Empire in Africa: Angola and Its Neighbors (Volume 84) (Ohio RIS Africa Series)

The dark years of European fascism left their indelible mark on Africa. As late as the 1970s, Angola was still ruled by white autocrats, whose dictatorship was eventually overthrown by black nationalists who had never experienced either the rule of law or participatory democracy. Empire in Africa takes the long view of history and asks whether the colonizing ventures of the Portuguese can bear comparison with those of the Mediterranean Ottomans or those experienced by Angola’s neighbors in the Belgian Congo, French Equatorial Africa, or the Dutch colonies at the Cape of Good Hope and in the Transvaal. David Birmingham takes the reader through Angola’s troubled past, which included endemic warfare for the first twenty-five years of independence, and examines the fact that in the absence of a viable neocolonial referee such as Britain or France, the warring parties turned to Cold War superpowers for a supply of guns. For a decade Angola replaced Vietnam as a field in which an international war by proxy was conducted. Empire in Africa explains how this African nation went from colony to independence, how in the 1990s the Cold War legacy turned to civil war, and how peace finally dawned in 2002. In this lucid, incisive book, David Birmingham takes the reader through Angola's troubled past, from Portuguese colonization to independence and the long civil war that followed. In eleven wide-ranging essays, Empire in Africa: Angola and Its Neighbors examines Angola's experience of colonialism and compares it with that of Angola's neighbors in the Belgian Congo, French Equatorial Africa, and the Dutch settlements at the Cape of Good Hope and in the Transvaal.Chapters on the role of merchants and missionaries, liquor and migrant labor, Luanda's tradition of street carnivals, and attempts by South Africa's apartheid regime to topple regional Marxist governments all work to illuminate Birmingham's major themes of war, religion, gender, and politics.It was not until 1975 that Angola was finally free of Portuguese dictatorship. For almost thirty years after that, the nation endured endemic warfare as the warring parties used Angola's oil and diamond revenues-which might have been used to rebuild a farming economy, schools, and hospitals-to buy guns from the Cold War superpowers. For the first decade of its independence Angola replaced Vietnam as a field in which an international war by proxy was conducted.Empire in Africa illuminates how Angola went from colony to independence, how in the 1990s the Cold War legacy turned to civil war, and how peace finally dawned in 2002. The idea of empire Wine, women, and war Merchants and missionaries A Swiss community in highland Angola The case of Belgium and Portugal Race and class in a "fascist" colony The death throes of empire Destabilizing the neighborhood Carnival at Luanda The struggle for power A journey through Angola. "Empire in Africa illuminates how Angola went from colony to independence, how in the 1990s the Cold War legacy turned to civil war, and how peace finally dawned in 2002"--Jacket