Portuguese Colonialism and Islam

In Mozambique and Guinea, the Portuguese colonial administration had to deal with Muslimcommunities of significant population expression and whose internal cultural differentiationspresented a complexity to which the administrative power was often unprepared. The exercise ofthis governance, with all the variations that characterized it, extended throughout the period thatthe colonial project lasted, from the phase of effective military occupation, in the transition fromthe nineteenth to the twentieth century, until the end of the colonial wars in 1974.In this chronological segment, Portuguese Colonialism and Islam seeks to address thecircumstances of the colonial governance and regulation of those populations, focusing on:(1) The representations and images of Islam and Muslims that the agents of Portuguesecolonialism produced at significant stages of the period, the recurrence of this imagery, itsevolution, and the way it interacted with the concrete policies of control and governance of thepopulations. (2) The changes that such policies underwent, oscillating between a posture ofambivalent hostility, more visible in the 1930s to 1950s and more present in Mozambique than inGuinea, and a strategy of rapprochement with the Islamic leadership and their religiousenticement, a strategy developed in the final phase of the Colonial War as part of the fightagainst nationalist movements. (3) The critical eye with which representatives of former colonialpowers followed the Portuguese policies of governance of Islam, expressed in the testimonies ofconsuls-general of France and the United Kingdom, and documents conveying how diplomaticbodies perceived the Portuguese colonial system.