As one of the leading historians of Lusophone Africa, Malyn Newitt has produced several reference works and obligatory readings for anyone interested in Mozambique. This beautifully crafted A Short History of Mozambique is a welcome addition to the body of scholarship on Mozambican history. In many ways, this is a condensed version of his well-acclaimed A History of Mozambique, an authoritative synthesis published in 1995. This new book is a testament to Newitt's continued investment in making the history of Mozambique accessible to a wider audience, as well as to his perceptive observations of the country's socioeconomic and political transformations.

The book has nine chapters that move chronologically from the sixteenth century to the present. In Chapters One to Six, the author narrates the making of modern Mozambique, beginning with the arrival of Portuguese explorers through the end of colonial rule in 1975. He opens the book with a succinct examination of Mozambique's environment and ethnography, paying special attention to the ways in which cyclical droughts and floods have affected the socio-political ecology of southeast Africa over the last five hundred years. The author makes the case for the key role that environmental imbalances have played in the poor economic performance of the country and in its position as one of the least developed in the world (Chapter Two). The increasing integration of the territory in the global trade networks of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries — mainly as a source of gold, slaves, and ivory — did not produce any significant wealth for the country (Chapters Three and Four). The nature of Portuguese early colonial rule also did little to alter the situation (Chapter Five). An economically frail colonial power, Portugal had to rely on foreign capital to establish her dominion by conceding large tracts of territory to chartered companies. Operating under financial duress, most of these concession companies relied on predatory forms of exploitation which amounted to new forms of slavery in certain regions.

It was not until after the Second World War that Portugal reclaimed total control of Mozambique and began investing in development projects (Chapter Six). At the same time, the colonial government pursued a scheme of white settlement, partly because of the expansion of public administration and partly as a strategy to reinforce Portugal's imperial claims at a time when anti-colonialism across the globe was on the rise (Chapter Six). The emergence of nationalism and the formation of the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo) ushered in a new phase of socio-economic reform that led to a significant economic growth in the 1960s. While putting pressure on Portugal's tight budget, Frelimo's war of liberation — like its counterparts in Angola and Guinea-Bissau — did not disrupt the economic expansion experienced during this time. In many ways, the war (which was mostly restricted to the northern fringes of the country) was one of the catalysts of the economic boom that characterized the last quarter of colonial rule in Mozambique. The main beneficiaries of this growth were the racially segregated cities of Lourenço Marques, Beira, and Nampula. Newitt notes astutely that Mozambique would have been fortunate to have gained political independence while the economy was on the rise — a fortune enjoyed by most African countries that achieved emancipation in the early 1960s. However, the combined effect of the 1973 oil crisis and the sudden collapse of the Portuguese empire after a bloodless coup in Lisbon in April 1974 dragged the country into a prolonged recession.

The impact of this dramatic change on independent Mozambique, coupled with the inheritance of colonial rule, is the subject of the last three chapters. Among the many legacies of colonialism, the author points out the pernicious effects of the high level of illiteracy, which was estimated to be at 90 per cent at the time of decolonization. Unlike other colonial powers, Portugal made very little effort to train Africans in professional or technical skills. With the massive flight of white settlers — who ran the government and managed all economic enterprises — the Frelimo government was immediately faced with an enormous shortage of skilled personnel in all sectors of the economy and public administration.

To add to the challenges, the Portuguese left Mozambique with a regional imbalance in terms of economic development. Whereas the southern part of Mozambique was relatively better integrated in the economy of southern Africa, the central and northern parts — for a long time placed under chartered companies that made no significant investment — were largely neglected and remained underdeveloped. Although ethnic rivalries remained insignificant compared to other parts of Africa, the regional imbalance of Mozambique has shaped social identities with consequences for political alignments. The author also points out the legacy of Mozambique's dependence on the richer hinterland, in particular South Africa and Southern Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe). This dependence is markedly visible in the ways in which the country's transport infrastructure is designed. Until independence, all major railways and roads ran horizontally, linking the hinterland with the coast. No single road or railway connected the country from north to south. This territorial disconnection, Newitt argues, exacerbated ‘regional divisions’ and ‘a sense of national unity’ was ‘poorly developed’ (148).

