Description: Making a fresh contribution to our understanding of the history of Angola, this book explores the impact of social, political and economic change upon the largest ethnic group of the country, the Ovimbundu.
Review Quotes:
"Vasco Martins's Colonialism, Ethnicity and War in Angola invites us to reflect on an inconvenient subject in Angola: the role of ethnicity in the historical, political, social, and economic processes that created Ovimbundu identity. Beyond colonial history in the Central Plateau, the book analyzes the entanglements between ethnicity and the political party UNITA (União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola/National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) and between ethnicity and citizenship in the present. The author is explicit throughout the book about the taboos surrounding ethnicity, UNITA, the Ovimbundu, the political instrumentalization of identities, and finally, the marginalization of ethnic groups in Angola. [...] This is a book that sets a novel agenda for future research, not only on the mobilization and politicization of ethnicity but also on the new history and the new chapters of UNITA's strategies, elites, and reconfigurations following the election of Adalberto Costa Júnior as president of UNITA in 2019."
Ana Lucia Sá, University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE-IUL), Portugal, for H-Luso-Africa