Catarina Madeira Santos. 2019. Open Access.
The African societies that belonged to what is now the nation‑state of Angola were not used to writing with an alphabet before the 16th century when they first came into contact with modern European empires. They began creating written documents, first within the ancient Kongo kingdom (1482), then inside the Portuguese colony of Angola (1576). This article aims to focus on these Central Africa’s societies’ written traditions, too often considered as existing outside written culture. Particular attention will be paid to the documents’ characteristics, their authors, their typology, their circulation and how they have been archived. Generally speaking, they are a valuable resource of African voices useful to the study of Central African history, modern empires, and colonisation.
https://books.openedition.org/pressesinalco/31314
Full Citation: Catarina Madeira Santos, “Les sources écrites africaines de l’Angola (XVIIe-XXe siècles)”, in Nathalie Kouamé, Eric Meyer, Anne Viguier, Encyclopédie des Historiographies. Afrique, Amérique, Asie, vol.I Sources et genres historiques en Afrique, Presses de l’INALCO, 2019, pp. 1628-1632.
