Convergence and coconstitution: the global spread of counterinsurgency and the making of the Serviços de Centralização e Coordenação de Informações in colonial Angola and Mozambique (1961–1974)

This article examines the Serviços de Centralização e Coordenação de Informações (SCCI, Information Coordination and Centralisation Services) and offers new insights into Portugal's counterinsurgent intelligence-led policing in colonial Angola and Mozambique during the liberation wars (1961–1974). Drawing on primary and secondary sources and adopting an interdisciplinary approach, it analyses the historical context, transnational knowledge transfers, and power dynamics that shaped the SCCI. It further explores the ideological foundations of SCCI's enemy-centric epistemology and the rationale behind its pivotal role in producing strategic intelligence on colonial populations to inform governance. The analysis is anchored in two key concepts: convergence and co-constitution. Convergence highlights how the global circulation of counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrines led European empires to adopt parallel security cultures and practices. Co-constitution, in turn, emphasises how these were reworked to fit local context-specific conditions. In doing so, the article argues that Portugal's counterinsurgent intelligence-led policing apparatus materialised through the combination of globally circulated doctrines and locally situated adaptations to political dynamics, institutional rivalries, and improvised solutions on the ground. These intertwined processes challenge exceptionalist national narratives and call for a reassessment of the enduring legacies of colonial COIN tenets and practices in the postcolonial era.