Michel Cahen

Le Mozambique: Une Nation africaine de langue officielle portugaise?

AbstractThe African countries where Portuguese is the official language have refused to be identified as countries expressing themselves in Portuguese. Indeed, the language may be Portuguese, but the expression remains African. Nevertheless, Portuguese continues to be called the language of unity and national liberation even though only 1.23 percent of all Mozambicans have Portuguese as their mother tongue. This tendency is part of an effort to foster a European-style nation-state by using projects of development and social reconstruction to get rid of the peasants from the mode of domestic production within a few years. The will to remain ignorant, characterizing the ethnic groups and the original social relations which are specific to them, has been a constant in the politics of the leaders of FRELIMO, responsible for the civil war which ravages the country. The turning point came in 1984–1988 when the nationalist movement was liberalized to allow for greater cultural flexibility and an expansion of lit...

‘Portugal Is in the Sky’: Conceptual Considerations on Communities, Lusitanity, and Lusophony

This contribution is that of a historian rather than a specialist of the literature on Lusophone culture. It therefore comes as no surprise that this piece starts by stating that such a culture does not exist. While there are indeed various cultures that can be described as Lusophone because they are expressed in the Portuguese language, the fact that they are expressed in Portuguese does not make them ‘sister’, or twin, cultures. Furthermore, does the fact that they use Portuguese make these phenomena specifically Lusophone? Are the Portuguese Lusophone? Are the French Francophone? We need to start by looking at the meaning of words. The aim of this piece is to deconstruct, but necessarily in full, and so partially to deconstruct the deconstruction itself.

Introduction: Portugal, Empire, and Migrations — Was There Ever an Autonomous Social Imperial Space?

It is a well-established understanding in historiography that empire building is closely linked to human migration, both as a cause and a consequence. The historiography on the subject is rich, with many articles and books about the movement of metropolitan people to the colonies as well as colonised individuals and groups moving within the empire and to the metropole (the mother country) during and after empire. As noted by many, the coincidence between empire and migration is not perfect since many people migrated during empire but outside the formal imperial space or within the imperial space but before or after formal subjugation. Still, the coincidence remains very important.1

Un autre regard sur Eduardo Mondlane

Ce livre est important. Il ne s’agit pas d’une biographie d’Eduardo Mondlane, mais c’est toutefois bien d’une etude sur sa vie dont il s’agit. Plus exactement, l’ouvrage en aborde un aspect fondamental, a savoir son engagement politique en tant que chretien lie au mouvement des eglises presbyteriennes suisses implantees au Mozambique et en Afrique australe depuis le xixe siecle. Contrairement a l’image qui est parfois donnee de Mondlane, on ne decouvre pas ici un Africain anticolonialiste qui se degagerait lentement de la religion pour s’engager dans la lutte armee. Certes, il est de plus en plus critique envers son eglise et les eglises qui prechent le royaume de Dieu sans ne guere se mobiliser pour celui de l’homme, mais cet eloignement n’est nullement un desenchantement envers la foi. Homme mur, Mondlane pouvait certes evoluer encore, mais point sur les grandes valeurs. L’apport de ce livre est donc de demontrer qu’il y a une continuite dans la mission d’Eduardo Mondlane, rompue seulement par la mort

À la recherche de l’historicité de l’Unita

A certain historiography of Unita, the main Angolan rebellion fighting against the MPLA regime between 1975 and 2002, presents this movement as the natural product of an ethnic (ovimbundu) and religious (American congregationnalism) maturation in the central Highlands of Angola. Didier Peclard, in his book Les incertitudes de la nation en Angola. Aux racines sociales de l’Unita , deconstructs this argument methodically. He does not deny or underplay ethnic and religious factors, but he studies them in the longue duree , thus avoiding any teleological approach. It is not because Unita took root among the umbundu population and gained important support from a section of the American congregationalist church after 1975 that we can say that this destined to happen. Thereafter Didier Peclard offers us a fine historical sociology of politics which offers an excellently textured contribution to the history of Angola and, more specifically yet, of Unita: one of the Angolan liberation movements which remains the least studied.

Lusotopie joins Brill. A new step forward for the journal after twelve years

Lusotopie was founded in 1992 (the association) and 1994 (the annual journal) by an anthropologist, Christian Geffray, a sociologist, Christine Messiant, and a historian, Michel Cahen, all three of whom wished to develop political analysis of contemporary spaces stemming from Portuguese history and colonisation. This initial trio was soon joined by a number of specialists in social sciences of thirty or so different nationalities, whose working languages were Portuguese, French and English. W...

Lusotopie na editora Brill.. Nova etapa para uma revista com doze anos de idade

Lusotopie foi fundada entre 1992 (a associacao) e 1994 (a revista anual) por um antropologo, Christian Geffray, uma sociologa, Christine Messiant e um historiador, Michel Cahen, todos os tres decididos a desenvolver a analise politica dos espacos contemporâneos oriundos da historia e da colonizacao portuguesas. A este trio inicial rapidamente se juntaram numerosos especialistas de ciencias sociais, de cerca de trinta nacionalidades diferentes, e cujas linguas de trabalho eram o portugues, o f...

Lusotopie chez Brill. Nouvelle étape pour une revue de douze ans d’âge

Lusotopie a ete fondee entre 1992 (l’association) et 1994 (la revue annuelle) par un anthropologue, Christian Geffray, une sociologue, Christine Messiant et un historien, Michel Cahen, tous trois decides a developper l’analyse politique des espaces contemporains issus de l’histoire et de la colonisation portugaise. Ce trio initial a rapidement ete rejoint par nombre de specialistes en sciences sociales, d’une trentaine de diverses nationalites, et dont les langues de travail etaient le portug...

African Workers and Colonial Racism. Mozambican Strategies and Struggles in Lourenco Marques, 1877-1962

This history of the African working class in Lourenco Marques details the individual experiences of gang labourers, stevedores, domestic servants and petty clerks. By doing so, the author focuses attention on the human dimension of colonial racism.

Iles du Cap-Vert: D'Un Micro-Monde au Systeme-Monde?

uvre de géographe, ce volume bien épais pour l’un des plus petits États insulaires de la planète, à l’histoire ô combien singulière, est largement une étude des politiques économiques et environnementales, le plus souvent politiques publiques. Cela n’étonne guère puisque l’auteur est à la fois professeur à l’Université de Rouen et chargé d’enseignement à l’Institut d’études politiques de Paris. Œuvre de chercheur, le volume est aussi un « ouvrage de professeur » : la volonté d’expliquer pédagogiquement, l’insistance sur certains détails qui permettent de souligner la méthodologie, ne présentent pas, comme on aurait pu le craindre, de lourdeurs, mais à l’inverse nous permettent de pénétrer clairement la complexité de l’archipel. L’essentiel des données concernent la période 1975-1991, mais certaines vont jusque vers 1994-1995. Il s’agit du produit de recherches personnelles de l’auteur – nombreux séjours de terrain dans l’archipel et en divers lieux d’émigration – joint à une présentation publique de nombreuses recherches de type « consultations ». Le Cap-Vert étant un des pays à l’aide per capita la plus forte du monde, il y a en effet une floraison de cabinets travaillant pour les diverses coopérations étrangères et d’ONG, et la littérature grise de leurs divers rapports d’étude est donc particulièrement florissante. Le volume présente aussi le produit de travaux d’étudiants avancés : notons-le, ces jeunes recherches (maîtrises, DEA...) sont très honnêtement citées dans le texte et en bibliographie.