Portuguese Colonial War: A Visual History

Visual history of a war

Thirteen years of war in Angola, Guinea and Mozambique that broke Portugal's dictatorship, ended Europe's last colonial empire and set up two decades of civil war.

Fought: 1961 to 1974
Duration: 13 years
Dates: 4 February 1961 to 25 April 1974 (independence 1974-1975)
Deaths: About 8,300 Portuguese soldiers killed; 50,000 to 100,000 guerrillas and civilians across the three theatres; the 1961 northern Angola violence alone killed thousands
Portugal: Estado Novo under Salazar and Caetano; army and air force; African troops (about half the force by 1974); Rhodesian and South African cooperation
Liberation movements: MPLA, FNLA, UNITA (Angola); PAIGC (Guinea-Bissau); FRELIMO (Mozambique); USSR, Cuba, China, Tanzania, Zambia, Guinea, Congo-Brazzaville
Result: Carnation Revolution; independence of Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Sao Tome

The Portuguese Colonial War (1961-1974) began with risings in Angola in 1961 (the MPLA's Luanda prison attack in February and the UPA's massacres of settlers in the north in March), spread to Guinea-Bissau (PAIGC, 1963) and Mozambique (FRELIMO, 1964), and pitted Salazar's and Caetano's Estado Novo against Soviet, Cuban and Chinese-backed liberation movements. Portugal deployed up to 150,000 troops, a huge burden for a poor country, held Angola and Mozambique but was losing Guinea, where Amilcar Cabral's PAIGC controlled most of the territory before his assassination in 1973. War-weary officers of the Armed Forces Movement overthrew the regime in the Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974; the colonies became independent within 18 months, and civil wars engulfed Angola and Mozambique.

When it was fought: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Portuguese Colonial War. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Portuguese troops deployed in Africa

Timeline of the Portuguese Colonial War

1961
Angola rises; Goa lost
1963
PAIGC war in Guinea begins
1964
FRELIMO war in Mozambique begins
1968
Caetano succeeds Salazar
1969
Mondlane assassinated
1972
Wiriyamu massacre
1973
Cabral assassinated; SAM-7s in Guinea
1974
Carnation Revolution25 April.
1975
Mozambique and Angola independent

1961

Salazar's Portugal called its colonies overseas provinces and refused to decolonise as Britain and France did. In January 1961 cotton workers rioted at Baixa de Cassange and were bombed; on 4 February MPLA militants attacked Luanda's prisons; on 15 March Holden Roberto's UPA killed hundreds of settlers and thousands of contract labourers in the north, and Portugal's response killed perhaps 20,000. Salazar took over the defence ministry: 'para Angola, rapidamente e em forca'. India seized Goa in December 1961.

Three wars

In Angola the FNLA operated from Zaire, the MPLA from Congo-Brazzaville and Zambia and UNITA from the east; Portugal, with aldeamentos (strategic hamlets), helicopters and African commandos, held the initiative and Angola's oil and coffee boomed. In Mozambique FRELIMO under Mondlane, killed by a parcel bomb in 1969, and then Machel opened fronts from Tanzania and pushed south past Cabora Bassa dam; the Wiriyamu massacre by Portuguese troops in December 1972 was exposed by priests. In Guinea Cabral's PAIGC ran schools and courts in liberated zones and, with Soviet SAM-7s from 1973, neutralised Portuguese air power; General Spinola concluded the war could not be won and said so in his book Portugal and the Future (1974).

The Carnation Revolution

By 1974 the war took 40 percent of Portugal's budget, conscription lasted four years, a million Portuguese had emigrated, and the officers who fought it had lost faith. The Armed Forces Movement's coup of 25 April 1974 toppled Caetano almost bloodlessly, with carnations in rifle barrels. Guinea-Bissau's independence was recognised in September 1974, Mozambique's in June 1975 and Angola's on 11 November 1975 amid the civil war already begun; 800,000 retornados fled to Portugal. Portugal's empire, begun in 1415, ended, apart from Macau, in 18 months.

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

Third Portuguese Empire (1822 to 1999)
First Portuguese Empire (1415 to 1663)
Second Portuguese Empire (1663 to 1822)
British Empire (1583 to 1997)
Second French colonial empire (1830 to 1980)
Dutch Empire (1602 to 1975)

Wars of the same era and region

Angolan Civil War (1975 to 2002)
Mozambican Civil War (1977 to 1992)
Cold War (1947 to 1991)
Algerian War (1954 to 1962)
Nigerian Civil War (Biafra) (1967 to 1970)
Liberian civil wars and Sierra Leone Civil War (1989 to 2003)

8 surprising things about the Portuguese Colonial War

Portugal, with a population of 9 million, kept 150,000 men under arms in Africa, proportionally more than the US in Vietnam.
About a million Portuguese emigrated during the war years, many to avoid conscription; France's Portuguese community dates from this.
The Carnation Revolution got its name from a Lisbon flower seller who put carnations in soldiers' rifle barrels.
Amilcar Cabral, agronomist and theorist of the PAIGC, was murdered by his own men, allegedly at Portuguese instigation, in January 1973.
Portugal was the last European power to leave Africa and the first to arrive.
The 800,000 retornados from Africa were about 8 percent of Portugal's population.
Portuguese Africa's wars produced the leaders of independent Angola and Mozambique and the civil wars that followed.
The Wiriyamu massacre report in The Times in July 1973 coincided with Caetano's state visit to London.

Sources

Portuguese Colonial War Wikipedia
Portugal: The colonial wars Encyclopaedia Britannica
Carnation Revolution Encyclopaedia Britannica
Norrie MacQueen, The Decolonization of Portuguese Africa (1997) Longman

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