Paper short abstract:

This paper compares the processes by which two natural resources, coffee and rubber, became marketable goods in Angola during the 1800s, showing how European demand and African initiative transformed the Angolan export economy after the end of the slave trade.

Paper long abstract:

As the export slave trade was slowly winding down in Angola after 1830, produce traders began to develop new forms of commerce in west-central Africa. Two commodities came to dominate the new export economy in nineteenth-century Angola: first coffee and then rubber. This paper examines how European traders in northern Angola obtained knowledge of local economic resources and production systems - in this case robusta coffee and wild rubber - and how they established connections with African producers and suppliers of these commodities. The robusta coffee plant was native to this part of Africa, but little is known about the initial stages of its commercialization in the Dembos and Kongo regions of northern Angola from about 1830 onward. From about 1870, rubber was exported from Angola in ever larger quantities, eventually overtaking coffee as the colony's most valuable commodity. Unlike coffee, however, most of the rubber sold in northern Angola was tapped from creepers and shrubs several hundred miles inland from the coast, that is, in regions beyond colonial control. This often left European traders guessing about the exact origins of the product they purchased and the untapped riches existing beyond colonial horizons. This paper compares the processes - in particular cross-cultural exchanges of information - by which two natural resources, coffee and rubber, became marketable goods in Angola during the 1800s, showing how European demand and African initiative transformed the Angolan export economy after the end of the slave trade.