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Paper short abstract:

I analyze digitization of Lusophone colonial rural archives in Portugal and Angola, emphasizing fascist rule, colonial counter-insurgency, and post-independence war. I make relational comparisons of Africa- and Angola-specific digitization in Germany, Belgium, the UK, France and the US.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation analyzes the varied experiences of digitizing Lusophone colonial rural archives across a dozen institutions in Portugal and Angola. The importance and challenges of such digitization are highlighted in relation to the salience of Portuguese fascist rule, rural colonial counter-insurgency, and post-independence conflicts. I draw on my research over the past 15 years on the causes and consequences of the rural 1961 anticolonial revolt in Angola’s cotton lowlands, the Baixa de Kasanje, on the border with the DR Congo. On the one hand, Angola has a uniquely deep historical record from the 1500s onwards, but on the other hand the 40 years of largely rural armed conflict 1961-2002 constrained research and destroyed archives. This renders problematic the seductive but simplistic elisions of legacies of trade in enslaved people with 20th century experiences of war and violence (historical ‘leap frogging’), especially prominent in claims about historical legacies and institutional inertia. In contrast, my Kasanje research illustrates how digitization is necessary to help reconstruct dynamic rural historical geographies of rural areas of the poor majority that were historically marginalized and often continue to be so. Digitized maps and legal gazettes offer broader applicability. This has implications for both dignity and popular engagement/mobilization. This also contrasts with focuses on only more well-documented areas, often prominent but restricted violent extractive sites involving only a relatively small fraction of rural society, usually disproportionately male. Throughout, I make relational comparisons with Africa- and Angola-specific digitization efforts in Germany, Belgium, the UK, France and the US.