Congratulations to Dr. Mariana P. Candido, Winship Distinguished Professor of History, 2023-2026, and Professor of History, on receiving one of the most significant book prizes in African studies. The African Studies Association (ASA) awarded Candido’s most recent monograph, Wealth, Land, and Property in Angola: A History of Dispossession, Slavery, and Inequality (Cambridge UP), with the ASA Best Book Prize for 2022. The prize is given “to the author of the most important scholarly work in African studies published in English during the preceding year.” Cátia Antunes (Leiden University) writes that “Candido’s approach, insights and poignant arguments will ignite profuse discussions and challenge common views regarding Africa and Africans. Candido is a unique historian and perhaps the most accomplished Africanist of the 21st century.” Earlier in 2023, Candido was one of 26 scholars based in the U.S. to receive the prestigious Berlin Prize, which supports a research fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin. Read more about Wealth, Property, and Land in Angola below and browse past winners of the ASA Book Prize.
Exploring the multifaceted history of dispossession, consumption, and inequality in West Central Africa, Mariana P. Candido presents a bold revisionist history of Angola from the sixteenth century until the Berlin Conference of 1884–5. Synthesising disparate strands of scholarship, including the histories of slavery, land tenure, and gender in West Central Africa, Candido makes a significant contribution to ongoing historical debates. She demonstrates how ideas about dominion and land rights eventually came to inform the appropriation and enslavement of free people and their labour. By centring the experiences of West Central Africans, and especially African women, this book challenges dominant historical narratives, and shows that securing property was a gendered process. Drawing attention to how archives obscure African forms of knowledge and normalize conquest, Candido interrogates simplistic interpretations of ownership and pushes for the decolonization of African history.
“Candido is a unique historian and perhaps the most accomplished Africanist of the 21st century.”
Cátia Antunes (Leiden University)