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Administration and Taxation in Former Portuguese Africa 1900-1945

  • January 2015
  • Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781443870108
Authors:
Philip Havik at Universidade NOVA de Lisboa
Philip Havik
Alexander Keese at University of Geneva
Alexander Keese
Maciel Santos at Centro de Estudos Africanos
Maciel Santos
  • Centro de Estudos Africanos
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Abstract

This book addresses a notable gap in the knowledge of Portuguese colonial administration and the policies implemented in the main territories of its “third” African empire: Angola, Mozambique and Guinea. In recent years, the question of colonial taxation has become a topic in the academic debate on colonial empires and has led to a comparative, long-term focus on its impact in African societies. Given that former Portuguese colonies in Africa have been largely absent from this debate, this book offers new perspectives on taxation and colonial rule, and the first detailed and comprehensive study of fiscal administration. Besides dealing with the economic and financial aspects of empire, the book interprets the social experience of African populations through their interaction with colonial institutions. Based on a thorough and probing qualitative and quantitative analysis of published and unpublished data, it places taxation in a broad social context for the period between the full military control of the territories and the end of WW II. Thus, whilst engaging with ongoing debates on comparative African economic and political history, the book provides a key contribution to research on African social change.
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A
DMINISTRATION AND
T
AXATION IN
F
ORMER
P
ORTUGUESE
A
FRICA
:
1900-1945
1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Illustrations .................................................................................... vii
List of Tables ............................................................................................ viii
Preface ......................................................................................................... x
Acknowledgments .................................................................................... xiii
Introduction ................................................................................................. 1
Colonial Taxation and Social “Transitions”
Taxes in Colonial Africa
Why Portugal?
Structure of the Book
Chapter One ............................................................................................... 28
Peasant Tax and the Funding of the Colonial State in the Portuguese Colonies (1900–1939)
Maciel Santos
1.1. The Export of Capital to Africa and the Size of the State
1.2. The Contradictions of Colonial Capital
1.3. The “Self-Sufficiency” of the Portuguese Colonies
1.4. Effects and Contradictions of the Peasant Tax—
The Case of Angola
1.4.1. The Intensive Growth of Peasant Tax in Angola
1.4.2. The Contradictions of the Peasant Tax
Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 82
Tax in Practice: Colonial Impact and Renegotiation on the Ground Alexander Keese
2.1. Colonial Societies, Interest Groups, and Taxes
2.2. Taxes and Information
2.3. Taxation and Colonial Penetration
2.4. Taxes and Compulsory Labour
2.5. Taxes and the Inter-Colonial Dimension
Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 98
Taxation, Evasion, and Compulsory Measures in Angola
Alexander Keese
3.1. The Established Colonial State in Angola, 1918–1945:
Repression and Stagnation
3.2. Tax Modalities and Domestic Discourse
3.3. Buried in Paperwork
3.4. The “Percentage”
3.5. Taxes, Tariffs, and Trade
3.6. Measuring the Burden
3.7. The Chiefs
3.8. Punishment
3.9. Flight
3.10. Crossing International Borders
Chapter Four ............................................................................................ 138
Peasant Tax in Northern Mozambique (1929–1939):
Forced Cultivation, a Growth Factor?
Maciel Santos
4.1. The Peasant Tax in Mozambique
4.2. 1929–1934: A Fiscal Breakdown in Northern Mozambique
A
DMINISTRATION AND
T
AXATION IN
F
ORMER
P
ORTUGUESE
A
FRICA
:
1900-1945
2
4.3. The Reaction of the Administration to the Fiscal Breakdown—Forced “Tradable” Crops
4.4. Conclusion
Chapter Five ............................................................................................ 167
“Taxing the Natives”: Fiscal Administration, Labour and Crop
Cultivation in Portuguese Guinea (1900–1945)
Philip J. Havik
5.1. The Political Context of Colonial Taxation
5.2. Portuguese Guinea: Economy and Administration
5.3. Military Campaigns: Sovereignty and Direct Taxation
5.4. Colonial Administration: Labour, Crops and Fiscal Policies
5.5. Colonial Accounts, Fiscal Revenue and Economic Development
5.6. Conclusions
Bibliography ............................................................................................ 228
Index ........................................................................................................ 251
... Yet, forced recruitment was not the only mechanism to make African laborers meet their "legal and moral obligation to work." As early as the mid-19th century the hut tax (imposto da palhota) was introduced in Portuguese Africa to generate state revenue, to promote the monetization of the economy, and to push Africans onto the wage labor market to meet their tax obligations (Havik, Keese and Santos 2015;. Whenever Africans were unable to pay the hut tax, they were easy targets for recruiters, who could force them to "pay" their tax in labor. ...
