This volume sets out a new paradigm that increases our understanding of African culture and the forces that led to its transformation during the period of the Atlantic slave trade and beyond, putting long due emphasis on the importance of Central African culture to the cultures of the United States, Brazil, and the Caribbean. Focusing on the Kongo/Angola culture zone, the book illustrates how African peoples re-shaped their cultural institutions as they interacted with Portuguese slave traders up to 1800, then follows Central Africans through all the regions where they were taken as slaves...

Contested Power in Angola, 1840s to the Present argues that the Ovimbundu of central Angola have been key players in the history of modern Angola. The work focuses on the tensions between the centralising forces of the state and the pull of local, regional and ethnic tendencies which have characterised the modern history of Angola. The study begins with a chapter which highlights the relationship between relatively weak pre-colonial Ovimbundu state systems and the autonomous local economic, political and social institutions that functioned in the villages. The chapter also looks at how both...