Reordering Colonial Society: Model Villages and Social Planning in Rural Angola, 1920–45

Abstract

In the interwar period, Portuguese hygienists, agronomists and colonial administrators began to advocate the resettlement of Angola's rural native population into model villages as the ideal solution to many of the colony's hygienic, economic and societal problems. The plans for model villages in Angola were not exceptional in the interwar period. They were part of larger and transnational debates about rural development in colonial Africa and Asia. Although model villages mostly remained rather a utopian vision than a social reality, the debates and attempts were significant. While revealing how colonial actors envisioned the future order of the colony, they illustrate why colonial rural populations became a target of social engineering and how the constraints of colonial rule conditioned the implementation of such plans on the ground. The analysis of the interwar debates also contributes to a longue durée history of the villagization policy during the decolonization wars.