As part of Development Workshop’s celebration of 25 years work in Angola, DW invited the renowned historian David Birmingham to speak at our office in Luanda on September 19, 2006. Professor Birmingham transformed the history of Angola’s last one hundred years into a series of stories situated at ten year intervals beginning at 1906. The intriguing lecture covered the early Angolan resistance to colonial occupation, the period of Portuguese settler land acquisition, the beginning of the liberation war, independence and the civil-war period. Angola’s history was presented from the different perspectives of the variety of actors that experienced and influenced the events.
David Birmingham is Emeritus Professor, School of History, University of Kent, Canterbury, England. From 1980 to 2001 he held the chair of Modern History at the University of Kent. He has written extensively on south and central Africa and Portugal including:The Decolonization of Africa (UCL Press, 1995), History of Central Africa, Volume Three (Longman, 1998), Portugal and Africa (Macmillan, 1999) and A survey of Trade and Empire in the Atlantic, 1400-1600 (Routledge, 2000).
It was a privilege to have Professor Birmingham help us celebrate Development Workshop’s twenty five year contribution to Angola’s developing story.
Audio recording of David Birmingham’s talk at DW:
David Birmingham speaks at DW’s office in Luanda, 2006.
David Birmingham speaks at DW’s office in Luanda, 2006.
This additional material has been selected to provide background on the author/speaker:
- The Portuguese Conquest of Angola (Clarendon Press, 1965) by David Birmingham.
- Trade and Conflict in Angola: The Mbundu and Their Neighbours Under the Influence of the Portuguese 1483-1790 (Clarendon Press, 1966) by David Birmingham.
- Cambridge Journals Online – Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies – David Birmingham: Trade and conflict in Angola: the Mbundu and their neighbours under the influence of the Portuguese, 1483-1790. (Oxford Studies in African Affairs.) xviii, 178 pp. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966. 35s; purchase online here.
- A review of David Birmingham’s Angola and its Neighbors: Empire in Africa, by I. Brinkman, 2008; order from the Leiden African Studies Centre here.
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Accord #15, Conciliation Resources, 2004.
A lecture by David Birmingham recorded at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC on December 7, 2011, including information about Angolan history.