Empire in Africa: Angola and Its Neighbors

201 Pages·2006·4.31 MB·English

by  David Birmingham

David Birmingham
EMPIRE
ANGOLA AND ITS NEIGHBORS
IN AFRICA
Empire in Africa
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Empire in Africa
A N G O L A A N D
I T S N E I G H B O R S
David Birmingham
Ohio University Research in International Studies
Africa Series No. 84
Ohio University Press
Athens
©2006 by the
Center for International Studies
Ohio University
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Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Birmingham, David.
Empire in Africa : Angola and its neighbors / David Birmingham.
p.cm. — (Ohio University research in international studies. Africa series ;
no. 84)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-89680-248-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Angola—History. 2. Portugal—Colonies—Africa—History. I. Title. II.
Series: Research in international studies. Africa series ; no. 84.
DT1325.B55 2006
325'.340967—dc22
2005032141
Contents
Preface, vii
1. The Idea of Empire, 1
2. Wine, Women, and War, 13
3. Merchants and Missionaries, 28
4. A Swiss Community in Highland Angola, 41
5. The Case of Belgium and Portugal, 62
6. Race and Class in a “Fascist”Colony, 80
7. The Death Throes of Empire, 96
8. Destabilizing the Neighborhood, 110
9. Carnival at Luanda, 123
10. The Struggle for Power, 139
11. A Journey through Angola, 159
Notes,175
Further Reading, 179
Index, 185
v

Preface
Angola’s imperial age spanned fivecenturies,from 1500 to 2000.
In some respects the experience resembled Hispanic colonization
in America, with battalions ofconquistadores and cohorts ofmis-
sion friars and pastors bringing European customs and beliefs to
Angola’s peoples. In other respects, as outlined in the eleven es-
says presented here, Angola’s experience was closer to that ofits
African neighbors. The Portuguese influence spreading out from
the cities of Luanda and Benguela paralleled the Dutch influence
in the south, where settlerscreated urban enclaves thatrippled out
into the countryside,coopting local herdsmen, craftsmen, and con-
cubines. Two centuries later, Portuguese colonial practice came
to resemble the practices ofFrench and Belgian neighborsin the
north as financiers were given a free hand in carving out giant
land concessions complete with untrammeled rights over the resi-
dent populations of potential conscript workers. On the eastern
shore of Africa, imperial experiences in Mozambique linked the
Portuguese closely to the British as the railway age opened up
an era of mine prospecting, which saw ambitious foreigners and
teams of migrant navvies flock to Angola.
Among the themes of modern imperial colonization, one of
the most influential and lasting was the impact ofChristianity on
societies that—unlike some of those in northern, western, and
eastern Africa—had little or no previous experience of external
world religions. In this book, reference will be found not only to
the way empire-builders used the Catholicism of the Portuguese
vii
viii / Preface
colonizers ofAngola and oftheir Belgian neighbors in Congo, but
also to the role of American Methodists, British Brethren, and
Swiss Presbyterians in creating empires. Each ofthese evangeliz-
ing traditions inspired and educated some ofthe African men and
women who inherited the colonial territories from the imperial
conquerors and carried forward the religious legacy of empire.
Asecond overarching theme ofempire was the introduction of
currency transactions, including coins and banknotes, into a broad
range ofeconomic activity that had previously been governed by
barter exchanges measured in assortments of trade goods. The
changes affected not only the old long-distance marketing ofsalt
and iron, but also the new commerce in coffee and sugar, in rubber
and ivory, that linked Central Africa to Europe and America and
became the economic grounding ofempire. The exchange princi-
ples affecting commodities were, however, slow to affect the African
labor market. In Angola and the neighboring territories, labor re-
cruitment took forms of compulsion, coercion, and conscription
that were distressingly similar to the practices utilized by pre-
colonial slave traders. Violence as a means of driving men and
women to work ceaselesslyfor foreigners continued to be preva-
lent throughout most of the colonial period.
Military might was another means by which empires in Africa
were created. During the last years of the nineteenth century
and the first decades of the twentieth, columns of white imperial
soldiers and black colonial conscripts imposed foreign rule. The
legacy of warfare was particularly lasting in the Central African
empires,and it was soldierswho captured the nationalist agenda
in the 1960s. Thereafter, for a full generation, their officers pro-
fited from neocolonial extractive economies. Even where the de-
parting empire builders had created integrated economies, with
urban consumers supplied by local industries, the new postimpe-
rial rulerstended to revert to the old colonial practice ofraw ex-
tractive plunder. They concentrated their attention on diamond
washing,copper mining, and petroleum drilling.
Empire in Angola and in the neighboring territories was es-
sentially the creation ofmen—entrepreneurs, engineers, colonels,
Preface / ix
and merchants. A few colonial settlers sent home for white brides,
and pioneering preachers were often wedded to an ascetic life-
style. Most other imperial immigrants adopted a predatory mas-
culine attitude to the ill-defended female half of the conquered
population. In Angola, white migrants fathered mixed-race chil-
dren whose ambiguous identities were akin to those of the “col-
oured” population of South Africa and the “mestizo” population
of South America, and Afro-Europeans in the Central African
territories experienced the same contradictory mix of racial dis-
advantages and racial privileges experienced by the Anglo-Indian
population of the British Empire in Asia.
The most potent legacy ofempire—to use the term in its loos-
est sense—was the oil revolution of 1973. In Angola, much as in
Nigeria and other Atlantic-basin territories, this revolution made
the country’s soldier-politicians the dependent clients ofthe Texan
oil giants. The corrupting lure of petroleum made an equitable
and democratic future hard to grasp when independence arrived
in 1975. Warfare, both civil and intrusive, was the first bitter
harvest ofthe imperial age.In the longer term, however, the new
wealth may hold out a promise of hope for Angola’s vibrant
people. Ingenuity and energy have enabled some of each rising
generation to survive during Angola’s hundred years of foreign
plunder and thirty years of civil conflict. With better education,
better sanitation, better statesmanship, better friends, Angola’s
people have rich potential in an impoverished land.