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ABSTRACT
The rise of the automobile played a significant role in the transformation of how we see and experience landscapes. Likewise, motor cars were key to defining the shape of twentieth-century tourism. In colonial settings, cars can be understood as a technology of speed and power which helped to control people and space. Looking at early twentieth century Africa, this study analyses the arrival of the motor car in Mozambique and the role it played in shaping motorised landscapes and in tourism development. This article looks at a collection of photographic albums depicting the colony of Mozambique. Published in 1929, the volume contains more than 100 photographs that include cars. This article highlights three main narratives: (i) the illusion of ‘motoring landscapes’; (ii) the car’s contribution to the invention of the beach and scenic roads; and (iii) the role of the car in safaris and the domination of nature. These three narratives are aligned with wider official discourses and contribute to the idea of conquering African landscapes, critical both to colonialism as well as to tourism development.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Gordon H. Pirie, ‘Non-Urban Motoring in Colonial Africa in the 1920s and 1930s’, South African Historical Journal 63 (2011): 56.
2 John Urry, ‘The ‘‘System’’ of Automobility’, Theory, Culture and Society 21, no. 4–5 (2004): 25–39; Mike Featherstone, Nigel Thrift and John Urry, eds. Automobilities (London: Sage, 2005); Kevin Hannam, Mimi Sheller and John Urry ‘Mobilities, Immobilities and Moorings’, Mobilities 1, no. 1 (2006): 1; João Sarmento. ‘Driving through Car Geographies’, Aurora: Geography Journal 1 (2007): 83–107; Merriman, Peter ‘Automobility and the Geographies of the Car’, Geography Compass 3, no. 2 (2009): 586–99.
3 Urry, ‘The “System” of Automobility’, 27.
4 Stéphanie Ponsavady, Cultural and Literary Representations of the Automobile in French Indochina: A Colonial Roadshow (Cham: Springer, 2018).
5 Michael V. Conlin and Lee Jolliffe eds. Automobile Heritage and Tourism (London: Routledge, 2017).
6 Pirie, ‘Non-Urban Motoring, 36.
7 Brian J. Turton ‘The Road Motor Services of Rhodesia, 1927–1938’, Journal of Transport History 18 (1997); Luise White, ‘Cars out of place: Vampires, technology, and labor in East and Central Africa’, In Tensions of empire: Colonial cultures in a bourgeois world, ed. Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler (Berkeley, London 1997); Jan-Bart Gewald, ‘Missionaries, Hereros, and Motorcars: Mobility and the Impact of Motor Vehicles in Namibia Before 1940’, The International Journal of African Historical Studies 35, no.2/3 (2002): 257–85; Georgine Clarsen, ‘Machines as the Measure of Women: Colonial Irony in a Cape to Cairo Automobile Journey, 1930’, The Journal of Transport History 29, no. 1 (2008): 44–63; Jan-Bart Gewald, Sabine Luning and Klaas van Walraven ‘Motor Vehicles and People in Africa: An Introduction’. In The speed of change. Motor vehicles and people in Africa, 1890–2000, eds. Jan-Bart Gewald, Sabine Luning and Klaas van Walraven (Brill: Leiden, 2009), 1–18; Pirie, ‘Non-Urban Motoring’; Kory Olsen, ‘Come Drive French North Africa: Cartographic and Guidebook Discourse in Michelin’s 1929 Maroc, Algérie, Tunisie’, French Colonial History 20 (2021): 29–64.
8 Gordon H. Pirie, ‘Elite Exoticism: Sea-Rail Cruise Tourism to South Africa, 1926–1939’, African Historical Review, 43 (2011): 73–99; Pamila Gupta, ‘Consuming the Coast: Mid-century Communications of Port Tourism in the Southern African Indian Ocean’, Comunicação Mídia e Consumo 12, no. 35 (2015): 149–70.
9 Alison Murray, ‘Le tourisme Citroën au Sahara (1924–1925)’, Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'histoire. 68 (2000): 95–107; Pirie, ‘Automobile Organizations Driving Tourism in Pre-Independence Africa’.
