Forced convict labor provided the Portuguese with solutions to the growing criminal population at home and the lack of infrastructure in Angola and Mozambique. In Convict Labor in the Portuguese Empire, Timothy J. Coates examines the role of large numbers of convicts in Portuguese Africa from 1800 until 1932. This work examines the numbers, rationale, and realities of convict labor (largely) in Angola during this period, but Mozambique is a secondary area, as well as late colonial times in Brazil. This is a unique, first study of an experiment in convict labor in Africa directed by a European power; it will be welcomed by scholars of Africa and New Imperialism, as well as those interested in law and labor.

This is the first comprehensive assessment of the end of slavery in Africa. Editors Suzanne Miers and Richard Roberts, with the distinguished contributors to the volume, establish an agenda for the social history of the early colonial period--hen the end of slavery was one of the most significant historical and cultural processes. The End of Slavery in Africa is a sequel to Slavery in Africa, edited by Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff and published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 1977. The contributors explore the historical experiences of slaves, masters, and colonials as they all confronted the end of slavery in fifteen sub-Saharan African societies. The essays demonstrate that it is impossible to generalize about whether the end of slavery was a relatively mild and nondisruptive process or whether it marked a significant change in the social and economic organization of a given society. There was no common pattern and no uniform consequence of the end of slavery. The results of this wide-ranging inquiry will be of lasting value to Africanists and a variety of social and economic historians.