100 books like Images on a Mission in Early Modern Kongo and Angola

By Cecile Fromont,

Here are 100 books that Images on a Mission in Early Modern Kongo and Angola fans have personally recommended if you like Images on a Mission in Early Modern Kongo and Angola. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Angola Bradt Travel Guide 2nd

Joan Deneve Author Of Saving Eric

From my list on the wonders of life and mission work in Africa.

Why am I passionate about this?

My passion for Africa came from my college days at Tennessee Temple University. Each year, the university would sponsor a missionary conference, and I always found myself drawn to the African exhibits. I am particularly passionate about missionary work in Africa and the challenges that it presents. Africa is a vast and splendid place with cultures as diverse as the climates in which they live. My research has only deepened my great love for this continent and the precious people who live there.

Joan's book list on the wonders of life and mission work in Africa

Joan Deneve Why did Joan love this book?

I found this book helpful because my books are set in Angola. This travel guide gave specific details about the terrain, climate, and geographic challenges of life in Angola. A travel guide such as this one is invaluable to anyone considering a short-term trip to Africa. This particular book even offered help with conversational language terms and gave thorough and interesting information that helped give my books the authenticity I wanted.  

By Mike Stead, Sean Rorison, Oscar Scafidi

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Angola Bradt Travel Guide 2nd as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Angola is changing at a rapid pace. This new edition reflects the continued resurgence of tourism following years of conflict. While no city comes close to matching Luanda for sheer size, venture outside the capital and you will find everything from frontier diamond towns to relaxed beach resorts. The country offers over 1,000km of unspoilt beaches, excellent fishing and some of the best surfing waves in the world. Rain forests and bird spotting opportunities abound. Whether business traveller or pioneering adventurer, Angola provides all the practical and background information you'll need to tackle this vast country. It also acts as…


Book cover of An African Slaving Port and the Atlantic World: Benguela and Its Hinterland

Vanessa Oliveira Author Of Slave Trade and Abolition: Gender, Commerce, and Economic Transition in Luanda

From my list on the slave trade from Angola.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a professor of African history at the Royal Military College of Canada, where I teach courses on European colonialism and early and modern Africa. I earned a PhD in history from York University in Canada and spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto before joining RMC. My research interests include slavery, slave trade, legitimate commerce, and intercultural marriages in Luanda and its hinterland. I have published articles and book chapters and co-edited (with Paul E. Lovejoy) Slavery, Memory and Citizenship. My first book, Slave Trade and Abolition was published by the University of Wisconsin Press in January 2021.

Vanessa's book list on the slave trade from Angola

Vanessa Oliveira Why did Vanessa love this book?

The Angolan southern town of Benguela was the third-largest port of embarkation of captives in the history of the transatlantic slave trade, after Luanda and Ouidah (in modern-day Benin). In spite of its importance as a slaving port, An African Slaving Port was the first English-language book on Benguela. In this book, Mariana P. Candido traces the history and development of the port from the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century highlighting the connections between Benguela, Portugal, Brazil, and the Caribbean. The book contributes to the scholarship on the impact of the transatlantic slave trade on African societies looking at changes in consumption patterns, cultural elements, and institutions on the coast as well as in interior regions. Furthermore, the book contributes to engender the history of the slave trade from Angola by evidencing the role of local women merchants known as donas as independent traders and intermediaries between foreign traders and…

By Mariana Candido,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked An African Slaving Port and the Atlantic World as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This book traces the history and development of the port of Benguela, the third largest port of slave embarkation on the coast of Africa, from the early seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century. Benguela, located on the central coast of present-day Angola, was founded by the Portuguese in the early seventeenth century. In discussing the impact of the transatlantic slave trade on African societies, Mariana P. Candido explores the formation of new elites, the collapse of old states and the emergence of new states. Placing Benguela in an Atlantic perspective, this study shows how events in the Caribbean and Brazil affected…


