By Selma Carvalho
It is instinct which prompts a man to leave his home and travel far and once there, in this unknown and alien land, it is again instinct which rescues him and propels him to success.
Exactly how old A C Gomes was when he left Goa and travelled to Zanzibar is unknown, but he couldn't have been past his twenties. By the time Goan boys were 15 they were thought to be man enough to cross the perilous Indian Ocean in hulking dhows into Africa.
By 1868, the bespectacled Gomes had a thriving photo studio in Zanzibar. Neither he nor any Goan photographer at the time could have imagined that 150 years later they would be the subject of an online exhibition curated by the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of African Art in Washington DC.
The exhibition titled 'Sailors & Daughters', featuring photos and postcards of the East African coastal region, states, "A C Gomes... established the first studio in Zanzibar in the early 1870s. Soon after, J B and Felix Coutinho, probably of Portuguese or Goan extraction, joined forces with Gomes for some time, then expanded to Mombasa." J B and Felix were indeed Goans who ran a studio as the Coutinho Brothers, as were Pereira de Lord and E C Dias.
A little research by the exhibition curator would have revealed that apart from the Portuguese consul, white Portuguese rarely settled in Zanzibar. By 1893, the 300-odd Portuguese residents in Zanzibar were all Goans.
By the 19th century, Zanzibar stood on the edge of a new modernity. It's emergence as a seaport presented fresh opportunities. It would soon become a thriving metropolis, an Eldorado to fortune hunters, explorers, naturists, traders and ambitious colonialists. It was here that the blueprint for an inclusive society emerged, perhaps unwittingly, as Africans, Arabs, Indians, Goans and Europeans lived dependent lives and shared civic responsibilities.
Goans had begun to arrive by the mid-1800s, setting up small provision stores in the port area, and supplying flour, fresh bread, meat and vegetables to ships docked nearby. Among the early arrivals was C R de Souza, a prosperous trader and influential patriarchal figure within the community. On the heels of the trader, arrived Goan bakers, tailors, carpenters, doctors, chemists and photographers.
Photography was already well established in India. Royal courts and government offices used it to document their affairs.
Arriving in Zanzibar, Goan photographers initially shared premises with chemists but buoyed by the tourist trade, independent studios emerged, and photographers became crucial players in preserving a pictorial chronicle of life on the East African coast.
Their lens created a third space for interpretation; different from the gaze of colonial Europe and indigenous populations. They took over from portraiture, as the preferred medium by the middle-class to conserve family histories.
Both the leading photographers in Zanzibar, Gomes and Coutinho, enjoyed royal patronage and were appointed photographers to the Sultan. Indeed so seminal was Gomes's work that in 1906, the Zanzibar Exhibition Committee commissioned him to make a series of studies illustrating the clove industry in Fufuni, the first study of its kind.
Undoubtedly Goans played an integral role in the formation of a modern Africa as intermediaries between the foreign and the indigenous. But a photo which is part of the Northwestern University collection should lead to a more critical assessment of this role.
It shows a Goan clerk standing guard over a human caravan of beleaguered Africans possibly about to depart on an ivory-hunting expedition to the interior. Whatever the motivation, Goans invariably furthered the cause of European colonization.
In the dismal hierarchies colonization gave birth to, there is very little doubt that the Goan understood clearly that his place was second only to the European, a position he enjoyed and protected for as long as he could.
The writer is the author of 'A Railway Runs Through: Goans of British-East Africa, 1865-1980'.
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