10 On Mozambique see Arlindo Gonçalo Chilundo, ‘Economic and Social Impact of Rail and Road Transportation Systems in the Colonial District of Mozambique (1900–1961)’ (PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 1995); on Guinea Bissau see Philip J. Havik ‘Estradas sem fim: o trabalho forçado e a politica indígena na Guiné (1915–1945)’, in Trabalho forçado africano–experiências coloniais comparadas, eds. Elvira Mea, José Capela and Maciel Santos (Porto: Campo das Letras, 2006), 229–47; Philip J. Havik, ‘Motorcars and Modernity: Pining for Progress in Portuguese Guinea, 1915–1945’, in The Speed of Change. Motor Vehicles and People in Africa, 1890–2000, eds. Bart Gewald, Sabine Luning and Klaas van Walraven (Brill: Leiden, 2009), 48–74; on Angola see Carlos M. Lopes, Candongueiros & kupapatas (Cascais: Principia, 2011); on Cape Verde see Gerard Horta, ‘Interurban Collective Transport and Road Crashes in Santiago, Cape Verde’, Etnográfica 17, no. 1 (2013): 77–95.
11 Ian James, Paul Virilio (London: Routledge, 2007), 29.
12 Paul Virilio, Open Sky, trans. J. Rose (London: Verso, 1997), 12.
13 Paul Virilio, Negative Horizon: An Essay in Dromoscopy, trans. M. Degener (London: Continuum, 2005), 105.
14 Virilio, Negative Horizon, 105.
15 Aldo Huxley, ‘Wanted, a New Pleasure’, in Music at Night and Other Essays (London: Chatto & Windus, 1931), 248–57.
16 Enda Duffy, The Speed Handbook. Velocity, Pleasure, Modernism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009).
17 Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880–1918 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983).
18 Georgine Clarsen and Lorenzo Verasini, ‘Settler Colonial Automobilities: A Distinct Constellation of Automobile Cultures?’ History Compass 10, no. 12 (2012): 889–900.
19 Frank Schipper, Driving Europe. Building Europe on roads in the twentieth century. (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008).
20 Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 113.
21 Le Matin, 1907: p.5.
22 Duffy, The Speed Handbook, 5.
23 Kern, The Culture of Time and Space.
24 Paul Virilio, Speed and Politics: An Essay on Dromology, trans. Mark Polizzotti (1977; repr., New York: Semiotext(e), 2007).
25 Gewald, ‘Missionaries, Hereros, and Motorcars’; Havik, ‘Estradas sem fim’; Havik, ‘Motorcars and Modernity’; Maria da Conceição Neto, ‘Nas malhas da rede: O impacto económico e social do transporte rodoviário na região do Huambo c. 1920 – c. 1960’. International symposium Angola on the Move: Transport Routes, Communication and History, (Berlin, 24–26 September 2003); Marcelo Bittencourt and Victor de Andrade Melo, ‘Esporte, economia e política: o automobilismo em Angola (1957–1975)’, Topoi Revista de História 17 (2016): 196–222; Pedro Cerdeira, ‘O Automóvel Touring Club de Angola e o automobilismo ao serviço do império (1961–1974)’, in A Guerra e as Guerras Coloniais na África subsaariana, eds. José Luís Lima Garcia and Sérgio Neto (Coimbra: Coimbra University Press, 2019), 267–93.
26 Jan-Bart Gewald, ‘People, mines and cars: Towards a revision of Zambian history, 1890–1930’, in The speed of change. Motor vehicles and people in Africa, 1890–2000, eds. Jan-Bart Gewald, Sabine Luning and Klaas van Walraven (Brill: Leiden, 2009), 21–47.
27 Neto, ‘Nas malhas da rede’. See also White, ‘Cars Out of Place’.
28 João Sarmento and Eduardo Brito-Henriques, ‘Overland tourism in the Istanbul to Cairo route: ‘real holidays’ or McDonaldised niche tourism?’ in Turismos de Nicho: Motivações, Produtos, Territórios, ed. José Manuel Simões and Carlos Ferreira (Lisboa: Centro de Estudos Geográficos, 2009), 283–95; Philippa Thomas and Christian van Nieuwerburgh, ‘The Lived Experience of Long-Term Overland Travel’, Annals of Tourism Research Empirical Insights 3, no. 1 (2022): 100040.
