The Island of Mozambique is located in the Indian Ocean at the crossroads of diverse influences: continental, Arab-Swahili, Indian and Portuguese ones... Portuguese colonial capital until 1898, it became at the beginning of the Eighteenth Century a slave trade hub, notably with French islands in the Indian Ocean. In 1991, it is inscribed by the UNESCO on the World Heritage List. The patrimonialisation of the island questions this colonial but also "multiple" legacy which results from a secular Indian-Oceanic mobility. Patrimony is the favourite tool for the making of imaginaries, memories and identities. Yet, the Island of Mozambique, polysemous object, is mixed within a complex network of relations and representations. Oscillating between the extreme symbols of colonial alienation and those of the plural "mozambicanity", the Island and its patrimony raises important stakes, on both identity, political, sociological and memorial levels. The multiple interpretations of the Island and of the notion of patrimony, among the population who live there and the national and international institutions which administrate it, cast light on those -- at times conflictual -- stakes and their incidence on the current rehabilitation process. This work also aims at tracing, through a "genealogic" approach, the main stages of the patrimonialisation process, in its legal, institutional and symbolic aspects, and to put into perspective the multiple images and customs of the Island, notably linked to colonial memory and to the process of national construction.
