As I have argued elsewhere, settlements between ex-slaves and ex-masters in the aftermath of slavery differed greatly between towns on the Swahili coast. Spatial distinctions and the options or lack of them fore spatial mobility were always important to them, as is known, for instance in the case of Lamu, where the 'sacred geography' continues to reflect distinctions between high-status (Sharifian) and ex-slave believers. By comparison, on the southern Swahili coast social distinctions derived from the era of slavery were less tenacious. This paper demonstrates that they are nevertheless traceable in the layout of one of these towns, Lindi, and that tracing them opens a revealing perspective on the aftermath of slavery here. Concretely, the formerly 'respectable' quarter, home to many former masters, has declined, superseded in the colonial period by the area associated most closely with the Indian merchants who dominated colonial cash-crop trading. Its ambiguous reputation as a site of both witchcraft and Sufi mysticism reflects the changing status of its population. Low-status immigrants to town, meanwhile, congregated in other new quarters. The successive building of mosques associated with partly ex-slave congregations, first in the new commercial quarter, later in the outskirts, forms a material substratum of the immigrants' negotiations for citizenship. Decades later, villagisation transferred to town the inhabitants of an ex-slave settlement on a former plantation, reiterating their marginality in a process meant to pursue modernization and social equality. These spatially-expressed social distinctions coexist uneasily with the communalist rhetoric, and at times practice, of town life.

In the begining of the 19th century, the commercial dynamics of the Bathias of Mandvi in Cutch opened new trends of migrations from Gujarat to Africa through Muscat and Zanzibar (Allen, 1981; Goswamy C., 2011). From that time and especially between the 1870s and the 1930s, Gujaratis have spread all over the African coast and inlands.

Their contribution to the urban fabric of East Africa is well known too. Surprisingly, the role of these migrations and business activities in Gujarat is still under-studied (Gandelot, 2011). To put the stress on this phenomenon, we will present the specific case of Porbandar, Gandhi's birthplace that highlights a specific connection with South Africa. The growth of the port-city activities shows, in the first half of the 20th century, the mutidimensional trajectories of the migrants. From rural Kathiawar to North Indian Ocean, Asian and African villages and cities, we will explain how Porbandar can be considered as the center of a complex and multi-scale network.

We will show as well the specific growth of the city in relation with Africa during the first half of the 20th century. Built between the two World Wars, Uganda road is a symbol of the success and of the cosmopolitanism of the gujarati traders and businessmen in Africa. Our own research (2006, 2008) and published narratives (Kalidas 1966, Madhavni, 2007) will be mostly presented on that purpose.

Inhambane is nowadays one of the poorest Mozambican provinces, and Inhambane town relays in attracting South African tourist to its windy beaches. However, from the IXth century onwards the area welcomed visitors coming by ship, as the archaeological sites along the Inhambane province's coast reveal.

Inhambane is the southernmost port reachable thanks to the monsoons, and there is evidence that Hindus and Muslims trading networks were active in Inhambane before the Portuguese reached the place. In the early XVIIIth century the Dutch from the Cape settled at Inhambane bay as they tried to find the way to the gold mines in the highlands. Few years later the Portuguese decided to settle permanently, and Inhambene soon became very well considered for both the amount of ivory and the quality of the slaves available.

Once the Portuguese settled permanently, all sorts of European and Brazilian traders joined them. In the late 1850s the French Government in Reunion formally asked for the exclusivity to contract labourers, but the proposal was denied. Two decades later the first ship transporting indentured labour from Mozambique actually departed from Inhambane; however its destination was not Reunion but the British colony of Natal. Later on, Inhambane province became one of the labour reserves for the mines in the Witwatersrand. In the XXth century the port decayed overpowered by Lourenço Marques, especially since it was connected by train to Johannesburg in 1895. Today, the local Hindu and Muslim communities have to compete with more trendy Chinese supermarkets.

Free and forced movement of people from Africa across the Indian Ocean to Asian lands is a centuries old phenomenon governed by the natural rhythms of the monsoons. Interaction between various ecological systems - the hinterland, urban and coastal areas and the sea - was inevitable. Trade goods were bartered or sold to meet the demand for manpower to fuel the imperial machinery which enhanced the Indian Ocean slave trade. Africans were forcefully moved across and within the Indian Ocean to new lands which became their homelands. Creolisation resulted from the mixing of peoples and cultures but the contact situations varied and the linguistic repertoires reflected the depth of the contact zones. Interactions between the maritime areas and inland are also evident in the trading patterns of European nations. Encounters of the Portuguese, as the pioneer Europeans to come into prolonged contact with Indian Oceanic peoples, and break into a trade that was locked by the natural rhythms of the monsoon winds is significant. The structure of Portugal's colonial outputs can be divided into two. The first, a shifting population of colonial administrators, priests and traders, and the second, a more stable population who tended to assimilate with the local people. The second group would act as agents for linguistic change. This paper focuses on Mozambique and the effects of Portuguese mercantile expansion on the people and their linguistic complement arguing that language is a site of sociocultural and political change.