Lusaphonic colonies

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Colonies of Portugal; "lusophonic" means "Portuguese-speaking." While Portugal is a relatively small, lower-income nation of the Trans-European Project, it had a large Portuguese colonial empire up until 1975. Its last colony, Macau, lapsed to Chinese rule in 1999.

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Brazil

The first colony of Portugal to become a sovereign state was Brazil (1822). This occurred when the royal heir to the throne of Portugal and regent of Brazil, Dom Pedro, agreed to local pressure to remain in Brazil, and refused (as heir) to subordinate himself to the king of Portugal (his father, João). In fact, many years before this, there had been independence movements launched by European Americans in Brazil.[1]

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Asia

Goa, Daman & Diu, and Dadra & Nagar Haveli were Portuguese possessions in India that were annexed by the new Indian republic in 1961.[2] In addition to the cluster of bases that fell in 1961, there were several port towns such as Cochin & Quilon (Kerala State), Tuticorin & Nagapatam (Tamil Nadu), Calicut & Chalyam-Chale (Karnataka), and others. These were invested by the Portuguese 1500-1532, and fell to the Netherlands 1659-1663.[3] Malacca (Malaysia) was also under Portuguese rule from 1511 to 1641.[4] In addition, there were large numbers of small bases in the Ganges and the eastern Deccan, which drifted back under local control in the 17th century, and a base in Yangon (Syriam), Myanmar, which was captured by the King of Ava in 1613.[5] The part of Portuguese India that was liberated in 1961 remains Lusophonic, but the rest is not.

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Africa

The colonial empire of Portugal remained intact legally, yet armed revolts intensified. In Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, 1961 marked the beginning of Amilcar Cabral's amazing campaign to liberate the whole of Lusophone Africa. The Portuguese government of Salazar was slow to take the revolt seriously, although by 1973 the tide had turned and the Portuguese Armed Forces (FAP), with modern US-supplied military hardware, were making substantial headway in reconquering lost territory.[6] In 1973, possibly with Sekou-Toure's collusion, the PAIGC leadership, including Cabral, was captured and murdered in Conakry. The radical foundations of the Guinean revolution were thus severely weakened, and in 1980 the country suffered a reactionary coup by the armed forces.


Cape Verde was also the scene of an anticolonial struggle, but as with São Tomé & Príncipe, this was under exceptionally difficult conditions because both nations were small islands readily accessible to naval forces.[7] Additionally, Cape Verde was a military base and São Tomé (home to 92% of the nation's population) had a tiny cocoa-based economy. Neither island had a hinterland from which guerrillas could operate. As late as May of 1974, it was assumed that São Tomé was not a tenable state and would join a Portuguese federation á la French West Africa and France. Instead, a tiny government-in-exile formed, aligned itself with CONCP (the Luso-African group of "Cabralist" movements) and essentially was awarded power in September '74. However, the exiles returned, as governments-in-exile typically do, to find they had been pre-empted by radical leftists stuck on the island. The independence party was unique, and incorporated the leftists when transition came. Unlike other Luso-African nations, independence was not accompanied by violence, but by poverty and debt.


While Guinea-Bissau actually won its independence before diplomatic transition (Sept '74), and its leaders came from Cape Verde, the most influential of the Luso-African group was definitely Angola. Angola's population was smaller than that of Mozambique, but Mozambique was scarcely touched by [8] Angola initially developed a strong guerrilla movement in the 1960's known as the FNLA, which was totally dominated by Holden Roberto.[9] Its rival, the MPLA, came somewhat later to the independence struggle and was to become dependent on Soviet and Cuban assistance, while the FNLA was reliant on covert US and Zairian support. UNITA emerged in 1966 as an extension of Jonas Savimbi (a defector from the FNLA, and, like the MPLA, ostentatiously leftist); Savimbi was to represent China's player in the conflict.


All three belligerents were almost driven from Angolan soil by the beginning of 1974 as a result of extensive use of modern counterinsurgency techniques and the settlement of hundreds of thousands of Portuguese peasants in the country. Almost immediately this was undone by the decision by the Portuguese state to withdraw from Angola; the entire European population fled, and the three insurgencies turned on each other with their foreign allies. The MPLA won control of the country with the aid of Cuban and Soviet allies, but at the cost of provoking South African intervention. The FNLA never returned to Angola, but the MPLA and UNITA (now a stooge of Western powers) fought desperately from 1975 to 2002. With the murder of Savimbi by disgruntled followers, the marathon war ended.[10]


Mozambique is the most populous Luso-African nation; however, unlike Angola, its history of encounters with either Omanis or Europeans is much sparser. Even without the oil revenues, its economy was much more aboriginal than Angola's was. The independence movement was launched from neighboring Tanzania in the early 1960's and ended with the liberation of the northern parts of Mozambique by FRELIMO.[11] The Marxist FRELIMO took power in '74 with no competitors for national power. Two years later, in the closing months of the White power regime in Rhodesia, a terrorist organization was created by the racist regime with the object of destroying the nation. RENAMO was created as a cover for Rhodesian/RSA operations in Mozambique with defectors from FRELIMO.[12] Unlike other guerrilla organizations, RENAMO made no effort to win sympathy from the local population; instead, it shook down whole regions for supplies, and used these to terrorize the region some more. In 1992, under intense international pressure, the RSA withdrew its support for RENAMO, and the war, which had killed over 100,000 Mozambicans, ended. All of the social initiatives of FRELIMO were wrecked, and Mozambique was destitute.

