A Short History of Modern Angola by David Birmingham is out now from Jonathan Ball Publishers.

Celebrated Africanist David Birmingham draws on decades of extensive scholarly research, and the ‘accidental adventures’ that make up his life as an historian, to offer this comprehensive account of Angola’s modern history.

Beginning in 1820, Birmingham details the Portuguese attempt to create a third, African, empire in Angola after the virtual loss of Asia and America. He charts the great flows of migrant people to and from the country that underpinned these colonial efforts and the burgeoning slave trade that went hand in hand with it.

A Short History of Modern Angola is a journey through the 20th century in Angola – the playing out of its politics, trade and labour practices against the backdrop of white settlement, and the eventual fall of Portuguese colonialism and Angola’s struggle for national identity. It concludes with an examination of the civil war that ravaged the country in the 70s and 80s, which ended in 2002, but from whose legacy the Angolan people are still trying to rebuild today.

Beyond A Short History of Modern Angola’s concise and comprehensive historical narrative, Birmingham illustrates the fascinating link between the British Cadbury chocolate company and Angola, as well as the origins of the term ‘Lusophone’.

There are few outsiders who know the country better than David Birmingham, and he has written a timely and incredibly readable book on this rising power.
– Toby Green, Lecturer in Lusophone African History and Culture, King’s College London

This is a fabulous book, an inspiring work of scholarship that reflects the author’s deep engagement with Angola for over half a century.
– Lara Pawson, author of In the Name of the People: Angola’s Forgotten Massacre

About the author

David Birmingham’s first book, on the Portuguese conquest of Angola, was published by Oxford University Press in 1965. Since then he has written a dozen other works, including the Cambridge History of Portugal, and edited the three-volume History of Central Africa, with Phyllis Martin. He taught in African universities and at SOAS before being appointed to the chair of modern history at the University of Kent.

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