Next Month in Lisbon! Spying on Muslims in Colonial Mozambique, 1964-74
On 27th February 2025 (from 5pm), the ISRF hosts an in-person & live-streamed book launch and conversation with Dr Sandra Araújo, author of 'Spying on Muslims in Colonial Mozambique, 1964-74'.
An in-person & online book launch and conversation with Dr Sandra Araújo, author of Spying on Muslims in Colonial Mozambique, 1964-74.
Colonial powers use a range of techniques to control their colonial populations. These include mixtures of violence and the exploitation of religious and other social divisions. How did Portugal improvise with these colonial practices to rule Mozambique? What were the effects?
In this in-depth and compelling study, Sandra Araújo uses archival and oral sources to uncover a full-fledged intelligence agency and explore Portugal’s counterinsurgent spying on Muslim communities during Mozambique’s liberation struggle.
She pays particular attention to Portuguese intelligence gathering practices, the social realities this imposed on Muslims residents during the war, and to popular responses to Portuguese efforts to turn them against FRELIMO’s efforts to free Mozambique from colonial rule. Araújo’s book contributes to a new understanding of colonial security strategies in Mozambique during the liberation war, and sheds new light on the history of colonial counterinsurgency more broadly.
Please join us for Sandra Araújo’s presentation and the discussion of her book.
Sandra Araújo is a Junior Researcher at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa. For the duration of her ISRF First Book Fellowship, she was a visiting researcher at the Global History and Culture Centre at the University of Warwick.
Sandra will be joined by Mustafah Dhada, Professor of History at California State University, Bakersfield; and Martin Thomas, Professor of History at the University of Exeter. A Q&A will follow, moderated by Chris Newfield, ISRF Academic Editor.