Colonial Land Legacies in the Portuguese-Speaking World

Colonial Land Legacies in the Portuguese-Speaking World explores the lasting impacts of Portuguese colonial land policies. Through ethnographic, historical, and legal lenses, it highlights how these policies continue to shape contemporary land governance, Indigenous-settler relations, and socio-economic inequalities.

Colonial Land Legacies in the Portuguese-Speaking World presents a comparative exploration of the enduring impacts of Portuguese colonial land governance in Portugal and across five former Portuguese colonies: Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Flores, and Portuguese Timor. Through ethnographic, historical, and legal analyses, the book investigates how colonial land policies and interventions were not simply implemented and forgotten but have shaped contemporary land access, governance, and socio-economic structures in profound ways.

Portuguese colonialism was shaped by shifting political and economic priorities. From trading routes to plantation economies and extractive industries, land became central to Portuguese colonial interests. Colonial Land Legacies in the Portuguese-Speaking World investigates the bureaucratic mechanisms employed by Portuguese authorities to regulate land, highlighting how these systems were frequently manipulated by elites to consolidate power and control over resources. It explores Indigenous-settler entanglements, illustrating how colonial land policies interacted with local governance systems, leading to contested and hybrid forms of land control shaped by both resistance and adaptation. Finally, it focuses on the global capitalist motivations driving land policies, particularly the use of large-scale concessions for plantations, and how these practices continue to shape contemporary land ownership and economic inequalities in post-colonial contexts.

Colonial Land Legacies in the Portuguese-Speaking World is a critical and comparative analysis of colonial land governance and its afterlives. It highlights how these legacies continue to shape contemporary struggles over land, making it essential to address them in the pursuit of more equitable land governance. Through its case studies, the book contributes to broader discussions on the relationships among land, power, and colonialism, offering insights into the ongoing challenges of land policy and practice in post-colonial contexts.

With contributions by: José Laimone Adalima, Bernardo Almeida, Carmen Alveal, Mattias Röhrig Assunção, Susanna, Barnes, Aharon deGrassi, Bárbara Direito, Laura Gerken, Hans Hägerdal, Elisio Jossias, Douglas Kammen, Tania Murray Li, Ricardo Roque, and Laura S. Meitzner Yoder

About the Editors

Susanna Barnes is a socio-cultural anthropologist at the University of Saskatchewan. Her research focuses on the anthropology of development, with a specific emphasis on the intersections of custom, social change and post-colonial dynamics in Southeast Asia.

Laura S. Meitzner Yoder is a political ecologist who serves as John Stott Endowed Chair and Director of the Human Needs and Global Resources Program, and as Professor of Environmental Studies, Wheaton College, Illinois, USA. Her research centers smallholder farmers and forest dwellers as they relate to policymakers regarding land and forests, primarily in rural Southeast Asia and Latin America.

Maps, Tables, Figures, and Images

Acknowledgements

Preface
Laura S. Meitzner Yoder and Susanna Barnes

Foreword

Colonial Land Legacies: Questions and Insights from Southeast Asia
Tania Murray Li

Introduction

Colonial Portuguese Land Legacies in Comparative Perspective
Susanna Barnes and Laura S. Meitzner Yoder

Part I: Administrative Practices and Governance Strategies

The Roots of Inequality: Sesmaria Land Grants in Colonial Brazil
Carmen Alveal

From Squatters to Smallholders? Configurations of African Land Access in Central and Southern Colonial Mozambique
Bárbara Direito

‘Everyday’ Displacements in Colonial Angola: Changing Political Geographies of Infrastructure, Gender, and Quotidian Village Concentration
Aharon deGrassi

Baldios, Communal Land, and the Portuguese Colonial Legacy in Timor-Leste
Bernardo Almeida

Part II: Indigenous-Settler Entanglements

Dutch Colonialism and Portuguese Land Legacies in Flores
Hans Hägerdal

Land Access in a Slave Society: The Case of Maranhão Province, Northern Brazil
Mattias Röhrig Assunção

The Impact of Portuguese Development Thought and Practice on Land Relations in the Late Portuguese Colonial Period
Susanna Barnes

The Re-Making of Territories and Political Institutions: Community Land Delimitation in Northern Mozambique
Elisio Jossias

Part III: Economic Imperatives and Global Articulations

The Trajectory of the Plantation System in Mozambique: The Case of Madal in Micaúne
José Laimone Adalima

Land Governance as Legal Opportunities in Struggles around Large-Scale Land Acquisitions in Mozambique
Laura Gerken

Colonial Concessions: The Antinomies of Land Policy in Portuguese Timor
Douglas Kammen and Laura S. Meitzner Yoder

Afterword

The Amphibious Colonial Empire
Ricardo Roque

About the Contributors
Index