By John Green
This book marks a significant contribution to the studies of modern African history and, despite its hefty price, well worth getting hold of a copy.
As the editors note, Portugal’s former colonies and their struggle for independence have typically been addressed, if at all, as a footnote, rather than as a constituent and transformative aspect of the larger history of anticolonialism. The Portuguese colonial empire was also in many ways distinct from those of the French or British empires that have dominated the historical narrative.
This scholarly work contains research papers from 19 contributors and covers a broad range of subject matter within the general Lusophone ambit, taking in the pre- and post-colonial struggles.
The end of the Second World War and victory over fascism gave new impetus to the liberation struggles in Africa and Asia. But the immediate onset of the Cold War made those struggles more complex and unnecessarily extenuated. It was the French, in 1957, who in the words of General Jacques Allard in his address to SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe) declared that the Soviet strategy was no longer focussed on the East-West axis, but on surrounding Europe by drawing a vast “enveloping curve” which passed through Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. The Soviet Union, he alleged, was fostering a myth of nationalism and the pretext of a people’s right to self-determination. Moscow was heading towards the conquest of the Third World. In this way, the tone was set for the resultant protracted battles fought during the Cold War, within Asia and Africa. In the name of combatting Soviet “expansionism’ and the threat of communism, every movement for national liberation was vehemently attacked and undermined.
Gisele Lobato in her contribution discusses these developments together with the role played by the Latin American dictatorships in “combatting communism’ in Africa too. She shows how the successful Portuguese Carnation Revolution increased the South American security sectors’ interest in Africa. She writes that, “Fearing the communist advance on the continent, individuals and state bodies from the Southern Cone sought to create new channels of intelligence and carried out operations on the other side of the Atlantic.
Other contributors also look at the post-independence period, at how neo-colonialism perpetuated the exploitation of the newly independent nations and promoted destabilisation as a means of continued control over the supply of raw materials.
The book is arranged arounds three themes: one, the diverse ways in which nationalists from Lusophone Africa understood, interpreted and re-worked contemporary ideas around statehood, culture and national unity, then, secondly, the contribution made by Lusophone revolutionaries to fostering global networks and strategies and their global impact and, thirdly, looking at the debates around achieving economic and political emancipation before and after independence.
Perry Anderson coined the term “ultra-colonialism” when writing about the Portuguese colonies. He argued that Portugal’s underdeveloped economy made its empire particularly extractivist. Angola and Mozambique became large centres for the cultivation of cotton and coffee, São Tomé produced cacao and Guinea Bissau peanuts. The colonies’ railway connections and ports also facilitated the export of valuable minerals from other African countries, like the Congo, Rhodesia and South Africa.
Portugal maintained a powerful repressive regime in its colonies, assisted by the powerful Catholic Church, just as it did at home. The book shows how those (few) students from Africa who were allowed to study in Portugal were often inspired to adopt a radical anti-fascism and a number moved on from cultural anti-colonialism to Marxism. Several joined the underground resistance in Portugal spearheaded by the Communist Party.
Importantly, the book also focusses on the specifically African momentum and away from the viewpoint of characterising the liberation movements purely in the context of, and as responses to, global politics and Cold War constellations.
Another interesting contribution examines the role of film in the liberation struggle, both from a consumer viewpoint as well as in terms of its revolutionary potential, as well as its wider cultural significance. PAIGC, the liberation movement in Guinea Bissau under Amilcar Cabral, became particularly keen to utilise film in its struggle. Inspired by the Cuban example, it sent a number of its cadres to study film making in Cuba and it began making documentaries in the liberated areas during the war with the Portuguese colonial army.
In this comprehensive collection of papers there are too many interesting aspects to comment on or evaluate individually in such a short review. It does, however, represent an extremely valuable contribution to colonial and post-colonial research and to the history of African liberation struggles.
Globalizing Independence Struggles of Lusophone Africa: Anticolonial and Postcolonial Politics. Eds. Rui Lopes and Natalia Telepneva. Hdbck £76.50. Pubs. Bloomsbury
John Green is a former trade union official, a journalist and former documentary film-maker, which in the 1970s involved clandestine filming assignments in South Africa in the 1970s aimed at helping bring the abhorrent practices of the apartheid regime to world attention. He is the author of numerous books, including Ken Sprague, People’s Artist, A Revolutionary Life: Biography of Friedrich Engels and Britain’s Communists: The Untold Story.
The views expressed in the articles published on this website do not necessarily represent those of Liberation.
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