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, critical analysis of sources and interviews, the book offers a 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 is the major and final 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 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.

Remembering the Liberation Struggles in Cape Verde: A Mnemohistory takes as its reference from the anti-colonial struggles against the Portuguese colonial empire in Africa in the 1960s and 1970s and the ways this period has been publicly remembered. Drawing on original and detailed empirical research, it presents novel insights into the complex entanglements between colonial pasts and political memories of anti-colonialism in shaping new nations arising out of liberation struggles. Broadening postcolonial memory studies by emphasising underdeveloped research cases, it provides the first comprehensive research into how the liberation struggle is memorialised in Cape Verde and why it changes over time. Proposing an innovative approach to thinking about this historical event as a political subject, the book argues that the "struggle" constitutes a mnemonic device mobilised while negotiating contemporaneous representations related to the Cape Verdean nation, state and society. As such, it will appeal to scholars of history, sociology, anthropology and politics with interests in memory studies and public memory, postcolonialisms and African studies. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.