Book excerpt: This monograph examines the failure of the Portuguese Escudo Monetary Zone and the birth of new monetary and financial systems in Portuguese-speaking African countries. Examining colonial and post-colonial times, Mata analyses the decision to build a Portuguese monetary area in the early 1960s and mid-1970s when the decolonisation process was peaking. This book offers some important lessons regarding the functioning and dismantling of monetary areas, and on the importance of central-banks’ co-operation.