State capacity, Catholic missions and education in colonial Mozambique

Abstract

[eng] Consolidating state capacity and ensuring inclusive access to quality education are two of the greatest challenges facing countries around the world today, and are particularly relevant for many African states. Addressing these challenges requires an understanding of the historical process of state-building and of the trajectories of education systems. This dissertation focuses on colonial Mozambique, analysing the influence of comparative financial and geo-political weakness, as well as ideology, on said processes. In Mozambique, state capacity and the provision of education were deeply entwined with the racially discriminatory, dualistic system of citizenship known as the indigenato, and with the interlinked dynamics of Christian missionary expansion and the evolution of gender parity in Africa. I create novel historical datasets on the expansion of the state and of Christian missions, the cost of education, and the levels of educational gender parity, using a wide range of primary sources, from colonial budgets and accounts to statistical yearbooks and unpublished ecclesiastical reports. All datasets except that on the cost of education are georeferenced and complemented with additional explanatory variables at the local and regional level. In each of the chapters in the dissertation, I combine the quantitative analysis of said datasets with qualitative evidence from the accounts provided by colonial and ecclesiastical authorities, and from colonial legislation. Chapter 2 studies the spatial allocation of state resources in the first stages of state building, and shows that the colonial state in Mozambique settled the territory progressively, advancing from its historical footholds on the coast towards the interior. I argue that this process was influenced by the financial and military weakness of the Portuguese colonial state, which would have constrained its capacity to focus on the maximisation of territorial control. Chapter 3 analyses the Portuguese colonial model of education in Africa, specifically the choice of the Portuguese Estado Novo to grant an almost monopolistic position over African education to Catholic missions in 1941, at a time when the majority of colonial powers in Africa would move towards greater state participation in the provision of education. I focus on ensino primario rudimentar (primary rudimentary education), a type of very low-quality schooling that was the only educational experience for the vast majority of African children in colonial Mozambique, and I provide evidence to support two mutually non-exclusive hypotheses. First, I show that subsidising Catholic missions was a cheaper option for the colonial state to expand African education than running schools directly. Second, I show that granting an educational monopoly to Catholic missions can be interpreted as a further step in a long tradition within Portuguese imperial policy of using Catholic missions against perceived threats to Portuguese colonial hegemony and security, and in particular against the purported threat of Protestant missions. Finally, Chapter 4 analyses the determinants of educational gender gaps in the rudimentary education schools run by Catholic missions, using enrolment data for boys and girls in 96 missions present in Mozambique in 1952, and 175 in 1962. I construct a Gender Parity Index (GPI) for each mission-year pair, calculated as the ratio of female to male enrolment, and I show that circular migration increased gender parity by reducing the pool of boys that attended school, while increases in the number of female teachers over time were associated with higher levels of GPI. Thus, the chapter highlights the importance of taking into account African agency and demand for education, as well as nuances in the educational supply of Christian missions, to understand the evolution of educational gender gaps in colonial Africa.