Angola’s Colossal Lie by Jeremy Ball and Diamonds in the Rough by Todd Cleveland present to the scholarly world two different but rather complementary narratives on forced labour and African workers’ responses to the colonial enterprise in twentieth-century Angola. In addition, these two studies offer important insights into the approaches of the colonial state and private entrepreneurs to labour recruitment and management. The three main groups of historical actors analysed are, therefore, African workers, private entrepreneurs, and the colonial state. The storyline, in both studies, revolves around the relationship between these three actors and their visions, strategies, and experiences of the world of labour in Angola during the colonial and early post-colonial period.
The two books deal with four main questions. Firstly, the authors examine the relationship between the colonial state and private enterprises by studying the privileged output, consumption, and labour market conditions offered by the colonial state to two private companies to develop their businesses in sugar plantation agriculture and diamond mining in the regions of Catumbela (south-central Angola) and Lunda (northeast Angola), namely the Sociedade Agrícola do Cassequel and the Diamang, respectively.
Secondly, Ball’s and Cleveland’s studies analyse in detail the relationship between the state and its African workers by examining the forms of recruitment to meet the state’s own labour demands as well as those of private enterprises – as an allocator of labour. As the authors clearly explain, this was achieved through three main coercive mechanisms. First, the imposition of taxation in the colony to force Africans to work for a wage in order to pay their taxes to the colonial state. Secondly, the criminalization of those “fit to work” found out of work, who would be compelled to work (forced workers or compelidos). Thirdly, the imposition of a regime of coerced contract labour (contratados). Under this labour regime, every man or youngster declared “fit to work” was coerced by the colonial state with the assistance of colonial officials (chefes de posto) and African village chiefs to sign a contract with the colonial state to work, either for the state or for a private enterprise, for a specific number of months each year, in exchange for a salary, accommodation, and rations.
The third central question in these two studies focuses on the relationship between private colonial enterprises and their African labour force. It is in this respect that the comparative analysis of both books offer the academic community two different, but rather complementary, narratives on forced labour, colonial business culture, and African workers’ attitudes towards the colonial private enterprises. Although the exploitative nature of private businesses in Angola is evident in both studies, they clearly demonstrate that private enterprises developed different strategies towards their labour force. In the case of Diamang, scarcity of labour and difficulties in labour replacement led the company to create infrastructures and take measures to safeguard the well-being of their workers, as a means to encourage them to continue working for the mining company or to return later, either as voluntários (free-wage workers) or contratados. These strategies contrasted with the situation at the Sociedade Agrícola do Cassequel, where poor working conditions and meagre salaries dominated, and the interests of the contratados were rarely taken into account.
The comparative reading of Ball’s and Cleveland’s case studies also reveal contrasting attitudes among African workers (in particular unskilled workers) with regard to their colonial employers. On the one hand, Cleveland argues that, in response to the more social- and health-friendly measures adopted by Diamang towards their workers, African workers adopted a “professional” attitude, adjusting to the work schemes and schedules imposed by the Western work model, contributing to the productivity of the company, while regarding the company as an entity that would, to a certain extent, protect them, even though working conditions were hard and forms of punishment for misconduct could be employed if deemed necessary. In contrast, in Jeremy Ball’s study the contratados of the Sociedade Agrícola do Cassequel appear to have been busy mainly devising forms of resistance in the face of poor labour conditions and abusive treatment on the part of employers, and simply conforming with the status quo. Differences in attitudes among workers towards their colonial employers are also rather evident when comparing coerced and free-wage workers. Thus, combined, these two studies offer a more nuanced history of coercive labour in Angola in its multiple forms, as well as of the business culture among colonial private enterprises.
The last main question addressed by Ball and Cleveland deals with the impact of decolonization and the independence process on the relationship between the three main actors being analysed – state, private enterprises, and labour force – in which the latter two appear to have been the main losers, with nationalization, economic crisis, and worsening labour relations.
For all the above, Ball’s and Cleveland’s studies are important contributions to various fields of history. On the one hand, both books are crucial to moving forward the study of twentieth-century Angola – a rather understudied period of the country’s history, and one to a great extent dominated by the MPLA’s narrative, which emphasizes liberation from the oppressive colonial forces and the construction of a free and better future for Angolans. In addition, these two case studies clearly show the importance of looking into the transition between colonial and post-colonial periods and of assessing its impact on the political, economic, and social history of the country.
Furthermore, these two books are important additions to the scholarship on Lusophone Africa, in particular concerning the study of coercive labour in its multiple forms, and colonial private businesses. Together with the recent studies by Allina, Havik, Keese, and Santos, they offer the English-speaking scholarly community a more comprehensive and balanced understanding of the system of coercive labour in the former Portuguese African colonies, as well as of the relationship between state and private companies. More importantly, they give voice to workers’ experiences with colonial employers.Footnote 1
Angola’s Colossal Lie and Diamonds in the Rough are also significant contributions to business history, especially if we look at the study of colonial private enterprises, their investment strategies, and their attitudes towards their labour force. These appear to have varied among enterprises. Cleveland’s study, in particular, makes clear that our view of colonial private enterprises as being only exploitative and abusive needs to be nuanced, at least, to a certain extent.
These two studies also offer important inputs to labour history, especially when it comes to the attitudes of skilled and unskilled workers towards the colonial state and colonial private enterprises. The comparative reading of Ball and Cleveland reveal contrasting attitudes among African workers (both skilled and unskilled) with regard to their colonial employers. Thus, the dominant image of the African worker only as resilient towards colonial exploitation also needs to be nuanced up to a point. Both authors also give important insights into the participation and role of women and children in the world of labour. In Angola’s Colossal Lie, the author focuses mainly on the experience of women in charge of households and family livelihood during their husbands’ temporary absence to comply with their coerced labour contracts; in Diamonds in the Rough, on the other hand, the author examines both paid and unpaid female and child labour in the mines and the mining compounds.
Cleveland’s study also offers two other important contributions to the field of labour history. On the one hand, the author emphasizes the importance of studying workers’ forms of sociability outside regular working hours and workplaces as a means to fully understand and capture forms of unpaid labour, but also of studying mechanisms of collaboration and mutual aid developed among workers. On the other, Diamonds in the Rough provides a significant addition to the historiography on labour and business culture in the mining industry of southern Africa. Cleveland’s research findings in what concerns both the behaviour of African workers and of Diamang, as a mining enterprise, contrast with the situation described by other studies on other southern African mining regions.
Finally, from a methodological point of view, these two books clearly demonstrate how historical studies benefit from combining written and oral sources. Ball’s and Cleveland’s works also illustrate how historians can make an effort to reconstruct the historical past by giving voice to “those from below” (skilled and unskilled workers) and relating their memories with the narratives of “those at the top” (colonial officials and the owners of private enterprises).
