Customer Reviews

A History of Mozambique

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Malyn Newitt's "A History of Mozambique," is not for the faint of heart given its detail laden pages covering some 450 years of Mozambican history. Nevertheless, the reader is well rewarded with a deeper understanding of the factors and events that have helped shape one of Africa's poorest and long-suffering nations.

The book begins with a sometimes laborious recounting of the unceasing warfare between the great Shona kingdoms that inhabited much of Mozambique and present-day Zimbabwe prior to the arrival of Europeans. The pace picks up, fortunately, in later chapters with Newitt making excellent use of the journals of early Portuguese explorers and the exceedingly rare, first-hand accounts by Mozambicans themselves. The author builds slowly upon this foundation to provide the reader with a complex, but highly informative picture of Mozambican society.

What makes the book superior, however, is the Newitt's skilled craftsmanship in integrating the historical legacy of Portuguese rule, particularly the evolution of the prazo system, with Mozambique's modern-day problems. One cannot begin to understand--and appreciate--Mozambique's post-WWII struggle for independence and the resulting bloodletting civil war that followed in 1976 without this historical foundation. While "A History of Mozambique" is most appealing to the die-hard Africanist, any inquisitive student of history will find its insights rewarding and well worth the effort.

The worst vice in african history-making is that of forgetfulness. Newitt's history of Mozambique clearly is an illustration of this: the author's view of Mozambique's history is one in which the portuguese play the villain and african's play the innocent "bon sauvage". Things are not so clear-cut however as our recent history has shown: mozambican history didn't begin with alien occupation and alien forces certainly aren't responsible for all evil we suffered in the past and still suffer in present times. For sake of intellectual honesty the least an historian of Mozambique should do is probe into the crimes, absurdities and mistakes of our socialist-era leaders. Not to do justice to colonialism, but to do justice to the thousands of mozambicans who died at their hands. That however is a chapter which does not figure in this book.