Book cover of New Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Writing by Women of African Descent

Joel Cabrita Author Of Written Out: The Silencing of Regina Gelana Twala

From my list on literary women you’ve never heard of.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a historian of Southern Africa who is fascinated by questions of visibility and invisibility. I love probing beneath the surface of the past. For example, why is this person famous and renowned, but that person isn’t? To me, recognition and reputation are interesting to scrutinize as social categories in their own right, rather than as factual statements. I’ve written two books focusing on the history of religious expression in Southern Africa, and my most recent book is a biography of the forgotten South African writer and politician Regina Gelana Twala. 

Joel's book list on literary women you’ve never heard of

Joel Cabrita Why did Joel love this book?

This anthology of African women writers has been my personal lodestar in writing about Regina Twala, a forgotten African writer.

Busby (a pioneering editor and publisher of Ghanaian heritage) was one of the first to recognize that the canon of African writers was much bigger than famous men like Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka.

Her work taught me about a longstanding rich female literary tradition on the African continent – some of her earliest examples of women writers date to Ancient Egypt!

Busby recognizes that we can’t always look to the written page for evidence of this, given that many women writers were denied opportunities to publish their work.

So she broadens the focus of her anthology by paying attention to both “words and writing,” thinking about female writers of novels, poetry, plays, non-fiction, and journalism.

A must read. 

By Margaret Busby,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked New Daughters of Africa as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Three decades after her pioneering anthology, Daughters of Africa, Margaret Busby curates an extraordinary collection of contemporary writing by 200 women writers of African descent, including Zadie Smith, Bernardine Evaristo and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

A glorious portrayal of the richness and range of African women's voices, this major international book brings together their achievements across a wealth of genres. From Antigua to Zimbabwe and Angola to the USA, overlooked artists of the past join key figures, popular contemporaries and emerging writers in paying tribute to the heritage that unites them, the strong links that endure from generation to generation, and…


Book cover of Cross-Cultural Exchange in the Atlantic World: Angola and Brazil During the Era of the Slave Trade

Vanessa Oliveira Author Of Slave Trade and Abolition: Gender, Commerce, and Economic Transition in Luanda

From my list on the slave trade from Angola.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a professor of African history at the Royal Military College of Canada, where I teach courses on European colonialism and early and modern Africa. I earned a PhD in history from York University in Canada and spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto before joining RMC. My research interests include slavery, slave trade, legitimate commerce, and intercultural marriages in Luanda and its hinterland. I have published articles and book chapters and co-edited (with Paul E. Lovejoy) Slavery, Memory and Citizenship. My first book, Slave Trade and Abolition was published by the University of Wisconsin Press in January 2021.

Vanessa's book list on the slave trade from Angola

Vanessa Oliveira Why did Vanessa love this book?

In this book, Roquinaldo A. Ferreira traces the trajectory of free and enslaved individuals directly and indirectly connected to the slave trade from Angola in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By looking at the life stories of merchants and ordinary men and women in the ports of Luanda and Benguela he reveals the movements of peoples, ideas, capital, cultural practices, and commodities that shaped the South Atlantic World. Ferreira also demonstrates that the Portuguese incorporated indigenous institutions and cultural practices evidencing that cultural exchanges worked both ways. The book is a fine example of the use of microhistory to recover the experiences of subaltern individuals, including the enslaved, women, and criminals.

By Roquinaldo Ferreira,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Cross-Cultural Exchange in the Atlantic World as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This book argues that Angola and Brazil were connected, not separated, by the Atlantic Ocean. Roquinaldo Ferreira focuses on the cultural, religious and social impacts of the slave trade on Angola. Reconstructing biographies of Africans and merchants, he demonstrates how cross-cultural trade, identity formation, religious ties and resistance to slaving were central to the formation of the Atlantic world. By adding to our knowledge of the slaving process, the book powerfully illustrates how Atlantic slaving transformed key African institutions, such as local regimes of forced labor that predated and coexisted with Atlantic slaving and made them fundamental features of the…


Book cover of Enslaving Spirits: The Portuguese-Brazilian Alcohol Trade at Luanda and Its Hinterland, C. 1550-1830

David Carey Jr. Author Of Distilling the Influence of Alcohol: Aguardiente in Guatemalan History

From my list on alcohol in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Why am I passionate about this?

