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Recent research on the history of colonialism shows how colonial knowledge served both as the basis for edifying the colonial state and as a foundation for identity in nationalist claims. The article takes the case of Angola, where the role of knowledge in colonial strategy was different, arguing that there was a link between the weakness of the “documentary project” of the colonial state and the one giving political expression to nationalism. Above all, it focuses on the way in which the waning of the colonial state and the phenomenon of “relief,” particularly in favor of the Christian missions that it implied, encouraged a multiplicity and compartmentalizing of the political imaginary in whose name the nationalist struggle was waged.