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Revolution in Portugal

In April 1974, young officers in the FAP staged a coup d'etat in Portugal; the coup triggered a wave of demonstrations against the falangist "Social State" and compelled junta leader Spínola to restore the republic.[13] As a side effect, the Spínola government (as it became) was obligated to grant independence to the colonies in September of that year.


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Timor Leste

The Portuguese acquired Timor Leste in 1556 and held onto it despite successful encroachment by the Netherlands everywhere else in the region. As elsewhere in the remaining empire, when September 1974 arrived, negotiations were begun with local groups for the future status of the territory. Three groups formed: FRETILIN (vaguely Marxist, but with clerical support); and the UDT (rightwing & favoring integration with Indonesia). In November '75, Portuguese forces withdrew and the two political groups seized different parts of East Timor. Nine days later (7 December) the Indonesian Armed Forces invaded and began a crackdown that killed perhaps 200,000 people (Amnesty figures) out of a total population of 650,000. The invasion received substantial US support; moreover, Indonesia would remain closely aligned with the USA until mid-1993, when efforts were made to end the international disgrace over military atrocities in the occupied territory. In '97, Indonesia experienced a fate similar to that of Portugal 23 years earlier: a shock in foreign accounts, economic crisis, riots, and capitulation of the regime. Suharto stepped down in favor of his adopted son, Jusuf Habibie, who proclaimed his intention of holding a referendum on the status of East Timor among the survivors there. They voted for total independence, and the military launched a devastating rampage that virtually destroyed the island's infrastructure (Sept '99). The country actually gained independence (from the UN) in 2002. It remains a devastated mess.

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Notes

  1. ↑ Library of Congress Country Study for Brazil, "Emperor Pedro I, 1822-31"
  2. ↑ Ramachandra Guha, "Small state, large nation," The Hindu (19 Aug 2007)
  3. ↑ See Marco Ramerini, "Portuguese India", Dutch Portuguese Colonial History
  4. ↑ See Marco Ramerini, "Portuguese Malacca," Dutch Portuguese Colonial History
  5. ↑ See Marco Ramerini, "Portuguese in the Bay of Bengal," Dutch Portuguese Colonial History
  6. ↑ BBC: Timeline: Guinea-Bissau & Timeline: Cape Verde
  7. ↑ For the liberation struggle in Cape Verde, see Richard Lobban, Cape Verde: Crioulo Colony to Independent Nation Westview Press; New Ed edition (1998), p.92ff; for the same in São Tomé and Príncipe, see Malyn Newitt, "São Tomé and Príncipe: Decolonization and its Legacy," anthologized in The Last Empire: Thirty Years of Portuguese Decolonization, Intellect Books (2003), p.37
  8. ↑ Library of Congress Country Study for Angola; Prof. Steve Kyle (Econ., Cornell University) "Economic Development in Angola and Mozambique" pdficon_sm.gif, Africa Notes (February 1999)
  9. ↑ OnWar.com, "Angolan War of Independence 1961-1974"; Wikipedia: Roberto Holden. Holden was a member of the suppressed Bakongo nation, which is mainly concentrated along the coast of Congo-Brazzaville, Congo-Kinshassa, and Angola, while the MPLA represented lower economic classes in the capital Luanda plus other peoples of Eastern Angola.
  10. ↑ As of 2000, the AFP estimated 500,000 Angolans, or one in 24, had died in the war. See "Angola's 25 Years of Civil War" Global Policy Forum. See also Ann Talbot, "The Angolan Civil War and US Foreign Policy," WSWS (April 2002). My characterization of UNITA as a "stooge of Western powers" would appear to some commentators, such as Victoria Brittain (Death of Dignity: Angola's Civil WarPluto Press, 1998, p.20ff) as too generous: UNITA was often given the "credit" for RSA operations carried out.
  11. ↑ OnWar.com, Mozambiquan War of Independence 1962-1975
  12. ↑ OnWar.com, Renamo Insurgency in Mozambique 1976-1992; Conspicuous Destruction: War, Famine, and the Reform Process in Mozambique, Human Rights Watch (1993), esp. p.19ff
  13. ↑ Library of Congress Country Study for Portugal, "Spínola and Revolution"
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