29 Murray, ‘Le tourisme Citroën au Sahara (1924–1925)’.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid.
32 Georgine Clarsen, ‘Tracing the Outline of Nation: Circling Australia by Car’, Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 13, no. 3 (1999): 359–69; Pirie, ‘Non-Urban Motoring in Colonial Africa’; Rosemary Kerr, ‘On the Trail of the New Frontier: Doing Things the Hard Way in Australian Overland Travel’, in Affective Geographies of Transformation, Exploration and Adventure, eds. Hayley Saul and Emma Waterton (London: Routledge, 2018), 178–99.
33 Clarsen, ‘Machines as the Measure of Women’.
34 Lassaad Dendani, ‘Les Origins du Tourisme Automobile dans la Tunisie Coloniale (de la fin du XIXeme Siecle au milieu du XXeme Siecle)’, Revue Tourisme May (2006): 75–83.
35 Kory Olsen, ‘Come Drive French North Africa: Cartographic and Guidebook Discourse in Michelin’s 1929 Maroc, Algérie, Tunisie’, French Colonial History 20 (2021): 29–63.
36 Pirie, ‘Automobile Organizations Driving Tourism in Pre-Independence Africa’.
37 Olsen, ‘Come Drive French North Africa’; Pirie, ‘Automobile Organizations Driving Tourism in Pre-Independence Africa’, 73.
38 Pirie, ‘Automobile Organizations Driving Tourism in Pre-Independence Africa’; Eric G.E Zuelow, A History of Modern Tourism (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 115.
39 Alois S. Mlambo, ‘From Dirt Tracks to Modern Highways: Towards A History of Roads And Road Transportation in colonial Zimbabwe, 1890 to World War II’, Zambezia XXI, no. I (1994): 147–66.
40 Pirie, ‘Automobile Organizations Driving Tourism in Pre-Independence Africa’, 78.
41 Maria Fernanda Alegria, A Organização dos Transportes em Portugal (1850–1910). As vias e o tráfego (Lisboa, Memórias do Centro de Estudos Geográficos, 1990). See also William Gervase Clarence-Smith, The Third Portuguese Empire, 1825–1975: A Study in Economic Imperialism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985).
42 Inês Vieira Gomes, ‘“A Souvenir of Lourenço Marques”: álbuns fotográficos de CS Fowler, J. & M. Lazarus e José dos Santos Rufino (1887–1929)’, Outros Tempos: Pesquisa em Foco-História, 13, no. 22 (2016): 163–76.
43 see Noeme Santana, ‘Olhares britânicos: Visualizar Lourenço Marques na ótica de J and M Lazarus, 1899–1908’, in O Império da Visão. Fotografia no Contexto Colonial Português (1860–1960), ed. Filipa Lowndes Vicente (Lisboa: Edições, 70, 2014), 211–22.
44 David Killingray and Andrew Roberts, ‘An Outline History of Photography in Africa to ca. 1940’, History in Africa 16 (1989): 197–208. For a broad analysis of photographic sources of colonial Portuguese Africa of an earlier period, see Jill Dias, ‘Photographic Sources for the History of Portuguese-speaking Africa, 1870–1914’, History in Africa 18 (1991): 67–82.
45 José dos Santos Rufino, Albuns Fotográficos e Descritivos de Moçambique (Hamburg: Broschek, 1929).
47 For some details on the context of its production see Eric Allina, ‘“Fallacious Mirrors:” Colonial Anxiety and Images of African Labor in Mozambique, ca. 1929’, History in Africa 24 (1997): 9–52; Ana Cristina Nogueira da Silva ‘Fotografando o mundo colonial africano (Moçambique 1929)’, Varia Historia 25, no. 41 (2009): 107–29; Ana Cristina Nogueira da Silva, “O registo da diferença: fotografia e classificação jurídica das populações coloniais (Moçambique, primeira metade do século XX)”, in O Império da Visão: Fotografia no Contexto Colonial Português (1860–1960), ed. Filipa Lowndes Vicente (Lisbon: Edições 70, 2014), 67–84; Gomes, ‘A Souvenir of Lourenço Marques’.
48 Allina, ‘“Fallacious Mirrors:” Colonial Anxiety and Images of African Labor in Mozambique, ca. 1929’.
49 Ibid.
50 Agência Geral das Colónias, ‘Boletim da Agência Geral das Colónias’, V, no. 50 (1929), Agosto.
51 While illustrating some empty roads and other ways, photographs from the district of Cabo Delgado (Nyassa Territory), the more distant from the capital, do not include any car, but only motorbikes with sidecar. In 1931, there were only 13 tourism vehicles in the district (see Table 2).
