Searching for the Reluctant Hands: Obsession, Ambivalence and the Practice of Organising Involuntary Labour in Colonial Cuanza-Sul and Malange Districts, Angola, 1926–1945

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In the 1930s, administrative control over the unruly hinterlands of Angola was established by the Portuguese colonisers, and officials at Lisbon's colonial ministry attempted to set up efficient mechanisms to force local populations to work. However, the experience and the attitudes of the administrators of the local posts—the chefes de posto—and of the small subdivisions were full of ambivalences and insecurities; their interaction with the African inhabitants of the respective areas and with the European settlers was characterised by improvisation. These attitudes of the local administrators, slowly changing up to and beyond the period of the Second World War, can be used as a window into administrative life in the field, and these attitudes had direct repercussions on the living conditions of rural Angolans. While this analysis is limited to subdivisions of the Angolan districts of Cuanza-Sul and Malange, it is intended to contribute to a broader picture of the effects the decisions of local administrators had, a picture applicable to other Portuguese colonies and to the lower parts of the hierarchy of other colonial empires.