This oral history of ex-combatants of the Portuguese colonial war places the reader face-to-face with the men who were conscripted to fight the last and bloodiest of the West’s colonial wars in Africa, namely in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau (then Portuguese Guinea), between 1961 and 1974. At the forefront of this work are the lived experiences of a wide range of Portuguese veterans, framed by broader insights about the post-war public memory of this event in Portugal. Moving away from stereotypical and polarized images of these ex-combatants, An Oral History of the Portuguese Colonial War: Conscripted Generation explores the memories and consequences of this war for these veterans and their society. Seeking to understand why Portuguese ex-combatants often feel neglected and historically unrecognised, this book presents a thorough portrait of a continually shifting – and at times paradoxical –individual and collective remembrance process.

The Portuguese Colonial War and the African Liberation Struggles: Memory, Politics and Uses of the Past presents a critical and comparative analysis on the memory of the colonial and liberation wars that led to a regime change in Portugal and to the independence of five new African countries: Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, and São Tomé and Príncipe. Covering more than six decades and based on original archival research and critical analysis of sources and interviews, the book offers the first plural account of the public memorialisation of this contested past in Portugal and in former colonised territories in Africa, focussing on diachronic and synchronic processes of mnemonic production. This innovative exercise highlights the changing and crossed nature of political memories and social representations through time, emphasizing three modes of mnemonic intersections: the intersection of distinct historical times, the intersection between multiple products and practices of memory and the intersection connecting the different countries and national histories. The Portuguese Colonial War and the African Liberation Struggles: Memory, Politics and Uses of the Past a major output of the research developed by CROME – Crossed Memories, Politics of Silence, a project funded by a Starting Grant (715593) from the European Research Council (ERC). The book advances current knowledge on Portugal and Lusophone Africa and deepens ongoing conceptual and epistemological discussions regarding the relationship between social and individual memories, the dialectics between memory, power, and silence, and the uses and representations of the past in postcolonial states and societies. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

This collection presents diverse scholarly approaches to oral narratives in the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking worlds. Eleven essays, originally written in Spanish, Portuguese, and English, coalesce around major themes that have long concerned oral historians and social scientists: collective memories of conflictive national pasts, subjectivity in re/framing social identities, and visual and performative re/presentations of identity and public memory.

This edited collection presents the first critical and historical overview of photography in Portuguese colonial Africa to an English-speaking audience. Photography in Portuguese Colonial Africa, 1860–1975 brings together sixteen scholars from interdisciplinary fields as varied as history, anthropology, art history, visual culture and museum studies, to consider some of the key aspects in the visual representation of the longest-lasting European colonial empire in the African continent. The chapters span over two centuries and cover five formerly colonial territories – Angola, Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Príncipe – deploying a range of methodologies to explore the multiple meanings and the contested uses of the photographic image across the realms of politics, science, culture and war. This book responds to a marked surge of international interest in the relationship between photography and colonialism, which has hitherto largely overlooked the Portuguese imperial context, by delivering the most recent scholarly findings to a broad readership.

This book examines the causes, course and consequences of warfare in twentieth century Africa, a period which spanned colonial rebellions, both World Wars, and the decolonization process. Timothy Stapleton contextualizes the essential debates and controversies surrounding African conflict in the twentieth century while providing insightful introductions to such conflicts as: African rebellions against colonial regimes in the early twentieth century, including the rebellion and infamous genocide of the Herero and Nama people in present-day Namibia; The African fronts of World War I and World War II, and the involvement of colonized African peoples in these global conflicts; Conflict surrounding the widespread decolonization of Africa in the 1950s and 1960s; Rebellion and civil war in Africa during the Cold War, when American and Soviet elements often intervened in efforts to turn African battlegrounds into Cold War proxy conflicts; The Second Congo Civil War, which is arguably the bloodiest conflict in any region since World War II; Supported by a glossary, a who’s who of key figures, a timeline of major events, a rich bibliography, and a set of documents which highlight the themes of the book, Africa: War and Conflict in the Twentieth Century is the best available resource for students and scholars seeking an introduction to violent conflict in recent African history.