This article analyses a peculiar and obscure episode in the colonial history of southern Angola. In the 1880s, the Portuguese government sponsored the settlement in the Huíla plateau of a group of impoverished migrants from the island of Madeira. This was part of a strategy of guaranteeing territorial control, frontier expansion and definition of borders in the context of the "European scramble for Africa". The study of primary sources reveals a great deal of improvisation, fragilities and ambiguities that the colonial history written in the 20th century rapidly erased and replaced for a narrative of pioneering heroism and white entitlement.
Angola; borders; colonization; frontier
