Vagabond States: Boundaries and Belonging in Portuguese Angola, c. 1880-1910

Portuguese colonialism;Racial identity & "creolization"Anticolonial rebellion;History (General);African Studies;Anthropology and Archaeology;Humanities;Social Sciences;Anthropology and History

Melnysyn, ShanaPitcher, Anne ;

University of Michigan

关键词: Portuguese colonialism;    Racial identity & ";    creolization";    Anticolonial rebellion;    History (General);    African Studies;    Anthropology and Archaeology;    Humanities;    Social Sciences;    Anthropology and History;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/138655/shanamel_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

At the end of the nineteenth century, Angola was ostensibly ;;Portuguese.” But colonialsettlement and bureaucracy in the south central African territory were limited to the Atlanticports of Luanda and Benguela and a few small military outposts in the hinterland. Thetransatlantic slave trade had brought an influx of novel commodities and people to Angola’sshores since the end of the fifteenth century, gradually transforming the modes through whichpeople defined identities and loyalties. Against the notion that a ;;slaving frontier” movedsteadily inland and left relative stability in its wake, this dissertation shows how a diversepatchwork of political structures and authorities persisted into the twentieth century, confoundingmetropolitan Portuguese agents. Following Vellut’s articulation of a ;;lusoafrican frontier, somehistorians have grouped the motley mix of exiles from Portugal who ran off into the bush,mestiços born of their local liaisons, and black Angolans adopting Portuguese language, dress,and religion as ;;Luso-Africans.” While this classification performed useful work in previoushistories of Angola, I argue that we should only use it carefully and critically, giving preferenceto emic categories to broaden the descriptive range. Locally forged categories of people—intermediary traders and scribes such as Ambaquistas and Mambari—performed anddisseminated colonial authority from an early date by building trade networks deep into thecontinent. Their social and racial fluidity enabled them to navigate political and commercialnetworks with ease and diplomacy, bridging worlds. Luso-Africans and colonial agents had tocontend with existing idioms of power recognized by people whom the state classified as gentio(unassimilated ;;gentiles”) well into the twentieth century. These gentio frequently rejectedcolonial influence through violent uprisings such as the Mbailundu Revolt of 1902—one of thelargest in Angolan history and an important conflict that has received relatively scant attentionfrom researchers. Political elites from the Mbailundu Kingdom in Angola’s mostly Umbunduspeakingcentral highlands targeted Luso-African traders and Portuguese colonial agents,suggesting they were attempting to draw stricter boundaries between subjects of Mbailundu andall others who did not belong in their territory. Contributing to scholarly debates on Portuguesecolonial power as ;;weak” or ;;subaltern,” this dissertation shows how traders of indigenous andmixed descent circulated European objects and affects, spreading colonial aesthetics and logics.Despite the dearth of Portuguese institutions such as schools, courts, or missions throughoutmost of the vast territory of Angola, these new players created their own niche. When theMbailundu Revolt broke out in 1902, local elites defending ;;traditional” authority targetedintermediaries and Europeans as threatening outsiders who would no longer be tolerated.Portuguese authorities condemned Luso-African traders as instigators who stoked moral outrage.The state also accused Anglophone Protestant missionaries as inciters of revolt, resenting theirsuperior wealth and the rapport they enjoyed with the Revolt’s leaders and with the gentio.Through microhistorical analysis of conflicts, oral histories and ethnographic observation, thiswork probes the nature of anxieties and misunderstandings that characterized this violentcolonial situation, and shows how this violence continues to echo in twenty-first century Angola.