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... Yet, forced recruitment was not the only mechanism to make African laborers meet their "legal and moral obligation to work." As early as the mid-19th century the hut tax (imposto da palhota) was introduced in Portuguese Africa to generate state revenue, to promote the monetization of the economy, and to push Africans onto the wage labor market to meet their tax obligations (Havik, Keese and Santos 2015;. Whenever Africans were unable to pay the hut tax, they were easy targets for recruiters, who could force them to "pay" their tax in labor. ...
The Age of Intra-African Migration
Chapter
Full-text available
  • Mar 2022
This chapter synthesizes the remarkable diversity of African migration patterns that have emerged, transformed, and disappeared in the 19th to 21st century, and which form the core subject of this book. We argue that the retreat of Africans from intercontinental migration systems during the “age of mass migration” (1850–1940) coincided with an accelerated succession of overlapping migration patterns within the African continent. The shifting patterns of mobility that we observe during this “age of intra-African migration” were intertwined with profound demographic, economic, and political transitions in African societies, which were also deeply influenced by changing global economic and political relations. We further argue that the prevalent dichotomous view juxtaposing “traditional” and “modern” migration is unhelpful to interpret these long-run shifts in African mobility. The analytical framework we propose views intra-African migration as an integral part of the global historical migration dynamic, and distinguishes between “contextual” and “macro-historical” drivers of migratory activity.
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... Customary leaders' close association with governing powers or other forces (e.g., commercial entities, religious movements, or political parties) can serve to bolster their power, sometimes temporarily. This was the colonial states' strategy with techniques of indirect rule, to appoint existing customary leaders as agents of the state [72][73][74]. Origin stories which demonstrate the concept of precedence also include these elements of change through affiliation. An origin group may devolve a position of authority to others, bringing them into the customary hierarchy; they may also grant domains to newcomers through established norms. ...
Possession and Precedence: Juxtaposing Customary and Legal Events to Establish Land Authority
Article
Full-text available
  • Aug 2019
Land restitution carries implicit recognition of some previous claim to ownership, but when are first claims recognized? The concepts of first possession and original acquisition have long been used as entry points to Western concepts of property. For Austronesia, the concept of precedence is used in customary systems to justify and describe land claims and Indigenous authority. Conflict and political change in Timor-Leste have highlighted the coexistence of multiple understandings of land claims and their legitimacy. Considering customary principles of precedence brings into relief important elements of first possession important in land restitution processes. This paper juxtaposes the concept of original acquisition in property theory to two different examples of original claims from Timor-Leste: a two-part customary origin narrative from Oecusse and the development of a national land law for the new state. In these three narratives, we identify three different establishment events from which land authority develops. The article then uses this idea of the establishment event to explore five points of customary-statutory intersection evident from the land restitution process: (1) legitimate sources of land authority; (2) arbitrary establishment dates; (3) privileging of social order; (4) recognition of spiritual ties to land; and (5) the possibility for reversal.
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Two Sides of the Same Coin: Direct Taxation and Negotiated Governance in Colonial Indonesia
Article
Full-text available
  • Sep 2022
This article investigates the implementation of direct taxes in colonial Indonesia between roughly 1870 and 1930, to widen our understanding of colonial governance and fiscal state building. It examines the various connotations given to taxation by colonial politicians and statesmen, and elucidates how these were developed and experienced rather differently in practice. Taxes became rooted in local patterns of customary law, indirect rule, and constant negotiation between colonial officials, local indigenous rulers, and subjected taxpayers. This demonstrates that local, colonial institutions did not have the weight and capacity state officials claimed they had, and that in colonial context, bottom-up practices of negotiated governance and consultation, that deliberately ignored the rules of fiscal bureaucracy imposed from above, were pivotal to taxation.
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Bibliography
Article
  • Feb 2022
Population Politics in the Tropics explores colonial population policies in Angola between 1890 and 1945 from a transimperial perspective. Using a wide array of previously unused sources and multilingual archival research from Angola, Portugal and beyond, Samuël Coghe sheds new light on the history of colonial Angola, showing how population policies were conceived, implemented and contested. He analyses why and how doctors, administrators, missionaries and other colonial actors tried to grasp and quantify demographic change and 'improve' the health conditions, reproductive regimes and migration patterns of Angola's 'native' population. Coghe argues that these interventions were inextricably linked to pervasive fears of depopulation and underpopulation, but that their implementation was often hampered by weak state structures, internal conflicts and multiple forms of African agency. Coghe's fresh analysis of demography, health and migration in colonial Angola challenges common ideas of Portuguese colonial exceptionalism.
