Peculiarly Portuguese?: Salazar, Luso-Exceptionalism, Enduring Mythologies

Portuguese Empire (image: Vivid Maps)

The fifteen or twenty years following WWII witnessed a very uneven pattern of decolonisation in Asia and Africa, with a number of the old European powers slow to cast off their coloniser mantle…the Belgians in the Congo; the French in Algeria and Vietnam and the Netherlanders in Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) in the end were extracted only after engaging in costly and unpopular wars. As the global wave of decolonisation gathered traction and other colonisers from the Old World divested themselves of their imperial territories, the Estado Novo regime of Portugal steadfastly clung on to its possessions – Angola, Mozambique, Portuguese Africa (Portuguese Guinea, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe), Goa (plus four minuscule enclaves on the western Indian coastline), Macau and East Timor.

Salazar: saviour of nation and empire

Portugal had been the first of the European powers to establish overseas colonies (enthusiastically followed closely by Spain), its earliest colonies date back to the 15th century. The Portuguese colonisers’ attitude towards the peoples they colonised in Africa, Brazil and elsewhere was really no different to any other rival European imperialist power of the time…undertake a Christian civilising mission to enlighten(sic) the “savages”, while economically exploiting them and their territories. In the 1950s with decolonisation starting to gain momentum, Portugal, a unitary, one-party state headed by dictator Antonio Salazar, looked for strategies to preserve its empire, aware that it faced a backlash from newly independent states in Africa and Asia who were a growing voice in the UN demanding it and other imperial powers decolonise ASAP. In 1952 Portugal effected a constitutional change, overnight the empire ceased to exist, Lisbon officially rebranded all of its overseas territories as províncias ultramarinas (overseas provinces). On paper it seemed Portugal had no colonies to decolonise, but the bulk of international observers saw the transparency of this, a technicality by Salazar to try to ward off criticism of the country’s failure to decolonise (a ploy that did buy Portugal some time but was always only a delaying tactic)[Bruno Cardoso Reis. (2013). Portugal and the UN: A Rogue State Resisting the Norm of Decolonization (1956–1974). Portuguese Studies, 29(2), 251–276. https://doi.org/10.5699/portstudies.29.2.0251].

‘The Masters and the Servants’ (source: errancias.com/)

The Estado Novo in the Fifties turned to a Brazilian writer Gilberto Freyre for guidance. The noted sociologist had developed a theory⦑ą⦒ in the 1930s concerning the effect of Portuguese culture on its former colony of Brazil, a phenomena that became known as Lusotropicalism⦑ც⦒. Basically, Freyre’s thesis was that Portugal and Portuguese culture diverged from other late-stage imperialist countries because of two factors, the first Portugal’s unique history as a “pluricontinental nation”, in the pre-modern era being inhabited by Celts, Romans, Visigoths and Moors et al resulting in extensive integration between the different groups⦑ƈ⦒. Freyre contended that (extensive) miscegenation in Portuguese metropolitan and colonial societies was a “positive” in that it led to the creation of “racial democracy” across the empire (ie, Portuguese and Lusophone society was “non-racist”)…as supposed evidence of this Freyre and conservative apologists could tender the de jure eligibility for Portuguese citizenship availed to non-white people, the attainment of assimilado status. The stark reality however is that the Portuguese authorities put so many obstacles in the way that made it virtually impossible for blacks from the colonies to ever secure the same legal rights and status as white citizens [Almeida, J. C. P., & Corkill, D. (2015). On Being Portuguese: Luso-tropicalism, Migrations and the Politics of Citizenship. In E. G. RODRÍGUEZ & S. A. TATE (Eds.), Creolizing Europe: Legacies and Transformations(pp. 157–174). Liverpool University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1gn6d5h.14]⦑ɖ⦒.

