Todd Cleveland examines the intersections of African tourism, empire, and labor in Mozambique’s twentieth-century colonial history. Utilizing tourism as part of the hegemonic apparatuses of colonial domination, Cleveland shows how the enticing labor of the tourism industry produced and reified both existing and new social structures. By delving into the experiences of foreign tourists and African workers within the tourism sector, the book rekindles familiar stories of an empire culture of environmental conservation, game reserves, race, and colonialism in Southern Africa.
Despite the significance of tourism in historical studies, research on tourism workers is scant. Historians have focused more on the motivations and experiences of tourists, concentrating on Europe and America, while other global regions such as Africa are mostly overlooked. Drawing on oral testimonies of tourists and African workers, as well as “newspapers, colonial reports and documents, tourism/propaganda films, memoirs, travel accounts, and English-and Portuguese-language travel guides,” Cleveland emphasizes the interconnectedness and contributions of these seemingly separate populations in advancing tourism in colonial Mozambique (15).
Tourism created intricate interactions between the tourists, tourism workers, local inhabitants, and white settler populations. Within this interaction, Cleveland’s analysis acknowledges the importance of African tourist workers, as without them, “there would not have been a hunting tourism industry in colonial Mozambique” (108). These indigenous custodians of the tourist industry in Mozambique were faced with some measure of exploitation and racial marginalization yet enjoyed better wages, learning opportunities, and social respectability vis-à-vis their counterparts in the mining sector in South Africa, for instance. The author demonstrates how the upward social mobility of workers challenges the simplistic “analyses that reductively emphasize their victimization” (11). Unlike the hazardous and exploitative mining experiences of the blacks in apartheid South Africa, tourism work in colonial Mozambique helped to stabilize incomes and created a variety of job opportunities in society. Thus, despite the generically oppressive feature of colonial rule in Africa, Cleveland notes that the native tourist laborers in Mozambique maintained a reasonable degree of contentment with their employment circumstances by abstaining from incessant protests.
Cleveland’s work provides clarity to understanding the relevance of tourist infrastructure to social fabric beyond Africa. Colonial Mozambique was “rendered … exceedingly alluring” (9) through colonial tourist investments that relaxed overt racial consciousness, but increased alcoholism and tourists’ intimacy with African women. Mozambique was colonized by Portugal and despite these attractive opportunities, Cleveland argues that tourism remained a smokescreen, “an important weapon in Lisbon’s politicodiplomatic arsenal” (24). Empire tourism played a vital role in colonial administration, especially after World War II, when colonialists, especially the Belgians and the Portuguese, saw improved reputation as a viable counter to radical decolonization in Africa.
The tourist industry generated enormous revenue, propelled colonial propaganda, and drove infrastructure development as well as conservative initiatives. The Estado Novo (New State regime from 1933 until 1974) portrayed tourism as a harmonious space for all races, religions, and social class, offering visitors a chance to experience natural wonders and top-notch accommodations. The global marketing campaign to attract foreign visitors was wildly successful and American astronauts, European royalty, celebrities such as John Wayne, Gregory Peck, and James Michener—all drawn to Mozambique’s hunting reserves.
Despite their involvement in multiple counterinsurgency operations in Angola and Guinea, the Portuguese sustained investment in Mozambique’s tourist attractions. The colonial government maintained a simplified border links with neighboring countries, particularly South Africa and Rhodesia, the essence of which was to facilitate regional tourism. That kind of tourist arrangement strengthened diplomatic bonds between Portugal and other regional governments, illustrating the relationship between tourism and state politics.
Mozambique gained independence in June 1975 and skilled tourism workers in the postcolonial period deployed their hard-gained expertise to sustain the tourism sector. The newly established Frelimo government appointed experienced individuals to the key roles of overseeing hotels, game reserves, and other tourist sites. Cleveland’s study captures a situation through which the ensuing transition created greater social mobility for the workers by providing broader opportunities for career advancement in postcolonial Mozambique, up to the climax of civil conflict in 1992.
The book is a well-analyzed account of the evolution of tourism in colonial Mozambique. It showcases how tourism united people of diverse races, classes, ethnicities, and political affiliations. A deeper attention to how tourism transformed the status of women would have broadened the social perspective on the colonial history of Mozambique. Nonetheless, Cleveland undertook the arduous task of reconciling the discourse on empire, colonial economy, and oppression, especially within the rubric of Portuguese colonial dictation. To be sure, it is intriguing that as white hunters and black trackers developed mutual bonds through shared experiences in the bush, colonial paternalism and inequality witnessed evanescence in the face of the “alluring opportunities” in colonial Mozambique.
