The State against the Peasantry: Rural Struggles in Colonial and Postcolonial Mozambique. By Merle L. Bowen. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 2000. 256p. $65.00 cloth, $19.50 paper.

Abstract

Merle Bowen investigates the politics of the changing rela- tionship between state and peasantry in Mozambique, prin- cipally through the elaboration of a case study, the Ilha Josina Machel in the southern province of Maputo. The book takes as point of departure the "developmental" period of Portuguese colonialism, from the early 1960s until the present day, although the main focus is on 1975-83. This is useful, because that period gives us a relatively clear insight into the reality of the Frelimo government's policies of socialism in the countryside, before all aspects of Mozam- bique's political economy were inundated by the war prose- cuted by Renamo with South African backing. Although there has been a marked increase of research interest in local-level studies recently, few works that take a similar approach treat this period in such detail. For all those interested in the realities of rural socialism generally, or specifically Mozambique's Frelimo period, this book will be valuable indeed.