Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies

This edited collection examines church-state relations in the European colonies in Africa during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The chapters focus on the period stretching from the most agitated stages of the ‘scramble for Africa’ during the 1870s and 1880s, to the great wave of independence of African colonies in the 1950s and 60s, and culminates in a discussion of colonial legacies during its aftermath. The Church and the State, although often having conflicting goals and agendas, walked hand-in-hand throughout the entire colonial period, with ‘imperialism of the spirit’ being inconceivable without the groundwork of Catholic missionaries.  Exploring the major domains that determined the course of church-state relations in the colonies, the authors analyse relations between the Holy See and the colonial powers, and between national Catholic authorities and secular authorities, as well as the international order and socio-political developments in the metropoles.They argue that interactions between state and church in Africa’s European colonies were contingent upon the complex dynamics of interests that both secular and ecclesiastical entities endeavoured to preserve or promote. With a particular focus on the Belgian and Portuguese colonies in Africa, this book provides useful reading for scholars of European imperial history and ecclesiastical history. 

This open access book addresses a question fundamental to the histories of empire and Africa: at the point of the colonial encounter, how was knowledge made? How did different communities, with little or no prior contact, construct meaning about one another? Amidst huge changes in the politics and economics of a continent, on the cusp of almost complete colonization at the hands of European powers at the end of the nineteenth century, how do the specifics of personality and contingency affect knowledge production? An obvious challenge in addressing this sort of question is the frequent lack of African-produced source material; here, we must work within the ‘archives of oppression’ and read both along and against the colonial grain in an attempt to restore African agency to this process of knowledge production. Drawing on the previously never-used diaries of explorer Frank Oates, who travelled throughout Matabeleland in the 1870s, the use of a single traveller’s experiences in detail affords us the means to consider the fine details of the interactions between Europeans and Africans. Therefore, this study seeks to enhance existing work on race and empire of the nineteenth century by asking: what place do the fragilities, uncertainties, and contingencies of encounters between individuals have in our understanding of how knowledge is made?

This book analyses the liberation struggles that took place in the Portuguese colonies of Angola, Mozambique, Guinea, Cabo Verde, and São Tomé e Príncipe during the second half of the twentieth century, highlighting how they unravelled and challenged colonialism in the international sphere. Activists established headquarters and training camps in various exile settings that were instrumental in their struggle for independence. Exile settings were places where the liberation movements worked with host countries, accessed representatives of foreign countries, made connections with nonstate actors and networks of support, and received political and military training. The complex networks of support formed by protestors around the globe operated on a transnational scale, using urban centres as sites of activism and arenas to promote a multiplicity of connections. Bringing together contributions from a range of skilled authors, the book explores selected hubs around the globe including those based in Kinshasa, Dar es Salaam, Cairo, Moscow, Beijing, New York, London, Paris, and São Paulo. Taking a comparative approach, this collection sheds light on the infrastructures of solidarity that were established by activists around the world, and highlights the transnational circulation of ideas around anticolonialism.