|
|
Preface
This book is about a subject with which non-Portuguese-speaking readers are not familiar: Angolan literature and culture. Moreover, it investigates a segment of Angolan history and literature with which even Portuguese-speaking readers are generally not familiar, for its main purpose is to define the features and the literary production of the so-called “creole elite”, as well as its contribution to the early manifestations of dissatisfaction towards colonial rule patent during a period of renewed Portuguese commitment to its African colonies, but also of unrealised ambitions, economic crisis, and sociopolitical upheaval in Angola and in Portugal itself.
Nineteenth-century Angolan society was characterised by the presence of a semiurbanised commercial and administrative elite of Portuguese-speaking creole families—white, black, some of mixed race, some Catholic and others Protestant, some old established, and others cosmopolitan—who were based in the main coastal towns. In addition to their wealth, which was derived from the functions performed in the colonial administrative, commercial, and customs apparatus, their European-influenced culture and habits clearly distinguished them from the broad native population of black peasants and farmworkers.