Lisbon street scene, late 16th century

Salazar (source: WSJ)

Salazar, though initially wary of a controversial philosophy which had at its centre a “glamourised” miscegenation and pseudoscientific mythologising about race, eventually reshaped Freyre’s theory into his regime’s official doctrine, a framework staking Portugal’s claim to ideological legitimacy to continue its anachronistic practice of colonisation. Lisbon’s politicians and diplomats were unleashed in the UN to burst forth with volleys of rhetoric about the soi-disant “special” relationship between the homeland and the overseas provinces⦑ᠻ⦒: the two were indivisible; the provinces were an integral part of Portugal’s unique, singular, multiracial nation; Portugal’s very identity depended on their retention, etc. [Cristiana Bastos, ‘Race, Racism and Racialism in Three Portuguese-Speaking Societies’, in Luso-Tropicalism and its Discontents, edited by Warwick Anderson, Ricardo Roque and Ricardo Ventura Santos (2019)].

Portuguese military in the colonial war with Angola

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Pariah state or defender of the West?

A spate of new decolonisations, speedily attained after 1960, leveraged even more pressure on Lisbon to decolonise – or at least to seriously begin a dialogue about a path to decolonisation, Salazar dugs his heels and refused to do either. Portugal was condemned in the UN as a practitioner of “colonisation in denial and in disguise” and was even more trechantly criticised after the coloniser engaged colonial rebels in Angola, Mozambique and Portuguese Guinea in wars of liberation. Lisbon responded by making a Cold War pitch to try to shore up Western solidarity on the issue…Salazar claimed to be defending Western civilisation in Africa against the menace of communism. This earned them few brownie points in Washington where the Kennedy Administration was among those pressing Lisbon to decolonise, while at the same time not going too hard, remembering its own vested interests (US was using the Azores Islands as an military base courtesy of Portugal). To its UN detractors and to the international community, Portugal throwing itself in full-scale colonial wars to prevent decolonisation was not a good look, resulting in further condemnation (Reis). Portugal’s international position was further undermined when, first, India overran the Portuguese colony of Goa by force in 1961 and annexed it, and later in the decade, another blow to Portuguese prestige, it lost control of its tiny enclave Macau to Communist China. Portugal, against the tide of history, continued to cling doggedly to its small portfolio of overseas possessions long after it could be said to amount to anything worthy of the name empire.

The Carnation Revolution overthrows Portugal’s “New State” (Image. lisbonlisboaportugal.com)

Postscript: Old habits
Significantly, the Lusotropicalism mindset didn’t end with the overthrow of the Estado Novo dictatorship in 1974, despite the new democratic government moving quickly to grant independence to the Portuguese colonies…conservative apologists in Portugal’s democratic era continue to celebrate and romanticise “mixedness” as “something inherently progressive” [‘Luso-tropicalism’, Global Social Theory, www.globalsocialtheory.org]. It seems the Portuguese politics has still not freed itself from the national myth-making that its long-dead leader Salazar had institutionalised in the 1950s…in 2017 the Portuguese head of state at an international meeting in Senegal was happily extolling “the virtues of Luso-exceptionality” (Bastos).

Endnote: Social integration myth The Lusotropical notion which claimed that Portuguese colonists integrated with the colonised subjects in a superior way was contradicted by the Portuguese town planning model for Africa, the colonatos. This scheme envisaged whites-only settlements which were intended to be “miniature Portugals”. When put into practice in Angola and Mozambique the colonatos were organisational disasters, poorly planned, little infrastructure and technical assistance, poor transport lines, etc. [Cláudia Castello, ‘Creating Portugal in Colonial Africa’, Africa is a Country, 25-May-2020, www.africasacountry.com].

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⦑ą⦒ labelled a “quasi-theory” by some scholars (Cláudia Castello, ‘“Luso-Tropicalism” and Portuguese Late Colonialism’, Buala, 28-May-2015, www.buala.org)

⦑ც⦒ Luso = pertaining to Portugal + tropicalism

⦑ƈ⦒ with transference to Brazilian society through its coalescence and integration of Europeans, enslaved Africans and native Amerindians

⦑ɖ⦒ with regards to colonial Brazil Freyre in his best known work The Masters and the Slaves misrepresents slavery as “a mild form of servitude” and he has been further criticised for exonerating the absolving the colonisers of any racist practices in modern Brazil and glossing over the iniquities of the slave trade [Wohl, Emma (2013). ‘“Casa Grande e Senzala” and the Formation of a New Brazilian Identity’,

