7 - Migrations

Summary

This chapter examines Portuguese discourses on health, environment and migration in the context of the colonisation of West-Central Africa. It points to ideas that people from certain parts of Portugal were seen as better suited to adapt to the Angolan disease environment, or rather environments, for certain regions in the colony of Angola were seen as healthier than others. Therefore, this chapter also addresses dangerous and healing environments within West-Central Africa, some of which gained a mythical status by the end of the eighteenth century. The history of migration in, to and from Angola would be incomplete without Brazil, which was intimately connected to discourses on health and environment in the Portuguese Atlantic, first as a potential source of immigrants to Angola, and second, as a temporary healing environment for Europeans stationed in West-Central Africa. By tracing the movements of people and ideas in time and space, this chapter demonstrates the interconnectedness of environment and health in the early modern southern Atlantic world.