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’,