The convoluted transition to independence also added to the mix of challenges that the independent government of Frelimo faced. The hasty departure of the Portuguese left a host of unresolved issues. Some of the most pressing issues related to economic relations with Portugal and neighboring countries, the settlement of debts, the fate of the more than 100,000 Africans who served in the colonial army, and the situation of migrant workers in South Africa and Rhodesia. Given Frelimo's position against white minority rule and the party's open support for the liberation of Zimbabwe, Mozambique quickly developed inimical relations with its economically and militarily powerful neighbors. Newitt argues that the emergence of the rebel group Mozambique National Resistance (MNR or Renamo) was one of the direct consequences of the troubled transition to independence and the legacy of Mozambique's geopolitical entanglements.

One remarkably important contribution of this synthesis is Newitt's discussion of the psychology of the socialist revolution in Mozambique through an examination of President Samora Machel's political discourses (Chapter Seven). Here Newitt rightly claims that ‘Machel's speeches read like evangelical sermons, representing Mozambique's quest for independence as a moral crusade as well as a political revolution’ (156). In this regard Newitt is taking up a thread hinted by Margaret Hall and Tom Young two decades ago about the moralist and puritanical tone of Machel's speeches.Footnote ¹ This important dynamic is one that earlier scholarship overlooked and one which has only recently been brought to the center of understandings of Frelimo's socialist experiment. Unfortunately, Newitt does not elaborate further on how Machel's moral crusade informed Frelimo's larger policies, particularly the anti-urban cleaning campaigns and reeducation camps, which stood at the heart of the socialist experiment in Mozambique. Newitt mentions the reeducation camps once, and only in reference to political dissidents who were executed there and to some former ‘collaborators’ with the Portuguese who were denied citizenship and who were also interned in one of these camps (159). However, the reader is not provided with any explanation as to the actual workings of those camps. In this regard, Newitt continues to maintain the ‘noisy’ silence about one of the most consequential policies of Frelimo's revolutionary government. We now know that the political dissidents and former ‘collaborators’ formed but a very small minority in the larger group of people interned in reeducation camps. The majority of detainees were people accused of moral offenses (prostitutes, alcoholics, vagrants, the unemployed), who the security forces scooped in various anti-urban cleanup campaigns beginning in late 1974. Among others, this was one of the direct outcomes of Machel's crusade to elicit moral change on Mozambique's social fabric.Footnote ²

Chapters Eight and Nine focus on the post-civil war years up to the present. Here the solid synthesis of the precolonial, colonial, and early independence periods give way to journalistic commentary, at times with little evidentiary substantiation. For example, the rumor that former President Joaquim Chissano was a KBG agent and that he ‘was directly implicated in the plot that resulted in Machel's death in a plane crash in 1986’ is brought up and left unresolved (180). So is the alleged link between the privatization of state companies and the recent surge of kidnapping (183). The question that guides Chapter Nine is why Mozambique is the poorest country in the world. The answer is a combination of all imaginable explanations, from environmental crisis, patrimonialism, ambitious planning, international aid, to corruption. Given that most transformations that marked the post-civil war era are still in process and are yet to be academically studied, it is a difficult task to make any historical assessment of Mozambique's present condition and future trajectory. Historians will have to wait for contemporary processes to play out and for reliable historical records to be made available for rigorous study.

While this is an easily readable book, readers would have benefited from a proper introduction. Newitt makes no clear statement on the main stakes of the book and what it aims to accomplish. Despite the sub-title of Chapter Three, ‘African agency in the creation of Mozambique’, readers will also find few African voices and little agency, especially in the chapters on the precolonial and colonial periods. Nevertheless, A Short History of Mozambique is a labor of thematic selection that only a well-accomplished scholar of Newitt's stature could have mastered.