The mythology of colonial empire in Angola travel writing of twentieth century

Abstract

Travel writing, a classical genre, was a constant feature of the Portuguese-language colonial press during the twentieth century, and propagated the ideology and myths of the Portuguese empire. This study is a socio-historical analysis of imperial ideology through the travel writing. In a post-colonial reading, the Angolan case shows how twentieth-century travel writings updated and popularised imperial mythologies and developed an “orientalist-style” rhetoric that sought to exert and maintain Portuguese power in Africa.