Newitt’s Short History of Mozambique weighs in at less than half the length of his earlier History of Mozambique (Johannesburg, 1993), with which it overlaps in some coverage. It will also become a standard work. Newitt states and sharpens themes from his earlier work for the sixteenth through twentieth centuries, but then plunges into the unfamiliar and fraught territory of Mozambique’s twenty-first century experience. The book has two good colonial-era maps, one of concession companies and the other of provinces, ports, towns, rivers, railways, and airports in the early 1960s. The brief notes, the bibliography of suggested readings (mostly in English), and the index are less than one-quarter the length of the same features in the 1993 book. Advanced scholars will want to consult both of Newitt’s histories of Mozambique, not just this one.
Readers of the Journal of Interdisciplinary History will appreciate Newitt’s use of the rich records of...