Raised on happy hours on Cape Cod, MA patios with my Irish-American relatives, I long have been fascinated by how alcohol can bring people together and facilitate bonds that traverse both hardship and joy. During my travels and research in Mexico, Chile, Peru, Guatemala, and Ecuador, I observed how alcohol could both render families asunder and unite communities. As addiction makes clear, alcohol could hold tremendous power over individuals. But it also marked the identities of even the most casual drinkers. Throughout my research on other topics—crime, gender, medicine—alcohol consistently emerges as a crucial avenue of inquiry. The books listed below offer innovative and insightful ways of centering alcohol in scholarly narratives. 

David's book list on alcohol in Latin America and the Caribbean

David Carey Jr. Why did David love this book?

By exploring the intertwined transatlantic trades of enslaved Africans and alcohol, Curto reveals how Latin American libations bested European stock in ways that altered the course of history.

West Africans’ taste for Brazilian cachaça (sugarcane brandy) dislodged Portuguese wine and liquor facilitating Brazilian merchants’ dominance in Western Africa and spawning a vibrant trade based out of Luanda. What impressed me most about this book was how Curto turned conventional wisdom on its head by demonstrating how a Latin American nation shaped trade and tastes across the globe.

Portuguese efforts to regain their privileged trading position by outlawing the sale of cachaça in Africa failed. The direct trade between Africa and Brazil that alcohol facilitated challenges traditional descriptions of the transatlantic triangle trade. 

By José C. Curto,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Enslaving Spirits as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This volume deals with imported alcohol at Luanda and its hinterland, where it was heavily used to acquire captives for the Atlantic slave trade. Aside from highlighting the complexities of this singular economic component of Atlantic slaving, its focus on changing West -Central African alcohol consumption patterns through the importation of foreign intoxicants reveals an important element of the social history of African societies before the modern colonial period.


Book cover of Rumours of Rain

Iain Parke Author Of The Liquidator

From my list on African set political thrillers.

Why am I passionate about this?

Looking for an adventure in the mid-90s I found myself in East Africa helping wind up a failed African bank, locked out of a t-shirt manufacturing plant, chasing down missing bulldozers (which turned up creating Rwandan refugee camps), taking over a toilet paper manufacturer which couldn’t manage to perforate the paper, and running a match factory on the slopes of Kilimanjaro before selling it to a Nigerian chief who turned up in his private jet. Meanwhile feeling like an alien who really didn’t understand what was really going on around me, and uncomfortable with much of the hard-drinking and arrogant expat culture, drove me to start to write as a way of making sense of what I was seeing and feeling.    

Iain's book list on African set political thrillers

Iain Parke Why did Iain love this book?

A true South African classic. Told from an Afrikaner point of view which is an unusual experience for me as someone with modern liberal sensibilities, this is a grown-up psychological and political thriller about loyalties, conflict, and betrayals set against the shadow of the Angola conflict and the beginning of the end of apartheid.

By Andre Brink,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Rumours of Rain as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Winter in South Africa - a time of searing drought, angry stirrings in Soweto, and the shadow of the Angolan conflict cast across the scorched bush.

Martin Mynhardt, a wealthy Afrikaner, plans a weekend at his old family farm. But his visit coincides with a time of crisis in his personal life. In a few days, the security of a lifetime is destroyed and, with only the uncertain values of his past to guide him, Mynhardt is left to face the wreckage of his future.


Book cover of Another Day of Life

Anjan Sundaram Author Of Breakup: A Marriage in Wartime

From my list on foreign correspondent memoirs of Africa.

