Land and Africans in Portuguese colonial thought, c. 1920 – c. 1945

Abstract

In the present paper I discuss the assumptions and significance of some of the theses and techniques behind Portuguese colonial land policies in Africa between the mid1920s and the 1940s, and discuss their role in the Portuguese colonial project. I particularly address the extent to which, both in national and international discussion fora on colonial topics, as well as in official discourse, through the voice of politicians in the metropole as well as colonial administrators and experts, arguments in favour of African access to individual property, for different purposes, gained ground. These arguments went against the dominant perspective in Portuguese colonial thought between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which dictated the limited access of Africans to the land for instance in the name of economic development of colonial territories, the fight against land speculation and the safeguarding of Portuguese sovereignty in Africa.