The Caravel’s Retreat: Mozambican Internationalism and the Long Chronology of Decolonization

Portuguese Africa exists at the margins of the historiography of decolonization. Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, and the island states received their independence too late to fit within the outlines defined overwhelmingly by the experiences of Britain and France. Negotiations did not occur between the nationalists and colonialists in the capitals of Laurenço Marques (Maputo), Luanda, or even Lisbon. Rather they occurred on the international stage and in wars fueled by foreign weapons and financial aid. My paper will refocus discussions of decolonization away from the elite Franco-British dialogues to the global struggle waged by Lusophone nationalists. This approach reveals how Africans used fluid global power dynamics to empower independence movements at the expense of settler imperialism, arguing for a longer chronology of decolonization that links the high tide of African decolonization with the successful global anti-apartheid movement.

The transnational diplomacy of the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO) illustrates the promise of this internationalized framework. In the midst of the Cold War, the party eschewed ideological politics and successfully courted both sides of the Iron Curtain. Social programs operating in liberated territories communicated the party’s commitment to anti-imperialism, multiracialism, and egalitarian development, consciously linking it to struggles for political and economic equality across the world. The emergence of trans-local solidarity with FRELIMO inspired international pressure on Lisbon and strengthened the nationalist party through military, material, and political aid. This combination of growing isolation and colonial resistance eventually led to imperial Portugal’s collapse. FRELIMO’s mobilization of official and popular support from the global South, East, and West expanded on the diplomatic strategy first explored by the National Liberation Front in Algeria, providing a model for successful transnational organizing perfected in the anti-apartheid movement.