Living Standards in Angola, 1760-1975

Carvalhal, Hélder and Palma, Nuno (2026). Living Standards in Angola, 1760-1975. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Service. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-857897

This project will provide a better understanding of the origins and development of the Great Divergence between Western Europe and other parts of the world. Recent scholarship has shown that contrary to Pomeranz's (2001) famous argument, Western Europe was already richer than other parts of the world by the 17th century. But comparative studies are rare, and rely almost exclusively on English, French, and Dutch sources from the 17thcentury at the earliest (and typically, only the 18thand 19thcenturies). Hence, we still do not know when did the Great Divergence began, and we also know little about developments of non-European parts of the world prior to the 17thcentury. Portugal's global empire has been mostly absent from this debate, but from the 16th century it included several sites in Africa, India, the Americas, and Asia. Detailed price and wage data from the 16th century onwards survives in the Portuguese colonial archives in both the imperial centre and former colonies, and these can be used to expand the chronological and geographical scope of research.

The primacy of Portuguese overseas endeavours from the 15thcentury ensured that it became Europe's oldest and longest lasting modern empire. We will use Lusophone quantitative sources created by administrative, military, and commercial institutions for five key former imperial sites over hundreds of years, from c.1500 to 1950: Luanda in Angola, the urban settlement of Mozambique Island, Goa in India, Macao in China, and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. We will privilege books of receipt and expense, payment rolls, census, and statistical yearbooks to assemble real wages and welfare baskets from the early 16thcentury onwards. The geographical coverage provided by these locations can provide much more detail on living standards for both native and European settlers in different parts of the world in which were the Portuguese were present, for a broader geographical range and beginning more than a century before currently available data derived from English, French or Dutch sources.

For each case study site, we will collect yearly wage data for different kinds of workers (skilled and unskilled, free and enslaved, European, native and mixed race), and also the prices of a variety of staple goods to produce chronologically and geographically specific welfare baskets. These baskets will reflect ongoing events, such as the introduction of new goods in the process known as Columbian Exchange. For example, maize became an important food in Angola since the 17thcentury, when together with cassava was first imported from colonial Brazil, progressively transforming patterns of production and consumption. Amassing a dataset with many thousands of observations, we will produce indexes of real wages and prices which will allow us to determine welfare ratios; that is, the quality and quantity of staple foods and other essential items that workers in these locations could purchase. This will provide clear evidence of living standards for different groups in each location over five centuries.

The project will help the PI develop his leadership skills, gain grant management experience and achieve research independence. It will also greatly the career prospects of the PDRA who will be hired to conduct research and work with the PI on datasets and publications. To ensure maximum benefit to the scholarly community, datasets will be made available for other researchers, opening further avenues for understanding the causes of the ascendency of Europe. Our findings will generate interest in both central government agencies and municipal institutions in the fields of public history, memory, and legacy by providing a vast amount of new information on the economic legacy of slavery and, consequently, our understanding of the origins of the 'Great Divergence'. A temporary exhibition and an event at the ESRC Festival of Social Science will also help to disseminate these findings to a wider public.

Data description (abstract)

This dataset is an output of the project “Measuring the Great Divergence. A study of global standards of living, 1500-1950”, supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (grant number ES/W001578/1). It corresponds, specifically to the paper: Carvalhal, Hélder and Palma, Nuno (2025). Living Standards in Angola, 1760-1975. Explorations in Economic History, forthcoming

This dataset has the purpose of helping to understand how the standards of living observed by colonial populations develop in the long run, as well as to investigate the reasons underneath the changes of the material conditions of living of the population in colonial settings. Moreover, it contributes to the debate around the impact of the colonial policies of the Portuguese empire in Africa vis-à-vis other counterparts.

Having such motivations in mind, the dataset presents a total of 1178 prices and 11843 wages for two Angolan urban locations – Luanda and Benguela – between 1760 and 1975. We have collected wages for both skilled and unskilled, coerced and non-coerced, African and European workers. Most entries are related to males, yet there is a cohort of female wages for Luanda. Most prices concern foodstuffs considered as staples in Western Central Africa, such as manioc (cassava), beans, palm oil, among others. Sources for prices are mostly coming from retail, while a minority comes from export records. Apart from prices and wages, it assembles the evolution of the population for both cases during the very same period.

We found that Angolan workers saw their real wages erode during the 19th century, with particular emphasis after the end of the slave trade. Their living standards experienced a modest increase from the early 20th century onwards, with significant improvements only occurring since the 1960s, resulting from the abolition of forced labour.

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