The study of taxation is a valuable tool for understanding the complex political and economic relationships between Africans and colonial administrations. A salient issue during the colonial period and in earlier histories of colonial rule, it has recently experienced a revival as the subject of research in African history. By examining the extension and development of colonial tax systems in Portuguese Africa, this book by Philip Havik, Alexander Keese, and Maciel Santos fills an important gap in a literature that has focused primarily on British and French colonies. The collaboration of the three authors allows the volume to combine careful and detailed archival research with sufficient breadth to compare the experiences of Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea Bissau.
Many of the main arguments of the book will come as no surprise to readers familiar with recent work on colonial taxation in other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, but making these claims with regard to Portuguese Africa – long treated as exceptional – is a major contribution. The authors argue, for example, that local circumstances in each colony were as important in shaping their fiscal policies as any typically ‘Portuguese’ pattern of colonial rule. In each of the three colonies, tax policies were influenced by trade and economic resources, the nature of indigenous institutions, and the progress of colonial conquest. (Similar arguments were made in the pages of this journal in 2014 in an article by Ewout Frankema and Marlous van Waijenberg, which compared fiscal practices in French and British Africa.) By examining the development of tax policies over time, Havik, Keese, and Santos also highlight the ways in which Portuguese colonial officials responded in terms of fiscal practice to major shifts like the Great Depression and the Second World War. Many of their efforts were similar to those of British colonial officials documented in a monograph comparing British colonies published in 2012 by the author of this review.
These parallels do not mean that there were not unique features that distinguished Portuguese Africa from other parts of Africa. The limited capacity of the metropolitan state meant that there appears to have been greater and more persistent involvement in tax collection by concession companies and other quasi-private actors in Lusophone Africa than elsewhere. In this sense, Portuguese Africa perhaps bears closer resemblance to, for example, Belgian Congo. Further, the long duration of Portuguese involvement in sub-Saharan Africa created interest groups less in evidence in other parts of the region, notably the prazos or Luso-African landholders of the Zambezi River in Mozambique.
Following the introduction, Santos provides the most comprehensive effort to compare directly the three Portuguese territories in Chapter One. It examines the financial relationships between colony and metropole, key sources of revenue, and the ways in which these varied according to the economic conditions of each colony. The theoretical framework of this chapter, rooted in Marxist economics, can at times feel somewhat dated. However, the data presented provide the foundations for further comparisons to neighbouring colonies under French or British rule, testing some of the claims made in the introduction.
Subsequent chapters deal in a more granular way with the political and economic relationships that underpinned the collection of tax revenue, particularly direct tax revenue, from the African population. A general review of issues linked to the politics of colonial taxation by Alexander Keese looks more broadly at previous work on British and French Africa. The final three chapters of the book present case studies of direct taxation in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea Bissau (written by Keese, Santos, and Havik, respectively). This focus collectively highlights several issues of potential interest in the broader study of colonial taxation and governance. First, despite the long history of Portuguese links to Africa, colonial tax collection was a relatively new innovation, reflecting the limited capacity of Portuguese rule. Second, considerable variation operated on the administration of taxation within Portuguese territories owing to differences in local political configurations, resources, and geography. A key virtue of the case study approach pursued in these chapters is that it allows the authors to investigate, via rigorous archival research, the dynamic relationship between taxation and other colonial policies such as forced labour, land concessions, and the cultivation (forced or voluntary) of export crops.
It is difficult in a co-authored book to maintain continuity among individual contributions. In this volume, more could have been done to ensure consistency in the format and units of the quantitative data presented in the three case study chapters. The theoretical underpinnings of the two chapters by Santos are also distinct from the other chapters. This reader at least would have appreciated a co-authored conclusion that returned to some of the larger questions raised in the introduction.
Despite some missed opportunities, this book nevertheless makes an important contribution to including Portuguese Africa in a wider comparative literature on colonial fiscal policies, and to understanding the ways in which local and global contexts interacted to shape African interactions with the colonial state. Important work remains to be done on colonial expenditures and on the transition of colonial fiscal institutions to independence, to name just two issues. This book provides an important foundation for those future investigations.
