A History Of Postcolonial Lusophone Africa

" . . . useful, timely, and important . . . a good and informative book on the Lusophone countries, Portuguese colonialism, and postcolonial influences." —Phyllis Martin, Indiana University "This book, produced by the obvious—and distinguished—corps of country specialists . . . fills a real gap in both state-level and 'regional' (broadly defined) studies of contemporary Africa." —Norrie MacQueen, University of Dundee Although the five Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa that gained independence in 1974/75—Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, and São Tomé e Príncipe—differ from each other in many ways, they share a history of Portuguese rule going back to the 15th century, which has left a mark to this day. Patrick Chabal and his co-authors assess the nature of the Portuguese legacy, using a twofold approach. In Part I, three analytical, thematic chapters by Chabal examine what the five countries have in common and how they differ from the rest of Africa. In Part II, individual chapters by leading specialists, each devoted to a specific country, survey the histories of those countries since independence. The book places the postcolonial experience of the Lusophone countries within the context of their precolonial and colonial past and compares and contrasts their experience with that of non-Lusophone African states. The result is a comprehensive, readable, and up-to-date text and reference work on the evolution of postcolonial Portuguese-speaking Africa.

The six contributions to this volume provide a survey of some of the best contemporary literature of Portuguese-speaking Africa: Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, and Sao TomT and Prfncipe. Includes a bibliography of the literature from Lusophone Africa published between 1975 and 1994.

This volume surveys the range of texts, authors and topics from the literary and non-literary cultures of Latin America and Lusophone Africa, adopting a set of perspectives that are grounded in the discipline of postcolonial studies. Using comparative and contrastive methods, Postcolonial Perspectives reinterprets cultural landmarks and traditions of Latin America and Lusophone Africa.

Situates the cultures of Portuguese-speaking Africa within the postcolonial, global era.

In 1975, after much resistance, Portugal became the last colonial power to relinquish its colonies on the African continent. The tardiness of Portuguese decolonization in Africa (Cabo Verde, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau, São Tomé e Príncipe) raises critical questions for the emergence of national literary and cultural production in the wake of national independence. Bringing together the works of poets, short story writers, and journalists, this book charts the emergence and evolution of the national literatures of Portugal’s former African colonies, from 1975 to the present. The aim of this book is to examine the ways in which writers contended with the process of decolonization, forging national, transnational, and diasporic identities through literature while grappling with the legacies and continuities of racial power structures, colonial systems of representation, and the struggles for political sovereignty and social justice. This book will be the first of its kind in English to include canonical, emerging, and previously untranslated authors of poetry and short-form fiction to a new public.

Lusophone Africa has been neglected in Anglophone historiography. With the exceptions of a narrow set of episodes, figures, and interpretations, all of which appear in a fragmented set of journal articles, its struggles against Portuguese colonialism have remained outside the grand narratives of decolonisation. In this open access book, a group of established and up-and-coming historians of Lusophone Africa bring much-needed coherence to this interconnected set of anti-colonial struggles in order to show how people and ideas from these countries crossed borders around the globe. Its international team of contributors draws on a an underutilized range of source material beyond the usual Western state archives in order to cover a wide geographic scope, from North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and Asia, all while critically examining the consequences of such international connections within the Lusophone states themselves. For its empirically rich, original contributions to the grand narratives of African independence struggles, this book is a must-read for students and scholars interested in African history, decolonization, and the Cold War, and it is of keen interest to anyone interested in alternative histories of decolonization. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Bloomsbury Open Collections Library Collective.

Ending slavery and creating empire in Africa: from the "Indelible stain" to the "light of civilization"--Law to practice: "certain excesses of severity"--The critiques and defenses of modern slavery: from without and within, above and below -- Mobility and tactical flight: of workers, chiefs, and villages -- Targeting chiefs: from "fictitious obedience" to "extraordinary political disorder" -- Seniority and subordination: disciplining youth and controlling women's labor -- An "absolute freedom" circumscribed and circumvented: "Employers chosen of their own free will" -- Upward mobility: "improvement of one's social condition" -- Conclusion: forced labor's legacy.

Aimed at a readership in postcolonial, Luso-Brazilian and Latin American Studies, this surveys the range of texts, authors and topics from the literary and non-literary cultures of Latin America and Lusophone Africa, adopting perspectives that are grounded in the discipline of postcolonial studies.