PORTUGUESE DECOLONISATION:
THE HOMEWARDS (1)

By 1415, when Ceuta was conquered, Portugal started a vast expansionist movement that would lead it to the discovery of a great part of the extra European world. The XVI century points out the Iberia kingdoms decline and the competition of England, France and the Netherlands which, sustained by the mare liberum doctrine, share the territories exclusive from the Iberia kingdoms up to then, becoming potentially hegemonic global powers.

Later, in the XIX century, when the strength and wealth of industrialized countries are being stated, Portugal loses prestige and international importance. The necessary reforms were postponed and the country was delaying itself, unable to compete industrially and commercially. Reaching the highest point in a series of international humiliations, a revolution implements the Republic in 1910. In order to legitimise and stabilizing the new regimen, Portugal participates, in 1916, in World War I, along with the allies, which didn't bring many benefits to the country. In 1926, a military dictatorship installs which would set things up Salazar's regimen, the so-called New State.

Oliveira Salazar's government had a positive side concerning the regularization of the state's accounts, the equilibrium of the commercial balance and the country's industrialization. On the other hand it was deeply negative regarding the other areas of national life, since the implantation of a dictatorship restrained the rights and liberties of the Portuguese people. The New State launched a colonial policy distinct from the previous times, publishing the "Acto Colonial" (Colonial Act) that faced the colonies as "Overseas Provinces", which gave birth to the political idea of a multicontinental nation from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Portugal was, at the time of the 1933's Constitution, constituted by continental Portugal, Azores, Madeira (Europe), Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, S. Tomé and Prince, Angola and Mozambique (Africa), Goa, Damão, Diu, Dadrá and Nagar-Aveli (India), Macau (China) and East Timor (Pacific). Then, it started a sustained policy of infrastructures building, industrial and commercial development and formation and settlement of superior specialized national technicians. In parallel, the government tried to direct the Portuguese emigration - which had as a favourite destiny the American continent (especially USA, Brazil and Venezuela) - to the Portuguese territories in Africa, preferably to Angola and Mozambique. They were thousands the Portuguese who, during the 30s, 40s and 50s, headed for the Portuguese overseas territories in the world, joining the thousands who were already there, essentially since the last quarter of the XIX century.

In the overseas possessions the Portuguese participated actively in the colonies' modernizing, building their lives in there and putting forward the seeds to the future. But by the beginning of the 60s everything changed. Effectively, in 1961, there was the insurrection of the military black elites against the Portuguese state in Angola, claiming for self-determination. The regimen had been resisting to the winds of change, which had started to be felt since the end of the II World War and the approach of the Cold War that brought the colonial empires to an end. Soon after, other insurrections occur in Mozambique and Guinea Bissau. Simultaneously, the Indian Union annexes the Portuguese State of India, which was a hard blow in the Portugal's political self-confidence. The colonial war situation would go on until 1974, causing an undetermined number of deaths among the opponents and absorbing huge amounts of money from the Portuguese military institutions, weakening an economy that was, in spite of the foreign dependency, healthy. Thousands of Portuguese youngsters, fearing for the military recruitment, run away "outlawed" to France, Germany, Luxembourg and Sweden, searching for political asylum.

Finally, on 25th April 1974, a few idealist militaries, fearing for the path that Portugal was following, made a pacific military revolution, empowering a military board. It is its duty to prepare the country to democracy and to put an end to the conflicts in Africa in a way to assure the transition to the colonies' self-determination: the Portuguese Colonial Empire came to an end. Yet in 1974, the negotiations between Lisbon and the Portuguese colonies interlocutors lead to the creation of conjunct transition governments in order to prepare their independency. In 1975, all Portuguese colonies in Africa are independent.