Why am I passionate about this?

I studied reporters' memoirs of Africa for my PhD in journalism at the University of East Anglia, under Giles Foden, author of The Last King of Scotland. I was fascinated by how foreign correspondents are aided by local reporters, who unfortunately often don’t receive much credit or commensurate pay for their contributions to international news. This inequality is changing, but not quickly enough, and it affects the kinds of news that we all receive, and how western lives, for example, are often respected more than others. 

Anjan's book list on foreign correspondent memoirs of Africa

Anjan Sundaram Why did Anjan love this book?

I promised my publisher, who edited Kapuscinski, a book as elemental, pure, and wild as Kapuscinski's seminal account of the Angolan independence struggle in 1975.

Though I’m not sure I succeeded, Breakup is that book.

I was inspired by this classic of reportage for its simple and profound observations of the city, and countryside, trying to make sense of the chaos and what Angolans, in Portuguese, called confusão.

By Ryszard Kapuściński, William R. Brand (translator), Katarzyna Mroczkowska-Brand (translator)

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Another Day of Life as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In 1975, Angola was tumbling into pandemonium; everyone who could was packing crates, desperate to abandon the beleaguered colony. With his trademark bravura, Ryszard Kapuscinski went the other way, begging his was from Lisbon and comfort to Luanda—once famed as Africa's Rio de Janeiro—and chaos.Angola, a slave colony later given over to mining and plantations, was a promised land for generations of poor Portuguese. It had belonged to Portugal since before there were English-speakers in North America. After the collapse of the fascist dictatorship in Portugal in 1974, Angola was brusquely cut loose, spurring the catastrophe of a still-ongoing civil…


Book cover of Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730-1830

Vanessa Oliveira Author Of Slave Trade and Abolition: Gender, Commerce, and Economic Transition in Luanda

From my list on the slave trade from Angola.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a professor of African history at the Royal Military College of Canada, where I teach courses on European colonialism and early and modern Africa. I earned a PhD in history from York University in Canada and spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto before joining RMC. My research interests include slavery, slave trade, legitimate commerce, and intercultural marriages in Luanda and its hinterland. I have published articles and book chapters and co-edited (with Paul E. Lovejoy) Slavery, Memory and Citizenship. My first book, Slave Trade and Abolition was published by the University of Wisconsin Press in January 2021.

Vanessa's book list on the slave trade from Angola

Vanessa Oliveira Why did Vanessa love this book?

This book is a mandatory read for anyone interested in the history of the transatlantic slave trade. In Way of Death, the late Joseph C. Milller examines the South Atlantic node of the slave trade within the context of the rise of merchant capitalism in the eighteenth century. Miller explores the connections between Angola, Portugal, and Brazil through the experiences of Africans and slave traders of Portuguese, Brazilian, and Luso-African origins. In this book, Miller advances his now much-debated theory of the expansion of the slave frontier eastwards into the deep interior. Scholars interested in the slave trade from Angola agree that Way of Death is a landmark study both methodologically and theoretically. Miller was able to mine primary sources in the Angolan archives in a time when the country experienced war and authorities were suspicious of researchers. 

By Joseph Calder Miller,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Way of Death as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

With extraordinary skill, Joseph C. Miller explores the complex relationships among the separate economies of Africa, Europe, and the South Atlantic that collectively supported the slave trade. He places the grim history of the trade itself within the context of the rise of merchant capitalism in the eighteenth century. Throughout, Miller illuminates the experiences of the slaves themselves, reconstructing what can be known of their sufferings at the hands of their buyers and sellers.


Book cover of The Last Train to Zona Verde: My Ultimate African Safari

John Ahern Author Of On the Road . . . with Kids: One Family's Life-Changing Gap Year

From my list on inspirational life-changing memoirs.

Why am I passionate about this?