52 Filipa Lowndes Vicente, ed. O império da visão: fotografia no contexto colonial português (1860–1960), (Lisboa: Edições 70, 2014).
53 Amy J. Staples, ‘Safari adventure: forgotten cinematic journeys in Africa’, Film History: An International Journal 18, no.4 (2006), 393.
54 Glenn Reynolds, Colonial Cinema in Africa. Origins, Images, Audiences (Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2015).
55 Rufino, Albuns Fotográficos e Descritivos de Moçambique, I: VI.
56 Ibid, I: VII.
57 Photograph taken by Piedade Pó, published in A. W. Bayly & Co., The Delagoa Directory: a year book of information regarding the Port and Town of Lourenço Marques (A. W. Bayly & Co., 1927).
58 Gordon H. Pirie, ‘Elite Exoticism: Sea-Rail Cruise Tourism to South Africa, 1926–1939’, African Historical Review 43 (2011): 73–99.
59 Rufino, Albuns Fotográficos e Descritivos de Moçambique, I: 13. See also João Sarmento, ‘History of Tourism in Colonial Lusophone Africa’, In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2024).
60 Up to 1961, when the ‘Law of the Indigenous’ was abolished, automobile property and driving licence was forbidden to people classified as indigenous. Only a small minority of the back population could drive a car. This was part of a broader policy of excluding the black African population from having an authoritative relationship with the technology.
61 Colónia de Moçambique, Censo da população não indígena em 1928 (Lourenço Marques: Repartição de Estatística, Imprensa Nacional, 1930).
62 Arlindo Chilundo, ‘Subsídios para o estudo do transporte rodoviário na Província de Nampula (1930–54)’, Cadernos de História 8 (1990): 74.
63 Mlambo, ‘From Dirt Tracks to Modern Highways’.
64 António Barradas, O Império Português na primeira Exposição Colonial Portuguesa: álbum-catálogo official (Porto: Litografia Nacional, 1934), 337.
65 For some interesting accounts of road travel in Mozambique see Cleveland, Alluring Opportunities, 62–63.
66 Governo Geral de Moçambique, Moçambique – documentário trimestral. no.15 (1938), Setembro, 52.
116 Motorcycles and trucks not included.
117 The most popular brands were Chevrolet (594), Ford (276), Fiat (178) and Buick (98) (Sociedade Luso-Africana do Rio de Janeiro, ‘Boletim da Sociedade Luso-Africana do Rio de Janeiro’ no.2 (1931), Dezembro, 80).
118 Excludes trucks.
119 16,349 km in the colony and 5,638 in the Company of Mozambique territory.
67 Staples, ‘Safari adventure’.
68 Deriving from seigneurial domains in the seventeenth century, Prazos were, up to 1930, chartered companies in miniature, leased to individuals or companies for 25 years, mostly to attract investment.
69 Malyn Newitt, A Short History of Mozambique (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 99.
70 Allen Isaacman and Barbara Isaacman, Mozambique. From Colonialism to Revolution, 1900–1982 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1983).
71 Clarsen, ‘Tracing the Outline of Nation’; Justine Greenwood, ‘Driving Through History: The car, the Open Road, and the Making of History Tourism in Australia, 1920–1940’, Journal of Tourism History 3, no.1 (2011): 21–37; Kerr ‘On the Trail of the New Frontier’.
72 Schipper, Driving Europe, 56.
73 Havik, ‘Estradas sem fim’; Havik, ‘Motorcars and Modernity’.
74 Gewald, ‘Missionaries, Hereros, and Motorcars’.
75 Ponsavady, Cultural and Literary Representations of the Automobile in French Indochina.
76 Malyn Newitt and Corrado Tornimbeni, ‘Transnational Networks and Internal Divisions in Central Mozambique’, Cahiers d’études africaines 192 (2008): 707–40.
77 Rufino, Albuns Fotográficos e Descritivos de Moçambique, VIII: VIII.
78 Raúl Augusto da Silva Guardado, ‘Relatório referente à visita efetuada aos distritos de Quelimane e Tete’, Boletim Geral das Colónias VI, no. 65 (1930): 70.
