This past summer, I was able to return to Angola and Cabo Verde to continue examining historical records that provide more clues about dispossession and inequalities in a long perspective. The colonial court records stored in archives in Angola and Cape Verde reveal norms and legal practices that shed new light on understandings of multiple legal systems (the so-called “African customs” and colonial law) that existed in this place, as well as on the different processes that resulted in land removal and labor extraction.  

Litigation over land and labor highlights how longue durée processes of dispossession led to long-lasting consequences that continue to affect Angola and Cape Verde. These historical documents also help us understand environmental challenges in a longer perspective and the strengthening of the rule of law. 

Angola and Cape Verde are exceptional cases that show how colonialism, land grabbing, coerced labor, and denial of individual and collective rights are the origins of todays’ environmental and democratic challenges. While much attention has been paid to legal, environmental, and economic histories in former French and British possessions, little research has been conducted on former Portuguese colonies in Africa. Moreover, Angola and Cape Verde tend to be examined in isolation. 

A comparative study will reveal nuances and raise new questions about African agency and how colonial legal systems operated on the ground, creating long-lasting inequality. Many of the legal records examined this past summer reveal how ownership over people and land has influenced the construction of colonial states and later postcolonial states. During the end of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century, labor and land underwent profound legal transformations, such as the rise of individual property and liberal law, that reshaped colonialism and dispossession. These changes had long lasting effect and determined challenges African states face today in the realms of land grabbing and environment degradation.