Slavery in Mozambique connected systems of enslavement within southeastern Africa to the western Indian Ocean and, especially in the nineteenth century, to Atlantic destinations. Captives moved through coastal ports and islands as well as inland commercial networks. The traffic changed with warfare, merchant credit, plantation demand, and attempts to suppress the slave trade; it was not a single route or institution.
Mozambique also became an embarkation region for the transatlantic slave trade. As suppression made older routes more difficult, traders sent growing numbers of captives from southeastern Africa toward Brazil, Cuba, and other plantation societies. The public SlaveVoyages database documents these changing routes while distinguishing recorded voyages from broader estimates.
The legal end of slavery under Portuguese rule was gradual. An empire-wide decree abolished legal slave status in 1869, but a transitional liberto condition continued until the late 1870s. Formal abolition did not end colonial coercion: compulsory recruitment, restrictive labor contracts, and chibalo forced labor later supplied plantations, public works, and labor migration. Legal slavery and colonial forced labor were distinct systems, but the latter preserved severe limits on workers' freedom to refuse or leave.
This history therefore illustrates the difference between suppressing slave trading, abolishing ownership in people, and ending coercive labor in practice.