The Dialogic Nation of Cape Verde: Slavery, Language, and Ideology is an ethnographic study of language use and ideology in Cape Verde, from its early settlement as a center for slave trade, to the postcolonial present. The study is methodologically rich and innovative in that it weaves together historical, linguistic, and ethnographic data from different eras with sketches of contemporary life—a homicide trial, a scholarly meeting, a competition for a new national flag, a heterodox Catholic mass, an analysis of love letters, a priest’s sermon, and a death in the neighborhood. In all these different contexts, Márcia Rego focuses on the role of Kriolu (the Cape Verdean Creole) and its relation to Portuguese—that is, on the way people live through speaking. The Dialogic Nation of Cape Verde shows how, through the dialogic give-and-take of the two languages, Cape Verdeans wrestle with deep-seated colonial hierarchies, invent and rehearse new traditions, and articulate their identity as a sovereign, creole nation.

The Cape Verde Islands, an Atlantic archipelago off the coast of Senegal, were first settled during the Portuguese Age of Discovery in the fifteenth century. A "Crioula" population quickly evolved from a small group of Portuguese settlers and large numbers of slaves from the West African coast. In this important, integrated new study, Dr. Richard Lobban sketches Cape Verde's complex history over five centuries, from its role in the slave trade through its years under Portuguese colonial administration and its protracted armed struggle on the Guinea coast for national independence, there and in Cape Verde. Lobban offers a rich ethnography of the islands, exploring the diverse heritage of Cape Verdeans who have descended from Africans, Europeans, and Luso-Africans. Looking at economics and politics, Lobban reflects on Cape Verde's efforts to achieve economic growth and development, analyzing the move from colonialism to state socialism, and on to a privatized market economy built around tourism, fishing, small-scale mining, and agricultural production. He then chronicles Cape Verde's peaceful transition from one-party rule to elections and political pluralism. He concludes with an overview of the prospects for this tiny oceanic nation on a pathway to development.

Remembering the Liberation Struggles in Cape Verde: A Mnemohistory takes as its reference from the anti-colonial struggles against the Portuguese colonial empire in Africa in the 1960s and 1970s and the ways this period has been publicly remembered. Drawing on original and detailed empirical research, it presents novel insights into the complex entanglements between colonial pasts and political memories of anti-colonialism in shaping new nations arising out of liberation struggles. Broadening postcolonial memory studies by emphasising underdeveloped research cases, it provides the first comprehensive research into how the liberation struggle is memorialised in Cape Verde and why it changes over time. Proposing an innovative approach to thinking about this historical event as a political subject, the book argues that the "struggle" constitutes a mnemonic device mobilised while negotiating contemporaneous representations related to the Cape Verdean nation, state and society. As such, it will appeal to scholars of history, sociology, anthropology and politics with interests in memory studies and public memory, postcolonialisms and African studies. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

"The island nation of Cape Verde has given rise to a diaspora that spans the four continents of the Atlantic Ocean. Migration has been essential to the island since the birth of its nation. This volume makes a significant contribution to the study of international migration and transnationalism by exploring the Cape Verdean diaspora through its geographic diversity and with a broad thematic range"--Publisher's description.

This book argues that the state in Cabo Verde is illegible since its operations, procedures, and processes are carried out through Portuguese, a language that most of the people do not understand. Consequently, the illegible state produces grave political consequences in overall political participation and the quality of democracy.

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, critical analysis of sources and interviews, the book offers a plural account of the public memorialization of this contested past in Portugal and in former colonized territories in Africa, focusing 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 is the major and final 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 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.