﻿TY - JOUR AB - Through a geographic and relational reinterpretation of the start of armed nationalist struggle in Angola, this article helps to critique and move beyond common interpretations of Angola (and Africa more generally) as characterized by long-standing socio-spatial divisions. Rather than an economic protest in an enclave, the so-called «cotton revolt» actually had multiple aspects — some explicitly nationalist — in a mobilization that was forged through multiple connections spanning urban and rural areas, Malanje and Luanda, and Angola and the newly independent Congo. The revolt happened at Malanje’s transforming crossroads of an underground Luanda-Malanje political network of churches, contracted laborers and administrative personnel that intersected with Congo-based provincial political mobilization organized through transborder ties. These combined nationalist networks articulated primarily but not exclusively with discontented peasants who faced joint state-corporate attempts to use intensifi ed labor, spatial restructuring, control, and risks to overcome resistance and stagnating cotton production. These patterns and the ways that the colonial government and settlers responded with farm mechanization, infrastructure and regional development as counter-insurgency measures would partly shape post-independence rural development projects, and, ultimately, also now post-2002 national reconstruction. Rethinking the Baixa de Kassanje revolt in relational, geographical, and historical terms allows a more accurate understanding of the trajectories of Angolan and African political economies, and hence eff ective avenues for progressive social change. AU - deGrassi, Aaron IS - 10 PY - 2015 SP - 53-133 ST - Rethinking the 1961 Baixa de Kassanje Revolt: Towards a Relational Geo-History of Angola T2 - Mulemba - Revista Angolana de Ciências Sociais TI - Rethinking the 1961 Baixa de Kassanje Revolt: Towards a Relational Geo-History of Angola UR - http://mulemba.revues.org/ VL - 5 ID - 40618 ER -