Reproducing Portuguese Villages in Africa: Agricultural Science, Ideology and Empire

Abstract

This article examines the political and ideological uses of agronomic research, focusing on state-directed rural white settlements in Angola. Implemented 'against the tide', in the mid-1950s, with Angola?s African anti-colonial movement already under way, these schemes contained numerous contradictions. Under a modernising agenda, the Estado Novo dictatorship created the colonatos of Cela and Cunene, with the expressed purpose of reproducing Portuguese rural villages in Africa, settling poor Portuguese peasants and perpetuating colonial rule. Drawing on a range of primary sources from Portuguese colonial and scientific archives and the literature on Angola, I analyse the relationship between policymakers and the agricultural engineers mobilised to study the soils and its agricultural suitability in the regions chosen for the colonatos. I show that several experts criticised state-sponsored development of white rural settlements and exposed the policy?s drawbacks. I also place this...