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Portugal'S Guerilla Wars in Africa - Lisbon'S Three Wars in Angola, Mozambique and Portugese Guinea 1961-74 (Paperback)
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Portugal'S Guerilla Wars in Africa - Lisbon'S Three Wars in Angola, Mozambique and Portugese Guinea 1961-74 (Paperback)
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Portugal's three wars in Africa in Angola, Mozambique and
Portuguese Guinea (Guine-Bissau today) lasted almost 13 years -
longer than the United States Army fought in Vietnam. Yet they are
among the most underreported conflicts of the modern era. Commonly
referred to as Lisbon's Overseas War (Guerra do Ultramar) or in the
former colonies, the War of Liberation (Guerra de Libertacao),
these struggles played a seminal role in ending white rule in
Southern Africa. Though hardly on the scale of hostilities being
fought in South East Asia, the casualty count by the time a
military coup d'etat took place in Lisbon in April 1974 was
significant. It was certainly enough to cause Portugal to call a
halt to violence and pull all its troops back to the Metropolis.
Ultimately, Lisbon was to move out of Africa altogether, when
hundreds of thousands of Portuguese nationals returned to Europe,
the majority having left everything they owned behind. Independence
for all the former colonies, including the Atlantic islands,
followed soon afterwards. Lisbon ruled its African territories for
more than five centuries, not always undisputed by its black and
mestizo subjects, but effectively enough to create a lasting
Lusitanian tradition. That imprint is indelible and remains
engraved in language, social mores and cultural traditions that
sometimes have more in common with Europe than with Africa. Today,
most of the newspapers in Luanda, Maputo - formerly Lourenco
Marques - and Bissau are in Portuguese, as is the language taught
in their schools and used by their respective representatives in
international bodies to which they all subscribe. Indeed, on a
recent visit to Central Mozambique in 2013, a youthful member of
the American Peace Corps told this author that despite having been
embroiled in conflict with the Portuguese for many years in the
1960s and 1970s, he found the local people with whom he came into
contact inordinately fond of their erstwhile 'colonial overlords'.
As a foreign correspondent, Al Venter covered all three wars over
more than a decade, spending lengthy periods in the territories
while going on operations with the Portuguese army, marines and air
force. In the process he wrote several books on these conflicts,
including a report on the conflict in Portuguese Guinea for the
Munger Africana Library of the California Institute of Technology.
Portugal's Guerrilla Wars in Africa represents an amalgam of these
efforts. At the same time, this book is not an official history,
but rather a journalist's perspective of military events as viewed
by somebody who has made a career of reporting on overseas wars,
Africa's especially. Venter's camera was always at hand; most of
the images used between these covers are his. His approach is both
intrusive and personal and he would like to believe that he has
managed to record for posterity a tiny but vital segment of African
history.
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