| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Sub-Saharan Africa

Linda Heywood. Contested Power in Angola, 1840s to the Present. (Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora, number 6.) Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press. 2000. Pp. xviii, 305. $79.95.

This book is a history of the Ovimbundu peoples of Angola during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Ovimbundu are located in the densely populated, agriculturally productive central highlands of Angola, and they comprise the largest ethnic group in the country. They have provided considerable support to the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), the opposition movement led by Jonas Savimbi that has been engaged in a deadly conflict with the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) government practically since independence in 1975. Although Savimbi's death during a battle between UNITA and the Angolan armed forces in early 2002 has eliminated one of the main obstacles to peace, this book shows that bringing about the cultural, political, and economic inclusion of the Ovimbundu into the Angolan polity remains a formidable task. 1

Linda Heywood provides an extensively researched account of identity formation among the Ovimbundu over the last 150 years. She has consulted government and missionary archives in eight locations including Scotland, the United States, Portugal, and Angola and has relied on Angolan, Portuguese, and American daily newspapers and monthly religious journals to support her analysis. Her focus on local struggles and the dynamics of ethnic, regional, and national politics incorporates several of the theoretical insights that social historians have brought to the study of Africa during the last two decades. Although she often does not engage directly with existing historiography on Angola, her examination of processes of social change departs significantly from earlier elite, policy-based, and structuralist interpretations. . . .

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