Paper short abstract:

This study explores the role of African agents in the construction of colonial knowledge in the interior of Benguela.

Paper long abstract:

African rulers and local agents shaped much of the colonial knowledge produced about territories and peoples. In the case of the interior of Benguela at the turn of the 19th century, African intermediaries informed Portuguese colonial officers about distances, political and religious systems, ethnic labels, languages, as well as trade and judicial practices despite the silence of the colonial sources on the African input.

The project of territorializing the Portuguese colony of Benguela was based on the appropriation of Central African knowledge of geography, fauna and flora, as well as political, economic, and social organization. Colonial officers drew maps, collected population demographic data, and produced reports with the intent to strengthening colonial control. In this study will explore how the ethnographical information was collected in the end of the eighteenth century - and how the territorial space was imagined. Precise boundaries were established despite the migratory nature of the population that inhabited the interior of Benguela, recreating new ways to think about the interior and the people who occupied it. For this purpose, I will analyze a series of "Notícias" produced about Benguela and its interior at the turn of the nineteenth century containing description of rivers and mountains, as well as of chiefdoms and larger states, and their religious and political systems. This study demonstrates how colonial reports were based on the knowledge and know-how of African intermediaries. Due to the weak Portuguese presence in Benguela and its interior, colonial officers relied on the African intermediaries and their information.