'In well-documented Angola, centuries of land records challenge today's beliefs that African land was too plentiful for ownership, so that only people had value. Candido shows that, by 1900, colonial ideology renounced centuries of land transactions. Historians must face the findings and implications of this important study.' Patrick Manning, University of Pittsburgh
List of maps and plans; List of illustrations; List of tables and graph; Acknowledgments; A note on currency; Introduction: a history of ownership, dispossession, and inequality; 1. Who owned what? Early debate over land rights and dispossession; 2. Property rights in the nineteenth century; 3. Written records and gendered strategies to secure property; 4. Commodification of human beings; 5. Branded in freedom: the persistent commodification of people; 6. The erasure of communal rights; 7. Global consumers: West Central Africans and the accumulation of things; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.