Overseas Subjects

 * British Armed Forces and Overseas Births and Baptisms, Mozambique, index & images ($)
 * British Armed Forces and Overseas Banns and Marriages, Mozambique, index & images ($)
 * British Armed Forces and Overseas Deaths and Burials, Mozambique, index & images ($)

Mozambique Emigration and Immigration
"Emigration" means moving out of a country. "Immigration" means moving into a country. Emigration and immigration sources list the names of people leaving (emigrating) or arriving (immigrating) in the country. These sources may be passenger lists, permissions to emigrate, or records of passports issued. The information in these records may include the emigrants’ names, ages, occupations, destinations, and places of origin or birthplaces. Sometimes they also show family groups.

Immigration into Mozambique

 * The voyage of Vasco da Gama in 1498 marked the arrival of the Portuguese, who began a gradual process of colonization and settlement in 1505. The Portuguese gained control of the Island of Mozambique and the port city of Sofala in the early 16th century, and by the 1530s, small groups of Portuguese traders and prospectors seeking gold penetrated the interior regions, where they set up garrisons and trading posts at Sena and Tete on the River Zambezi and tried to gain exclusive control over the gold trade.
 * In the central part of the Mozambique territory, the Portuguese attempted to legitimize and consolidate their trade and settlement positions through the creation of prazos, large estates leased to colonists, settlers and traders to exploit the continent's resources. Prazos operated like a semi-feudal system and were most commonly found in the Zambezi River valley. These land grants tied emigrants to their settlements, and inland Mozambique was largely left to be administered by prazeiros, the grant holders.
 * Slavery in Mozambique pre-dated European-contact. African rulers and chiefs dealt in enslaved people, first with Arab Muslim traders, who sent the enslaved to Middle East Asia cities and plantations, and later with Portuguese and other European traders. In a continuation of the trade, slaves were supplied by warring local African rulers, who raided enemy tribes and sold their captives to the prazeiros.
 * Continuing emigration from Portugal occurred at comparatively low levels until late in the nineteenth century.
 * While prazos were originally intended to be held solely by Portuguese colonists, through intermarriage and the relative isolation of prazeiros from ongoing Portuguese influences, the prazos became African-Portuguese or African-Indian.
 * By the early 20th century the Portuguese had shifted the administration of much of Mozambique to large private companies controlled and financed mostly by British financiers.
 * Although slavery had been legally abolished in Mozambique, at the end of the 19th century the Chartered companies enacted a forced labour policy and supplied cheap—often forced—African labour to the mines and plantations of the nearby British colonies and South Africa.
 * Mozambique became independent from Portugal on 25 June 1975.
 * During Portuguese colonial rule, a large minority of people of Portuguese descent lived permanently in almost all areas of the country, and Mozambicans with Portuguese heritage at the time of independence numbered about 360,000. Many of these left the country after independence from Portugal in 1975.
 * An estimated one million Mozambicans perished during the Mozambique civil war (1977 to 1992), 1.7 million took refuge in neighboring states. By mid-1995, over 1.7 million refugees who had sought asylum in neighboring countries had returned to Mozambique, part of the largest repatriation witnessed in sub-Saharan Africa.
 * There are various estimates for the size of Mozambique's Chinese community, ranging from 7,000 to 12,000 as of 2007.
 * Roughly 45,000 people of Indian descent reside in Mozambique.

Emigration From Mozambique
KNOMAD Statistics: Emigrants: 727,400. Top destination countries: South Africa, Zimbabwe, Portugal, Malawi, Tanzania, Swaziland, the United Kingdom, the United States, Brazil, Kenya