79 Schipper, Driving Europe. Building Europe on roads in the twentieth century.
80 Governo Geral de Moçambique, Moçambique – documentário trimestral. no.15 (1938), Setembro, 51–52.
81 Governo Geral de Moçambique, Moçambique – documentário trimestral, 52.
82 A ‘second nature’ landscape is one that has been redefined by human activity to meet human needs.
83 White, ‘Cars Out of Place’.
84 Sarmento, ‘History of Tourism in Colonial Lusophone Africa’.
85 David Louter, Windshield Wilderness: Cars, Roads, and Nature in Washington's National Parks. (Washington: University of Washington Press, 2009), 31.
86 Thomas Zeller, Consuming Landscapes. What we see when we drive and why it matters. (Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 2022), 26.
87 Rufino, Albuns Fotográficos e Descritivos de Moçambique, I: VIII.
88 Ibid, III: IX.
89 Ibid, III, 110.
90 Ibid.
91 Duffy, The Speed Handbook.
92 see João Sarmento and Denis Linehan, ‘The Colonial Hotel: Spacing Violence at the Grande Hotel, Beira, Mozambique’, Environment and planning D: Society and space 37, no. 2 (2019): 276–93; Cleveland, Alluring Opportunities.
93 Anne F. Hyde ‘From Stagecoach to Packard Twin Six: Yosemite and the Changing Face of Tourism, 1880–1930’, California History 69, no. 2 (1990): 154–69; Merriman, 2008; Christof Mauch and Thomas Zeller ed., The World Beyond the Windshield: Roads and Landscapes in the United States and Europe, Athens (Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2008).
94 Zuelow, A History of Modern Tourism.
95 Merriman, 2007; Mauch and Zeller, The World Beyond.
96 Louter, Windshield wilderness; Zuelow, A History of Modern Tourism; Mauch and Zeller, The World Beyond; Zeller, The World Beyond the Windshield
97 Todd Cleveland, A History of Tourism in Africa. Exoticization, Exploitation, and Enrichment. (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2021), 55.
98 Brian Herne, White Hunters: The Golden Age of African Safaris (New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2014), 246.
99 Cleveland, A History of Tourism in Africa, 55.
100 Maria Archer, Caleidoscópio Africano (Lisbon: Editorial Cosmos, 1939), 4 (also published in Cadernos Coloniais, 49).
101 Agência Geral das Colónias, ‘Boletim da Agência Geral das Colónias’, 385.
102 A majestic company established in 1891, with a 50-year concession of the present territories of Manica and Sofala provinces. In 1935 the 1000 square kilometres were expanded to 3200, and a tourist camp was built in 1940. In 1960, Gorongosa became a National Park, with the size of 5300 square kilometres. In the 1960s and 1970s, the park was quite well known and among famous visitors were actors John Wayne, Joan Crawford and Gregory Peck, and the astronaut James Lovell.
103 see Staples, ‘Safari adventure’.
104 Ignatius Phayre, ‘Hunting Big Game by Train and Auto’, Current History (1916–1940) 28, no. 5 (1928): 773–80.
105 Ofcansky, Thomas Paul, ‘A History of Game Preservation in British East Africa, 1895–1963’ (PhD Diss. West Virginia University, 1981).
106 Ibid, 200.
107 Ibid.
108 The only binary inside/outside that is discernible in the images is that the photographers appear either next the car or inside it.
109 Phayre, ‘Hunting Big Game’, 780.
110 Olsen, ‘Come Drive French North Africa, 30.
111 Ibid.
112 Sarmento and Linehan, ‘The Colonial Hotel’; Sarmento, ‘History of Tourism in Colonial Lusophone Africa’; Cleveland, Alluring Opportunities.
113 Pahyre, ‘Hunting Big Game by Train and Auto’, 773.
114 Ibid.
115 Allina, ‘“Fallacious Mirrors”; Jeanne Penvenne, African Workers and Colonial Racism: Mozambican Strategies and Struggles in Lourenço Marques, 1877–1962 (London: James Currey, 1995).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
João Sarmento
João Sarmento is a professor in the Geography Department of the University of Minho, Portugal. He holds a Ph.D in Geography from the University College Cork, Ireland. He is the author of Fortifications, Postcolonialism and Power: Ruins and Imperial Legacies (Routledge, 2011) and History of Tourism in Colonial Lusophone Africa (Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History, Oxford University Press, 2024).