John was born in Brisbane, Australia, and grew up roaming the beaches and playing backyard sports with his mates. His career spanned from mowing lawns and packing groceries, to being the Global Head of Acquisitions for a public listed travel company. In between bouts of work, he has travelled through over 80 countries, and been shot at, tear-gassed, robbed at gunpoint, and locked up in an African jail. He has stowed away in a Columbian cargo plane and been a passenger in two train derailments. John now lives with his family in the comparative safety of the Currumbin Valley on Australia’s Gold Coast. He considers it their base camp.

John's book list on inspirational life-changing memoirs

John Ahern Why did John love this book?

How could I leave out the doyen of modern-day autobiographical travel writing? Paul Theroux’s list of books describing his overland adventures and the history and culture of places he rides through, is impressive. He is funny, cantankerous, offensive, likable, and informative. I chose his last book Zona because he travels the same path I myself once took. It also differs from his earlier tomes in one distinct way; Paul undertook the hard overland journey from Cape Town to Angola at age 71, when most of us expect to be tucked up in bed with a warm toddy and a cat purring at our feet. His perspective from an older man commentates on and compares the Africa he once knew to now. At times, it’s a depressing tale, exposing stories of hunger and starvation, genocide, nature clogging with plastic, and vast examples of greed, climate change, wilderness destruction, and species extinction.…

By Paul Theroux,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Last Train to Zona Verde as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Following the success of the acclaimed Ghost Train to the Eastern Star and The Great Railway Bazaar, The Last Train to Zona Verde is an ode to the last African journey of the world's most celebrated travel writer, Paul Theroux.

'Happy again, back in the kingdom of light,' writes Paul Theroux as he sets out on a new journey though the continent he knows and loves best.

Having travelled down the right-hand side of Africa in Dark Star Safari, he sets out this time from Cape Town, heading northwards in a new direction, up the left-hand side, through South Africa…


Book cover of The Atlantic Slave Trade from West Central Africa, 1780-1867

Vanessa Oliveira Author Of Slave Trade and Abolition: Gender, Commerce, and Economic Transition in Luanda

From my list on the slave trade from Angola.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a professor of African history at the Royal Military College of Canada, where I teach courses on European colonialism and early and modern Africa. I earned a PhD in history from York University in Canada and spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto before joining RMC. My research interests include slavery, slave trade, legitimate commerce, and intercultural marriages in Luanda and its hinterland. I have published articles and book chapters and co-edited (with Paul E. Lovejoy) Slavery, Memory and Citizenship. My first book, Slave Trade and Abolition was published by the University of Wisconsin Press in January 2021.

Vanessa's book list on the slave trade from Angola

Vanessa Oliveira Why did Vanessa love this book?

In this book, Daniel B. Domingues da Silva traces the origins of the enslaved men, women, and children shipped from West Central African ports as well as their methods of enslavement. Silva has been part of the group of scholars who organized the Voyages, the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database. In this book, he draws upon archival research and the quantitative data found in the database to analyze the scale and organization of the forced migration of enslaved Africans to the Americas. Silva demonstrates that an important proportion of the enslaved Africans exported to the Americas in the nineteenth century originated from coastal areas. Therefore, his findings bring into question the theory of an expanding slave frontier inland.

By Daniel B. Domingues da Silva,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Atlantic Slave Trade from West Central Africa, 1780-1867 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Atlantic Slave Trade from West Central Africa, 1780-1867 traces the inland origins of slaves leaving West Central Africa at the peak period of the transatlantic slave trade. Drawing on archival sources from Angola, Brazil, England, and Portugal, Daniel B. Domingues da Silva explores not only the origins of the slaves forced into the trade but also the commodities for which they were exchanged and their methods of enslavement. Further, the book examines the evolution of the trade over time, its organization, the demographic profile of the population transported, the enslavers' motivations to participate in this activity, and the Africans'…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in Angola, Africa, and presidential biography?

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