International Symposium: Drought, Famine and Portuguese Colonialism in Africa – History and Memory (19th-21st centuries)

International Symposium: Drought, Famine and Portuguese Colonialism in Africa – History and Memory (19th-21st centuries)

The Drought, Famine and Portuguese Colonialism in Africa – History and Memory (19th-21st centuries) is a two-day international symposium hosted by Instituto de História Contemporânea (NOVA FCSH), Centro Interuniversitário de História das Ciências e da Tecnologia (NOVA FCT), Instituto de Ciências Sociais (UL) and Global Health and Tropical Medicine (NOVA IHMT), and will be held at the Biblioteca Nacional, in Lisbon, on February 2-3, 2023.

Participation in this Symposium while free requires prior registration: REGISTER HERE

Over the last decades, scholarly contributions have shown to what extent the African continent is particularly vulnerable to drought and famine and how the combination of arid soils and irregular rainfall has had dramatic consequences for human and animal populations and ecologies. They have also demonstrated how (post-) colonial policies between the 19th and 21st centuries impacted upon African populations and their responses to these phenomena, but also how different scientific disciplines attempted to address the particular challenges that African environments posed. Not all regions and historical periods have however received the same scholarly attention, and there is still a significant knowledge gap when it comes to understanding the complex relationship between drought, famine and Portuguese colonialism in Africa.

This symposium aims to bring together graduate students and early-career and established scholars from different disciplines to discuss the contexts, the causes, and the social, economic, and ecological consequences of droughts and famines in former Portuguese colonial Africa. It also aims to promote a debate on the responses that populations and governments developed to drought and famine while engaging with the relevant scholarship in the field of environmental history, climate history, social history, imperial history, history of science, the history of health, and migration history. It seeks to advance knowledge on drought and famine in these territories in the 19th and 20th centuries, both through site-specific and broader regional or comparative approaches. Recognizing the importance of understanding in particular how famines were lived and are remembered in post-independence Portuguese- speaking countries in Africa, the symposium also seeks to discuss the question of memory and the lived and transmitted experiences of individuals and communities that faced great loss of life, hardship and trauma.

Information about funding

The IHC is funded by National funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., under the projects UIDB/04209/2020 and UIDP/04209/2020. 

This Symposium is supported by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P. (PIDDAC/OE), through unit CIUHCT under the project UIDB/00286/2020.

This Symposium is supported by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P. through unit ICS-UL under projects UIDB/50013/2020 and UIDP/50013/2020. 

Program

You can watch the symposium through this link. 

Thursday, 2 February 2023

9h00 - Welcome address 

9h30 - Keynote – Heidi Gengenbach (Associate Professor of History and History Department Chair, College of Liberal Arts, UMass Boston)

10h15 - Discussion

10h40 - Coffee-break

11h00 - Session 1 – Climatic variability and social impacts

Matthew Hannaford (University of Lincoln) 

Food systems and drought vulnerability in Mozambique to 1830

William Gervase Clarence-Smith (SOAS, University of London)   

Rainfall and floods in southern Angola and northern Namibia, 1806-1918

Anneli Ekblom (Uppsala University)

Climate variability is the environmental and social history of Mozambique

David Nash (University of Brighton)

“Hunger, hunger, yes, nothing but hunger”: Narratives of drought in southern Africa in different nineteenth century source types

12h30 - Lunch

14h00 - Session 2 – Memories and narratives of famine

Valdemir Zamparoni (Universidade Federal da Bahia) *     

Seca, fome e colonialismo: narrativas da imprensa negra na Lourenço Marques colonial 

Maria Isabel Lemos (ISCTE-IUL e IELT) *  

1947: narrativas, rotas e retratos da fome em Cabo Verde 

Rui Cidra (FCSH NOVA) *       

As fomes dos anos 40 e a diáspora de São Tomé e Príncipe entre trabalhadores contratados cabo-verdianos: memórias pós-coloniais mediadas pela música e a dança 

Bárbara Direito (CIUHCT - NOVA FCT)

Climate and the environment in Southern Mozambique. Some evidence from 19th and 20th century missionary sources

15h30 - Coffee-break

16h00 - Screening of the documentary "Making a living in the dry season”" (Inês Ponte, 35’) followed by a conversation with the director 

17h30 - Closing of the first day of the Symposium

Friday, 3 February 2023

9h30 - Session 3 – Colonial and post-colonial policies and anticolonial resistance to drought and famine

Nardi Sousa e Pedro Matos (Universidade de Santiago) *  

Da Psicologia da Fome e Incitamento à Emigração aos Novos Cidadãos de Origem Cabo-verdiana em São Tomé e Príncipe e Angola 

Julião Soares Sousa e Sérgio Neto (CEIS20/UC) *      

A fome e as secas no arquipélago de Cabo Verde como elementos de denúncia anticolonial e de mobilização política visando a independência (1940-1970) 

Ruy Llera Blanes, Carolina Cardoso (School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg), Helder Alicerces Bahu (ISCED-Huíla) e Cláudio Fortuna (CEA-UCAN, FCSH-UNL)         

Drought expectations: from the future projections of colonial infrastructure to present-day hydropower in Southwestern Angola 

Pedro Aires Oliveira (IHC-NOVA FCSH) *

War, famine and death in the Cape Verde archipelago, 1940-43

11h00 - Coffee-break

11h20 - Session 4 – Local knowledge, research and health

Jéssica Evelyn Pereira dos Santos (Universidade Federal Fluminense) *

Alimentação, Trabalho e Colonialismo: o debate em torno da subalimentação dos trabalhadores indígenas nos Anais do Instituto de Medicina Tropical

Philip J. Havik (GHTM-NOVA IHMT)

Innovating on the margins: nutrition science, public health and development in former Portuguese Africa

12h30 - Lunch

14h00 - Concluding remarks and final discussion

15h30 - End of the Symposium

• Registration form
• Zoom