CH-ULisboa Seminar in the History of Africa
Towards a History of Muxima: Lost and Existing Archives

[Português]

Speaker: José C. Curto (York University)

School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon (Room B112.B)

October 16, 2024 (5:00 PM GMT)

Organisation | Carlos Almeida, Eugénia Rodrigues, José da Silva Horta, and Sofia Afonso Lopes

Free Admission

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Summary

The Portuguese areas of influence located in present-day Angola prior to 1885 are long known for representing, in the words of Joseph C. Miller, “a moldy Garden of Eden waiting for diligent or deserving scholars.” Just like in Portugal, there are abundant archives with varied riches of documentary sources and other historical sources. However, this rich archival collection has also been constantly endangered. Less than seven decades after the Portuguese founded Luanda in 1575 as the colonial capital of Angola, for example, its administrative, municipal, and ecclesiastical archives were lost as Luso-African forces attempted to move inland in the face of Dutch occupation. Muxima, the inland outpost of Portuguese influence closest to the colonial center of Luanda and an important site of Catholic pilgrimage during the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, has suffered similar disasters. This presentation details the loss of archival materials in Muxima up to 2000 and points to the historical documentation still in existence. As we will argue, the loss of historical sources in Muxima, along with the limited documentary evidence and other evidence about this landscape available elsewhere, severely undermines attempts at historical reconstruction. The historical memory about Muxima, the springboard through which Portuguese colonial influence penetrated inland via the Kwanza River, is thus significantly degraded.

José C. Curto

Senior Scholar, History, York University (Canada)

Foreign Associate Professor, Humanities, PUCRS (Brazil)

Researcher, Center for African Studies, University of Porto (Portugal)