Beira in 1929

Blog Post 5: May 2022

A gripping description of Beira, Mozambique (where I was born and raised) when briefly visited in 1929 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) [1]:

[…] Beira is a remarkable town. We were told much that was evil before we came, but we did not find this justified. It is true that the Savoy Hotel is rather more expensive than its London namesake, but on the other hand it has verandas which look right out upon the Indian Ocean, and how can one appraise that upon a bill? The streets are broad, and a system of hand-driven trollies makes it easy and pleasant to get about. There is a club and a golf course. No, Beira is not a bad place in spite of the heat and the flies.

One of the pioneer inhabitants, Mr. Tom MacDonald, gave me some particulars. All this Coast is governed, not by Portugal but by a private Company, the Mozambique Company, which is on the lines of the old Chartered Company of Rhodesia, but with more restricted powers. Everything is referred to Lisbon. Mr. MacDonald says — what I have often heard — that when you get a really high-class Portuguese you get one of the finest gentlemen in the world. Such a one is Andrade, who is now Governor. Such men make one understand the wonderful things which Portugal did when at the height of her energy. What enormous driving power there must have been which sent her sons up from this Coast across 500 miles of savage country as far as the gold reefs in Southern Rhodesia! You have to traverse the country, the marshes, the rivers and the mountains, to realize what it meant. But if there is a high-class Portuguese there is also a low one, and some stern remonstrance from Great Britain would not be out of place, as regards the police bullying from which many of our people have suffered in their African ports.

Beira, though it has only a population of 15,000, 2,000 of whom are white [2], is laid out on a large and ambitious scale, and promises to be a worthy entrance to a great country. It will seem strange, however, to our descendants to think that in this year, 1929, there was no road of any sort connecting the port with Rhodesia. This place is very essential to Rhodesia, and if it were in the market that Dominion should pawn its shirt to buy it; but Portugal is our old and valued ally, and I hope and believe that we will play fair and leave to her always that which was hers before ever a British foot was placed in South Africa. At present the Mozambique Company consists of shareholders, a large proportion of whom are British or German. Its capital is 21/2 millions. Thus in fact the Government of the country lies in the hands of a Cosmopolitan Board, though, as I have said, it is severely checked from Lisbon. […]

[1] Excerpt from chapter 9 of the book by Arthur Conan Doyle, Our African Winter,  John Murray 1929, with an account of his African travels from November 1928 to April 1929. In https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php?title=Our_African_Winter#Chapter_IX. The chapter includes details of his journey from Rhodesia to Beira during a recurrent extreme event (summer cyclone) flooding neighbouring rivers such as the Zambezi and the Pungwe:  (...) We have bad news as we hear that a section of the line connecting us with Beira has been washed away by the heavy rains (...) 

[2] Population data through time: 4 041 (for 1897); 16 118 (for 1928) (data from 'A Cidade da Beira na Primeira Exposição Colonial do Porto', Beira 1934, pp. 30,67); 45 000 (for 1960) and 89 000 (for 1970) (data from 'Heritage of Portuguese Influence' published at https://hpip.org/pt/Contents/Place/311); According to the 2022 census the population was c. 600 000 (https://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/beira-population)

Photo: Hotel Savoy, Beira, c. 1900 (from Wikimedia Commons).