This book examines the history of the colonial conquest of a neglected region of Angola from an alternative perspective. Dr Clarence-Smith has used advances in Marxist theory to develop a model of the early colonial period which differs greatly from the established historiography of `African resistance'. Although the main focus is on local socio-economic structures, one chapter places the region in the wider context of the political economy of the partition of Africa, with strong emphasis on the economic motivations of Portugal. A brief epilogue brings the story in outline to the end of Portuguese colonialism. The rest of the book analyses colonial society and African peasant societies in turn. Capitalist relations of production were generally predominant in local colonial society, but slavery persisted into the 1910s and was followed by a system of forced labour.