Italy’s Acute Case of Empire Envy in the Early 1900s

Invoking Italy’s heritage: the glory of Rome (photo: ISTOCK.COM/MUSTANG_79)

In the late 19th century the Kingdom of Italy was still in its infancy as a fully-fledged, unified state in Europe, nonetheless Italians were casting an envious eye over the smorgasbord of colonial possessions other European powers were snaffling up (seemingly effortlessly) in the free-for-all known as the “Scramble for Africa”. In a climate of burgeoning nationalist sentiments Italian politicians were quick to underscore the country’s historical association with Ancient Rome by way of its imperial credentials. By the turn of the century Italy had secured a minor foothold in Africa with two East African colonies, in Eritrea and Italian Somaliland, but what it really wanted was a base in North Africa, a prerequisite for expanding its sway into the Mediterranean (mare nostrum – “our sea“𝟷̷). Real estate options in Africa had rapidly dried up however, France had already established colonies in Tunisia, Algeria and (shared with Spain) Morocco, and Egypt was a British “veiled protectorate”. The Italian focus turned to the one remaining Mediterranean territory in North Africa, Libya, then comprising several provinces, the principal ones being the Regency of Tripoli or Tripolitania, and Cyrenaica, both semi-autonomous vilayets of the Ottoman Empire.

Illustrated map of Italian campaign with fleet blockade of Libyan ports (source: Media Storehouse)

Italian imperialist designs: Search for a casus belli Italian nationalists and imperialists, whipped up by the frenzy created by the jingoistic Italian press, started to agitate for Italy to annex Tripoli. The territory being in close proximity to the southern tip of Italy made it attractive as a base from which to control the central Mediterranean𝟸̷. As the groundswell for war in Italian society gathered momentum and pressured by war hawks in his own cabinet, Italian Prime Minister Gioltti sounded out the European powers, most of whom voiced no objections to Italy’s plan for occupation of Libya𝟹̷. The Italian government tried to provoke the Ottoman regime into war…drumming up pretexts for intervention, eg, the small Italian community in Libya was supposedly being mistreated (highly exaggerated!). On the strength of this Gioltti issued an ultimatum to the Ottomans to immediately cede Tripoli to Italy. The Ottoman government of the “Young Turks” vacillated before asking Rome to accept a Britain/Egypt style solution (the would-be coloniser assumes real power in the colony while the former coloniser retains nominal suzerainty over the colony). Italy refused this counter-offer point blank, declared war in September 1911 and commenced preparing its invasion force.

Port of Tripoli, ca.1910 (image: delcampe.net)

A settler-colonial society Italy’s motives for acquiring a colony in Libya were not entirely about national pride and resurrecting the glory of the Roman Empire. The Italian state, post-unification, had serious social problems. The underdeveloped national economy was incapable of coping with the exponential growth in population, for which there was insufficient work and insufficient food for all the people. A new colony in North Africa just over the sea, the politicians surmised, would solve this dilemma, a receptacle to drain off surplus Italian population with the emigrants becoming small agricultural producers in Libya (‘The Italo-Turkish War’, Osprey Blog (Gabriele Esposito), 17-Sep-2020, www.ospreypublishing.com).

Italian troops in action, Libya 1911

Italian expectations, strategy and stalemate When war was declared Italy’s superior navy was easily able to intercept and prevent attempts by Ottoman naval vessels to transport troops and equipment to Libya. Turkish commanders Enver Pasha and Mustafa Kemal and other army personnel had to resort to smuggling themselves into Libya, mainly via Egypt. Italian forces having landed in Tripoli quickly took control of the coastal regions of Libya necessitating the Ottoman military units and Arab Bedouin fighters to withdrew to the interior. Italy had expected a quick victory in the conflict and had counted on the native Arab population welcoming the Italian soldiers as liberators from the Turks, it was wrong on both counts. Arab and Bedouin tribesmen (Muslim Senussi clan), combined together with the Ottoman units to staunchly resist the invading Christians (the Arabs’ irregular forces (hamidiye) proved to be quite effective fighters). The invasion force also found itself fighting the Libyan conditions, harsh landscape, extreme heat, wind, etc described by one historian as scatolone di sabbia (a “box of sand”) (Charles Stephenson, Box of Sand: The Italo–Ottoman War, 1911-1912, (2014)). The Italians were further hampered by the utter inadequacy of its maps of the region (relying on old maps, some of which were from the Ancient Roman era!) The Italian military strategy was to try to draw the defenders into engaging in open, full-scale, conventional battles, the Ottoman and Arab resistance refused to oblige them, rather the defenders resorted to fighting a guerrilla war, a mode of fighting which the Italians failed abjectly to adapt to (‘Italy-Turkish War’, (documentary), The Great War series (2021)). A stalemate ensued…despite putting a force in the field in Libya of up to 100,000 soldiers (including Somali mercenaries), the Italians could not make any military headway inland and yet at the same time the desert-based defenders couldn’t expel the invaders from the country.

