Every summer, when the weather turns more clement, I dedicate time to do some primary research at, what are perhaps the best archives in the world, based in London. Last week, I spent some time studying the, ‘Statistical Report on the Portuguese Settlements in India’, extracted in the year 1850 from official documents by Captain Kol, Chief Secretary to the Government of Portuguese India,’ which provides us with a good sketch of mid-19th century Goa.
Apart from population statistics, it has detailed notes on Goa’s river routes, soil, islands, ports and winds. It mentions, the eight major rivers as (spellings as per report) Tiracol, Chapora, Baga, Sinquerim, Mandovi, Zuari, Sal and Talpona, and that the ‘communication across the eight rivers and their branches, as well as with the islands, is by means of canoes, commonly called Passagems. There are upwards of 104 of these; 35 belong to Government.’
The report tells us that ‘the inhabitants of the country are divided into three classes – Europeans, their descendants, and natives. These again, are sub-divided into four classes – Brahmins, Charados, Sudros, and Musulmans.’ People marry early, Christian females between the ages of 13 and 18, and men between 20 and 30. Hindu men, it says, ‘marry at any age, and even two or more wives, provided they support them all, when they live in the same house.’ The average number of births in a marriage are 6 to 8.
In Salcette there are 945 people to each square mile. In Bardez which is considered ‘the most cultivated and populous territory,’ there are 1331 people to the square mile. But the low density of population becomes clear when these figures are compared to Diu, where there are 6151 people to each square mile.
It is against this backdrop of a predominantly agrarian and stagnant economy, that by the 1850s, references to Goans begin to emerge in the writings of European explorers and clergy travelling through East Africa. In 1860, the Spiritan vicar apostolic Raoul de Courmont, counted ‘seven to eight’ Catholics on the island of Zanzibar, ‘who had come from Goa.’ He’d been reliably informed that the Goans ‘are coming here especially because they have the assurance of finding both priests and a Catholic mission.’
Catholic piety aside, just who were these handful of Goans that the vicar had prayed with and what were they doing in Zanzibar? With the decline of Mozambique, attention had already begun shifting to Zanzibar. It is likely, they were Goan traders from Mozambique, which was then part of Portuguese East Africa, who had moved to Zanzibar.
But the British Royal Navy provides us with another clue as to who these Goans might be. In 1878, the navy had on their muster roll, a ‘man of colour’ and of ‘very good conduct’, one Chaiton d’Almeida, who for the next seventeen years worked as ship’s cook. (Chaiton is a corruption of the Goan name Khaitan or Caetano). His date of birth is given as 1852; his place of birth as Zanzibar. How did Chaiton come to be born in Zanzibar? Almost certainly, Chaiton would have been of biracial Goan and African stock, because they were no Goan women in Zanzibar at the time.
Chaiton’s choice of occupation, that of a tarvotti (seafarer) and a cook, is interesting. Traditional occupations were inherited. It is likely that his father had arrived in Zanzibar engaged on board a ship and it was not unusual for tarvottis to take up employment or trading on land intermittently and then return to the sea after a few years. By the mid-1800s, Goans had increasingly begun to be employed on British naval ships. Catholic Goans had no inhibitions about crossing the kala pani or handling pork and beef. They were adept at making bread, and they were fairly good at learning languages. Often, they learnt a smattering of African languages enabling them to become intermediaries between Europeans and native populations. It was this occupation, seafaring, which would open up a new migratory life for Goans, as they docked in alien ports.
By 1875, the British consulate in Zanzibar estimated there to be 59 Goans on the island, and six years later the figure had ballooned to 174 odd. Among the early arrivals was John Peter de Souza, who in 1867 opened a small bakery and butchery promising fresh ‘flour always on hand’. It seems likely, that these Goan bakers, butchers and wine merchants who set up shop along the port of Zanzibar were previously employed on ships as cooks or stewards and were familiar with provisioning. Eventually what started out as small shops, grew to be large retail empires spread across British East Africa, like that of Caetano do Rosario de Souza.
Souza was born in Velsao on 7 February, 1839 to Joao Francisco and Eulalia Godinho. The family were landowners, and Souza showed an early interest in merchant shipping. He arrived in Zanzibar in 1865, and established himself fairly quickly. In just fifteen years, Sultan Sayyid Barghash awarded him a ‘diploma of honour with a gold medal’ for enterprise. Further recognition came in 1892, when he was honoured once again by Sayyid Ali bin Sayyid. On the island he was known as Big Souza, possibly for being the most established as well as for his philanthropy. He recruited scores of Goans to work for him in Zanzibar, and he is generally considered to be the chief patriarch of Goan migration to East Africa.
Migration would profoundly alter the economy of Goa but more importantly, the contact with the Anglophone world, would herald Goa’s leap into modernity.
(The writer is the author of Goan Pioneers of East Africa)
