Colonial Centres and Peripheries: Low-cost Roads and Portuguese Engineers in the 1950s

Scholars within the Science and Technology in the European Periphery network have proposed that with technological and scientific peripheries there needs to be a greater emphasis on the history of appropriation, which means considering the receptor environment active, acknowledging the point of view of the receivers and studying this history through its conflicts, i.e. those caused by the different agendas of the actors (political, technical and others). How could this concept be applied in a European periphery, such as Portugal, in its relation, as a centre, to its colonies of Angola and Mozambique? We answer this question by following road engineers from the metropole in their technical missions to these African peripheries, and how they adapted their discourse on traffic engineering and economic development to a discourse on the low cost roads to be built there in the 1950s. By taking this approach we aim to challenge the concept of appropriation and apply it to the mobility realm, also bringing an interpretation of the dynamic relation between centres and peripheries.