Wealth, Land, and Property in Angola

A History of Dispossession, Slavery, and Inequality

Mariana P. Candido

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781316511503
• eBook ISBN:
  9781009062152
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

Exploring the multifaceted history of dispossession, consumption, and inequality in West Central Africa, Mariana P. Candido presents a bold revisionist history of Angola from the sixteenth century until the Berlin Conference of 1884–5. Synthesising disparate strands of scholarship, including the histories of slavery, land tenure, and gender in West Central Africa, Candido makes a significant contribution to ongoing historical debates. She demonstrates how ideas about dominion and land rights eventually came to inform the appropriation and enslavement of free people and their labour. By centring the experiences of West Central Africans, and especially African women, this book challenges dominant historical narratives, and shows that securing property was a gendered process. Drawing attention to how archives obscure African forms of knowledge and normalize conquest, Candido interrogates simplistic interpretations of ownership and pushes for the decolonization of African history.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Series information
• Title page
• Copyright information
• Contents
• List of Maps and Plans
• List of Illustrations
• List of Tables and Graphs
• Acknowledgments
• A Note on Currency and Price-Level Adjustments
• Introduction: A History of Ownership, Dispossession, and Inequality
• 1 Who Owned What? Early Debate over Land Rights and Dispossession
• 2 Property Rights in the Nineteenth Century
• 3 Written Records and Gendered Strategies to Secure Property
• 4 Commodification of Human Beings
• 5 Branded in Freedom: The Persistent Commodification of People
• 6 The Erasure of Communal Rights
• 7 Global Consumers: West Central Africans and the Accumulation of Things
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index