Portugal: The Unyielding Imperialists

Alone among the former imperial powers of Europe, tiny Portugal has clung desperately to all its overseas possessions, refusing to surrender so much as a foot of territory. Britain gave up India; France gave up its Indian enclaves; but for all of Nehru’s huffing and puffing, Portugal hung on to Goa. Last week stubborn Portugal was forced to give up at least the first inch of empire.

At issue was the fort of St. John the Baptist, built at Ouidah on the coast of Dahomey in 1680 as a depot for ivory, gold and rubber. It was almost destroyed in the 19th century when France conquered Dahomey, but the French finally sealed for limiting the Portuguese holdings there to the fort, a residency building and some surrounding gardens. When Dahomey won its independence from France last year, it asked Portugal to turn the tiny enclave into an embassy or consulate. Lisbon bluntly refused, and continued to administer Fort St. John as a full-fledged colony, defended by a pair of ancient brass cannon and garrisoned by a commandant and one assistant. The Dahomeyans finally told the Portuguese to get out by July 31. On the day of the deadline, the two-man garrison set fire to Fort St. John and the residency and departed, suitcases in hand, as Dahomeyan firemen raced to the scene. After the fire was put out, the Portuguese flag was ceremoniously lowered, and the green, yellow and red Dahomeyan emblem was raised over the charred walls.

Another Angola. These days, arson seems Portugal’s main answer to colonial troubles. In the vast African possession of Angola, the Portuguese army ruthlessly burns down native villages in retaliation for the burning of Portuguese plantations by guerrilla bands. With the rains due this month, the army desperately seeks a military decision but can rarely come to grips with the elusive rebels. Farther north, below the bulge of Africa, lies a 2,800-sq.-mi. sliver of Portuguese territory called Cabinda. Here the authorities recently tried to snuff out revolt by arresting all the local chiefs and every Cabindese who could read or write. Villages were put to the torch, and most of the colony’s 60,000 natives fled across the border into former French and Belgian Congo. But even making a desert of Cabinda was not enough to end revolt. Last week a band of natives armed with homemade muzzle-loaders slipped back into Cabinda and ambushed a Portuguese patrol near Miconje.

Portuguese Guinea, which lies on the African bulge, has managed to fight off three invasion attempts by guerrilla bands. Lisbon accused Portuguese Guinea’s neighbor, Senegal, of helping the rebels; Senegal retaliated by promptly breaking off diplomatic relations with Lisbon. Even the large and prosperous East African colony of Mozambique, which has so far been quiet, is stirring with nationalist fervor. Mozambique rebels in nearby Tanganyika, given asylum by Prime Minister Julius Nyerere, boast that they will soon turn the colony into “another Angola.”

Glorious Page. In Portugal itself, Strongman Antōnio de Oliveira Salazar, after 33 years in power, hangs on to office as strongly as he hangs on to empire. Despite tax boosts, the government is finding it almost impossible to finance its colonial wars, and Lisbon talks grandly of African reforms to speed the independence of its colonies—once “pacification” is complete. But after the loss of unimportant Fort St. John in Dahomey last week. Portugal talked bombastically of regaining the lost fort “by all means within reach.” A semiofficial Lisbon newspaper cried that in burning the fort and fleeing, “a new and glorious page of Portugal’s history has just been written!” Another paper had a spiteful word for the victors of Dahomey: “A country without a history robbing a people of its history.”