Forty years ago the Cahora Bassa Dam was completed on the Zambezi River shaping the course of one of Africa's mightiest waterways and influencing the development trajectory of soon to be independent Mozambique. The project was finished in the final throes of Portuguese colonialism and was an agonising and painful attempt to modernise the Zambezi Valley in Northern Mozambique. Cahora Bassa has always been more than just a hydrological project and Allen and Barbara Isaacman expertly explore how Portugal exerted authority and sought to legitimise their control over the local population – whilst portraying themselves as developmental administrators to the international audience – through the construction of a hydroelectric mega scheme. For Frelimo as well as the Portuguese, the dam became an important icon for competing narratives of nationhood, but the building of this concrete mega structure had the most dramatic effect upon the people of Tete Province. Construction involved labour exploitation, the displacement of agricultural and fishing communities, institutional violence and environmental disturbance and these are documented here in extensive archival and interview research. Since independence, the main output has been the generation of electricity for export to South Africa and although the Mozambican state now asserts the dam is a national asset it has not reduced poverty. Rather than figuratively or literally electrifying development, Cahora Bassa has drained local communities of energy through the displacement of livelihoods and the disruption of ecosystem services. For Mozambicans Cahora Bassa continues to be a living memory of the long-standing effects of Portuguese colonialism. The Isaacmans provide an excellent and authoritative understanding of the different displacements that have occurred through Cahora Bassa and this book is an important and comprehensive study which will remain a major source for scholars.

Presciently, this book is particularly significant as the Tete Province is once again being transformed by a massive energy and infrastructure project. Major Brazilian investment in coal mining is leading to the creation of a new centre for resource extraction and a transnational development region encompassing Northern Mozambique and Southern Malawi. Mozambicans are again working on the construction of an infrastructure project that will have diverse social, economic and environmental impacts and will fuel another international trade in energy resources. The Nacala Logistics Corridor is a railway line linking coal mines near Cahora Bassa to the port of Nacala enabling fuel to be exported to Indian and Chinese markets. The Isaacmans’ study should be important reading for all those involved in today's big development intervention.

One minor consideration is that the prominent title ‘Dams, Displacement and the Delusion of Development’ and the low-key subtitle ‘Cahora Bassa and Its Legacies in Mozambique, 1965–2007’ suggest that the text will offer insights and analysis of the history and challenges of dams and associated development projects and offer theoretical insights into the impacts of large-scale environmental modernisation projects in general. Instead, this is a book where the subtitle offers a more appropriate label and the strength of the Isaacmans’ scholarship is in their specific in-depth discussion of this single important mega dam. Readers keen to explore the broader field should also consult other publications such as The Hydropolitics of Dams: Engineering or Ecosystems? by Mark Everard (Zed Books, 2013) which provides multiple case studies of dams, water politics and development.