Population Politics in the Tropics: Demography, Health and Transimperialism in Colonial Angola

Description

Population Politics in the Tropics explores colonial population policies in Angola between 1890 and 1945 from a transimperial perspective. Using a wide array of previously unused sources and multilingual archival research from Angola, Portugal and beyond, Samuel Coghe sheds new light on the history of colonial Angola, showing how population policies were conceived, implemented and contested. He analyses why and how doctors, administrators, missionaries and other colonial actors tried to grasp and quantify demographic change and 'improve' the health conditions, reproductive regimes and migration patterns of Angola's 'native' population. Coghe argues that these interventions were inextricably linked to pervasive fears of depopulation and underpopulation, but that their implementation was often hampered by weak state structures, internal conflicts and multiple forms of African agency. Coghe's fresh analysis of demography, health and migration in colonial Angola challenges common ideas of Portuguese colonial exceptionalism.

Samuel Coghe is Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Global History at the Freie Universitat Berlin.

'An entirely fresh history. Coghe richly expands the links between colonial demography and depopulation, in this detailed study of Portuguese Angola. A key addition to new population histories.' Alison Bashford, author of Global Population: History, Geopolitics and Life on Earth 'Population Politics in the Tropics is a sophisticated analysis of the works of empire, colonial medicine, public health and population politics with reference to 20th century colonial Angola. With an impressive use of previously unexplored sources, Samuel Coghe gives us a rich, prismatic approach to an understudied context by examining closely the politics towards sleeping sickness, maternity, African migrations and the making of statistical knowledge, while also expanding the concept of biopower in colonial settings and masterfully weaving the analysis of depopulation anxieties, inter-imperial circulation of medical knowledge and practices, and the related racialized politics. This book should become a reference in multiple fields - global and African history, comparative colonial studies, history of (tropical) medicine, history of science and technology, history of demography, and the intersections between them.' Cristiana Bastos, University of Lisbon 'Impressively researched and cogently argued, Population Politics reframes understanding of African historical demography. Using new sources, Coghe shows how Portuguese fixation with African emigration shaped their competitive engagement in transimperial demographic networks; how Angolan policy was transformed by doctors' purposive data-gathering; and how local interventions were mediated by African agency.' Shane Doyle, University of Leeds