Introduction

This chapter focuses on policing in Lusophone contexts during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It picks up the emerging story of Portuguese colonial policing during the third phase of this global Empire, after it had lost its Brazilian colony in the Americas. It deals with an expert comment from Martin Thomas that flags the significance of civil-military frictions as well as overlaps. He also emphasises how macro-political factors – both in Portugal and in Lusophone Africa – shaped late-colonial policing and counterinsurgency, and draws attention to transnational counter-colonial connections during this period. The chapter explores how policing in Luso-Africa, Luso-Asia and Luso-Brazil emerges from what Honke and Muller call 'the entangled histories of (in)security governance in the (post)colonial world'. It examines the complexity of police reforms in post-conflict Mozambique, contrasting the importation of two of the most prominent models: the professional reform model; and, community policing.