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Bibliography
Article
  • Jan 2022
A wealth of new data have been unearthed in recent years on African economic growth, wages, living standards, and taxes. In The Wealth and Poverty of African States, Morten Jerven shows how these findings transform our understanding of African economic development. He focuses on the central themes and questions that these state records can answer, tracing how African states evolved over time and the historical footprint they have left behind. By connecting the history of the colonial and postcolonial periods, he reveals an aggregate pattern of long-run growth from the late nineteenth century into the 1970s, giving way to widespread failure and decline in the 1980s, and then followed by two decades of expansion since the late 1990s. The result is a new framework for understanding the causes of poverty and wealth and the trajectories of economic growth and state development in Africa across the twentieth century.
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From Headhunting to Head Taxes: Violence, Taxation and Colonial Governance on Seram, c. 1860–1920
Article
Full-text available
  • Nov 2021
This article investigates Dutch colonial practices on the Moluccan island of Seram in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Seram’s mountainous interior was the domain of ungoverned, peripatetic Alfurs who engaged in headhunting. For a long time, they were rendered untouched by colonialism and administered through coastal intermediaries. After 1900, renewed imperial-civilizational vigour demanded the direct incorporation and ‘civilization’ of Seram’s stateless spaces. A series of expeditions subjected the Alfurs to registration, categorization, and taxation, which this article argues were seen as pivotal, moralizing tools of colonial social-engineering, used to inscribe subjected people into the state and instil compliant and ‘productive’ behaviour. However, rather than a replacement of indigenous orders with European modernity, colonization produced a hybrid fusion of colonial strategies of domination with indigenous cultural practices of state-evasion. This article demonstrates that colonial governance was a site of interaction, in which colonial developmentalism and modernity were actively negotiated and challenged.
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Trouble and strife: demographic shocks, agrarian change and marriage in Portuguese Timor
Article
  • Mar 2021
Marital exchange between origin ‘houses’ is central to Timorese narratives and has been a central concern of anthropological study of Portuguese Timor and independent Timor-Leste. This article challenges the notion of stable patterns of marital exchange between named houses across time. Drawing on data from the colonial census, this paper finds a severe imbalance in the sex ratio during the first half of the twentieth century. Starting from subsistence agriculture, demographic shocks, the head tax and the introduction of forced coffee cultivation, the paper identifies the neglect and mistreatment of females, inflationary pressures on the bride price, increasing polygamous marriage and significant maternal mortality as key causal mechanisms that led to a highly imbalanced sex ratio. These dynamics impacted the age of marriage for men and women, and resulted in a sharp increase in the number of men who were unable to marry.
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Genealogy of Colonial Land Registration and State Land in Portuguese Timor
Article
  • Apr 2020
Establishing territorial control was one of the primary activities of colonial presence on Timor from the late nineteenth century. In Portuguese Timor as elsewhere in Southeast Asia, the colonial state pursued codification and regulation of land in multiple forms, including serial attempts to enact land registration in tandem with colonial projects including pacification, resource extraction, and generation of state income. Seeking to extend official purview to Timor-specific customary land use and practices, Portugal defined distinct social categorizations linked to land access and ownership. This article traces the policies governing land in Portuguese Timor from the late 1800s to the mid-1900s, highlighting state land acquisition, registration processes, laws and procedures asserting state control over land transactions, and international influences on Portuguese practices.
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Taxing Chiefs: The Design and Introduction of Direct Taxation in the Sierra Leon Protectorate, 1896–1914
Article
  • Jan 2020
This paper investigates the introduction of direct colonial taxation in the Sierra Leone Protectorate. By examining the local dynamics of colonial taxation policy, a more nuanced reading of colonial relationships can be reached, that appreciates the minutiae of colonial finance and sheds light on the fundamentally different terms on which people were incorporated into ‘states’ in empires compared to the western contexts that we encounter more commonly in the literature on taxation. While direct taxation has been given many non-revenue functions, including facilitating the extension of a cash economy and the promotion of wage labour, in this colonial context, the power of the colonial government to shape behaviour at an individual level was sacrificed in the interests of a reliable revenue policy in the context of a state with seriously limited administrative and financial capacity.
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Havik 5.1. The Political Context of Colonial Taxation 5.2. Portuguese Guinea: Economy and Administration 5.3. Military Campaigns: Sovereignty and Direct Taxation 5.4. Colonial Administration: Labour, Crops and Fiscal Policies 5.5. Colonial Accounts
  • J Philip
Philip J. Havik 5.1. The Political Context of Colonial Taxation 5.2. Portuguese Guinea: Economy and Administration 5.3. Military Campaigns: Sovereignty and Direct Taxation 5.4. Colonial Administration: Labour, Crops and Fiscal Policies 5.5. Colonial Accounts, Fiscal Revenue and Economic Development 5.6. Conclusions