The Moinheiro from Caála: the microhistory of a Madeiran family in the colonization, decolonization and return from Angola

Abstract

This article is the microhistory of a family from Madeira who moved to Angola, from the time they settled in the highlands of the Huila in the late nineteenth century to the decolonization process in 1975. With the use of testimonies, archival research and bibliographic research, this is a history-memory of the lived experience of a particular family. Its purpose is to achieve an understanding of the wider social, political and historical structures that marked the history of Portuguese colonization and decolonization. Focusing on a Portuguese family of nineteenth-century settlers’ descendants, people of the small business and working class, we give these outliers their place in the history of white settlers and problematize class, gender, and race relations in colonial society.