Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Preface Portugal's Impact on Africa Colonisers and the African Iron Age The Regimento da Mina Early African Trade in Angola Traditions, Migrations and Cannibalism Iberian Conquistadores and African Resisters Angola and the Church Joseph Miller's Way of Death The Coffee Barons of Cazengo Britain and the Ultimatum of 1890 Colonialism in Angola: Kinyama's Experience Youth and War in Angola The Twenty-Seventh of May Angola Revisited Black and White in Angolan Fiction Index
Synopsis
The late-medieval Portuguese who arrived in Africa were colonizers in the roman style, gold merchants on an imperial scale, conquistadores in the Hispanic tradition. Although their empire struggled to survive centuries of Dutch and English competition, it revived in the twentieth century on a tide of white migration. Settlers, however, brought racial conflict as well as economic modernisation and the Portuguese colonies went through spasms of violence which resembled those of Algeria and South Africa. Liberation eventually came but the peoples of the old colonial cities clung tightly to their acquired traditions, eating Portuguese dishes, writing Portuguese poetry and studying in Portuguese universities.