MAPS OF HISTORY · HISTORY OF · Mozambique

ONE LAND · 3 ATLASES

Mozambique, on the map of history

What was Mozambique before it was Mozambique? Below, every era of this land in the Maps of History collection — who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed — each line linked to the dated map that shows it. Modern borders stand in as an honest approximation; every atlas says so on the map itself.

Mozambique · The Great War, 1914–1918

OPEN WWI ON THE LIVING MAP →

Mozambique · The Cold War, 1945–1991

OPEN THE COLD WAR ON THE LIVING MAP →

Mozambique · The Decolonization of Africa, 1945–1994

Mozambique won independence under Samora Machel’s FRELIMO in June 1975, inheriting a country with a handful of African graduates and a fleeing settler population. Almost at once, apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia armed the RENAMO insurgency, and a devastating war — perhaps a million dead, mostly of famine — ran until 1992. Liberation into destabilization: the Portuguese war of independence became the region’s war of proxy.

OPEN THE DECOLONIZATION OF AFRICA ON THE LIVING MAP →