“The transformation of Angola’s coffee landscape” no CHAM

A IV Conferência internacional do CHAM (Centro de História e Além Mar), da Universidade Nova de Lisboa é dedicada ao tema Innovation, Invention and Memory in Africa.

Nesta edição desta conferência interdisciplinar, Maria do Mar Gago apresenta comunicação com Jelmer Vos (University of Glasgow), “The transformation of Angola’s coffee landscape”

A comunicação tem lugar no painel P16, “Commodity frontiers and knowledge regimes in Africa, 1800 to present”, que tem por objectivo examinar “the formation, implementation and interaction of global and local bodies of ecological knowledge at different commodity frontiers in modern Africa, paying special attention to agriculture and animal husbandry”.

O painel é coordenado por Samuël Coghe (Humboldt University of Berlin) e Jelmer Vos (University of Glasgow), e decorre durante duas sessões, na sala B1 1.12, 6ª feira, 19 Julho, 11:30-13:15 e, 14:00-15:45

Resumo da comunicação

“This paper surveys botanic and agronomic studies produced by the Angolan Agricultural Division between 1898 and 1939 to analyse the ways in which both African farmers and colonial settlers used and adapted indigenous (robusta) coffee reserves for commercial exploitation. The paper is specifically interested in the different cultivation methods adopted by African smallholders and colonial planters and the bodies of knowledge which both groups applied to robusta’s natural environment in Angola, the country’s famed montane ‘cloud’ forests. Besides the issue of scale which obviously separated African from European planters, we examine different methods of planting, inter-cropping, shading, soil preservation, and processing. While there was little technological innovation in coffee cultivation on either side throughout this period, this paper aims to assess the specific contributions of African and European farmers to the transformation and management of the Angolan coffee landscape.”

Para ver mais sobre o painel, aceda por aqui