Title:
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Mossamedes and its hinterland, 1875-1915
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The history of southern Angola and northern South West
Africa during the period of colonial conquest (1875-1915) has
been reexamined from a predominantly economic angle. In
the arid coastal strip the fisheries and sma11 plantations went
through alternating periods of boom and slump, white settler
society became increasingly stratified and a concealed form
of black slave labour was maintained until 1913. In the Huila
highlands Portuguese settlers from Madeira eked out a meagre
living from subsistence farming, Boer trekkers from the
Transvaal built up an important transport riding business and
the indigenous Mwila inhabitants fought a long and bitter struggle
to prevent white encroachments on their lands. In the Ovambo
and Okavango flood plains the Africans built up a flourishing
raiding and trading economy supplemented by migrant labour,
underwent rapid social stratification and resisted European
conquest. In a number of large campaigns which only ended
in 1915. In the southern fringes of the Ovimbundu highlands
most of the trade routes went to Benguela, but Mossamedes
benefitted from the great boom in the export of root rubber
between 1886 and 1913. This was also the area where the
French catholic missionaries had their greatest success among
peoples raided by the Ovambo. Over the whole of the
hinterland of Moossamedes the policies followed by the Portuguese administration were often dictated by financial or political
considerations which had little to do with local conditions and
were often linked to financial crises at home or to frontier
disputes with Germany and Britain. The general conclusion
drawn from the thaesis is that the period of colonial conquest
needs to be analysed with more complex social categories
than the usual ones of colonisers and colonised or collaborators
and resisters.
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