Encroachment, violence and negociation: economic, social and political relations between African pastoralist populations and Portuguese colonial society in Southwestern Angola, 1926-1961

Abstract

This project seek to analyze and understand which were the strategies and interests of the pastoralist populations who lived in Southwest Angola in face of the attempts of the portuguese colonial administration to subject the africans to the colonial rule during the period of validity of the indigenous legislation known as indigenato, between 1926 and 1961.The scarcity of natural and economic resources of the Southwest region Angolan resulted in a growing interest in the native cattle by the portuguese colonial society . After the damage caused to those populations by wars driven by the portuguese authorities between 1890 and 1926, as well as a result of the economic crisis experienced by Portugal in the late 1920s, the demand for cheap african labor to public and private enterprises became more pronounced. On the other hand, the native herds and the pastoralist production system became target of policies of rationalization driven by livestock and veterinary technicians. Against this background, the historiography has assumed that, in fact, Africans have been converted into docile reservoirs of labor force who were unable to impose their interests. Opposed to this analysis, the study proposed here will explore a documentation of varied nature - ethnographies, military and administrative reports, technical articles on veterinary and livestock, legislation, and so on - through which we can see the importance of the role played by Africans in political, social and economic configuration of Southwest Angola in the period noted. Furthermore, we aim to supply the lack of studies on phenomena highly significant and complex as the genocide of the kuvale population between 1940 and 1941. (AU)