ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the diplomatic culture and practices of Munhumutapa, or Monomotapa, focusing on relations with the Portuguese. It focuses on the social and cultural dimensions of diplomacy between African and European polities in the early modern world. The chapter shows that mutual interests existed between the Karanga and the Portuguese during early modernity. It examines the processes of legitimization of agreements, underlining how African devices prevailed in the negotiation of pacts, although the European pattern of establishing alliances existed in parallel. External relations raised the question of how to formalize and legitimize the agreements between the mutapa and the neighbouring polities. The Portuguese continued to hold the mutapa garrison but, from the 1740s, they only travelled to the Zimbabwe to conduct the annual saguates. Envoys returned to the Zimbabwe to transmit those responses, with the final decisions taken by the mutapa and their counsellors.
