Colonialism and Commons: the production and instrumentalisation of knowledge on land use and tenure in Africa (1890-1974)

Abstract

This article focuses on the evolution of colonial discourses on community practices observed in Portuguese Africa throughout the period of effective occupation, compiling ethnographic studies of the "indigenous customs" produced between 1890 and 1974. The first part critically evaluates the contexts of production of these studies, seeking to historicise the relationship between colonial policies and representations. The second part illustrates the evolution of colonial science, particularly in the second post-war period and influenced by international trends. It concludes that the knowledge produced challenges the representations of indigenous primitivism that legitimised policies of expolition and subjugation, offering empirical evidence of a complex system of communitarian management and norms and reciprocity  . These advances, however, had no repercussions at the legal level, with access to property and the free disposal of natural resources by indigenous people remaining prohibited even after the formal extinction of the indigenato regime.