AfricaBib 
bibliographic database
| Previous page | New search |
The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here
 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
 WorldCat |
| Title: | Sowing the Seeds of Failure: Early Portuguese Cotton Cultivation in Angola and Mozambique, 1820-1926 |
| Author: | Pitcher, M. Anne |
| Year: | 1991 |
| Periodical: | Journal of Southern African Studies |
| Volume: | 17 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Period: | March |
| Pages: | 43-70 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic terms: | Angola Mozambique Portugal |
| Subjects: | colonialism cotton History and Exploration Anthropology and Archaeology Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/2637286 |
| Abstract: | Early attempts by the Portuguese to grow cotton in Angola and Mozambique were humiliating failures. A plethora of legislative directives from the early 1800s to the early 1900s did not foster any sustained cotton production in either Mozambique or Angola. Natural factors, as well as erratic international prices, conflicting and contradictory metropolitan objectives in the colonies, inappropriate methods of production, competing crop and labour demands, and African resistance led to the failure of cotton cultivation. This article documents the history of early Portuguese legislative initiatives to establish stable cotton production during the periods 1820-1870, 1880-1910, and 1910-1926, the Republican period. It briefly pays attention to the successful cotton policy of the 'Estado Novo' during the 1930s, which, drawing lessons from these earlier failures, used forced peasant production in specially designated, cotton-only areas, and introduced a system of guaranteed prices, thereby reducing risk and insuring a profit for trading companies, in order to entrench a cotton regime in the colonies. App., notes, ref. |
