Volume 1 of Three Wise Monkeys explores the Portuguese colonisation of Mozambique, and the gradual transformation of the colony into a reservoir of cheap labour, first during the Atlantic slave trade and then during the rise of the voracious Rand mining industry.

Mozambique became locked into financial dependence on South Africa. The South African mining industry came to own significant parts of the harbour infrastructure of Lourenço Marques. The mining industry's insatiable appetite for pit props gave rise to a globalised trade in timber flowing in from the US, Scandinavia and Australia via new shipping lines to the port of Lourenço Marques.

After World War I, the South African gold-mining industry and Mozambique's weak 'central bank', the Banco Nacional Ultramarino, operating alongside the South African Reserve Bank, a branch of the Royal Mint and the Rand Refinery, effectively controlled the economic fortunes and destiny of South Africa's neighbour. Mozambique was colonised twice over – first by Portugal and then by South Africa.