Mustafa Kemal with Senussi tribesmen, Tobruk 1911

Air, land and sea With no progress in sight on the land front the Italians in 1912 opted for a new strategy, launching a naval campaign against the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman possessions in the Aegean Sea—the province of Rhodes and other islands in the Dodecanese chain—were attacked by gunboat and captured. The Italian navy heavily shelled the cities of Beirut and Smyrna in Asia Minor, blocked the Ottomans’ Red Sea ports and even made an unsuccessful assault by sea on the Dardanelles.

Ottoman surrender of Rhodes to Italians (source: La Domenica del Corriere, May-June 1912)

As the costly and increasingly unpopular war dragged on much longer than anticipated, the mounting concern of European states prompted them to initiate peace talks between the warring parties. After a few failures a peace agreement was eventually reached in October 1912 with the Treaty of Ouchy (AKA First Treaty of Lausanne) on terms favourable to Italy. The Constantinople government ceded Tripoli and Cyrenaica to Italy who promised to return the Dodecanese Islands to Turkey, however a turn of events in the region prevented this from ever happening.

Pax (source: Media Storehouse)

Fallout and Aftermath The Italo-Turkish War’s biggest consequence was to contribute to the destabilisation of the Balkans. The impact of that was felt immediately – one day after the Treaty of Ouchy was signed Montenegro declared war on the Ottoman Empire, with the other member-states of the Balkan League doing likewise a week later, setting in motion a war continuum that would lead to the catastrophic Great War in 1914 and further reversals for the Turks. The Ottoman Empire emerged from the 1911-1912 conflict with its reputation as the “Sick man of Europe” further tarnished. Italy, though the victor, must have had some mixed feelings about its decision to commit to the military adventure. The war dragged on for over a year, drained 1.3 bn lira from the Italian coffers and cost several thousand Italian lives either killed in action or from disease. Yes, it won itself a colony in the North Mediterranean but this in itself brought further headaches for Italy as Arab and Bedouin rebels in the Libyan hinterland doggedly continued their violent resistance to their new colonial masters for decades afterwards (‘The Great War’).

Footnote: A series of martial “firsts” Despite the Italo-Ottoman War being one of the lesser known international conflicts in modern history, it is significant for a number of innovations in warfare. It was the first war to utilise aircraft in combat missions, and the first to practice aerial bombing of the enemy lines. The Turco-Italian War also marked the debut of armoured vehicles. And it was the first three-dimensional war, ie, fought on land, sea and air. The Italians’ use of airplanes in warfare however was not particularly effective militarily in flight missions. It’s much greater benefit was in their reconnaissance value – aerial photographs, and intelligence allowing the Italians to spy on ground troop movements, etc (‘The Great War’).

Italian airplane raiding Turkish-Arab ground troops (source: suttori.com)

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𝟷̷ Mare nostrum, deriving from Roman antiquity, was a concept “deployed to anchor Italian imperialism in Africa” at this time and during the later Fascist period, Agbamu, S. (2019). ‘Mare Nostrum: Italy and the Mediterranean of Ancient Rome in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries’; Fascism 8(2), 250-274. https://doi.org/10.1163/22116257-00802001.

𝟸̷ Mussolini would later describe Libya as impero italiano’s quarta sponda (“fourth shore”)

𝟹̷ Germany and Austria-Hungary were not so positive about the Italians’ move

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