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 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 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.

About the Author

Miguel Cardina, is a Researcher at the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra, Portugal. He was also the coordinator of the European Research Council-funded CROME – Crossed Memories, Politics of Silence. The Colonial-Liberation Wars in Postcolonial Times project (2017–2023). His research interests include colonialism, anticolonialism, and the colonial wars; political ideologies in the 60s and 70s; and the relationship between history and memory. He is co-author of Remembering the Liberation Struggles in Cape Verde: A Mnemohistory (Routledge, 2022, with Inês Nascimento Rodrigues).

Book Details

Title: The Portuguese Colonial War and the African Liberation Struggles

Author: Miguel Cardina (Editor)

Publisher‏: ‎Routledge

Series: Memory Studies: Global Constellations

 Publication Date: September 14, 2023

Language‏: ‎English

Hardcover‏: ‎220pp

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