Charter Companies/Prazos

The origins of the Prazos da Coroa traced in the powerful position reached by individual Portuguese within the African society of the lower Zambesi valley in the central regions of modern Mozambique in the sixteenth century. The transformations of the seventeenth century, when the Crown relied increasingly on these families and on their private armies for its objective of establishing an effective colonial regime in the area. The last quarter of the nineteenth century, when the prazo system, which had survived for centuries, was radically transformed by the new economic forces brought into the region by the international commerce and by the South African mining revolution, and by the consequences of the principle of effective occupation stated in the Berlin Conference.