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Portugal in Africa: A Noneconomic Interpretation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Thomas Henriksen
Thomas Henriksen*
Affiliation:
Department of History, State University of New York, Plattsburgh, New York
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Extract

Contemporary critics of Portugal's presence in Africa charge that economic exploitation is the basis of Portuguese colonialism. They often emphasize, to the exclusion of other factors, economic reasons for Portugal's past and present stake in the tropics. These arguments contrast the actual and potential mineral wealth, agricultural produce, and abundant sources of hydroelectric power in Angola and Mozambique with the lack of them in Portugal. The Portuguese goal is often characterized as making the African dominions yield a profit on investments, furnish raw materials, and provide protected markets for metropolitan industries (Hance 1967, p. 23). In a recent issue of Africa Today, Jennifer Davis concluded that “the prospects for profit are exciting. Small wonder that the Portuguese want to keep their colonies now” (1970, p. 6). John Gellner, in a special to the Toronto Globe and Mail (1971), wrote: “Thus the strategic aim of the Portuguese is to hold what is worth holding.…Angola is a very rich country.”

African revolutionaries and their sympathizers reiterate these economic explanations of Portuguese behavior in a steady stream of books, pamphlets, and leaflets. Marxist in outlook, the authors couch their analysis of Portugal's colonial motives almost exclusively in economic terms. With the exception of revolutionary leaders such as Amilcar Cabral and Eduardo Mondlane, who identified other reasons for Portugal's retention of African colonies, many of those favorable to African liberation emphasize the economic rationale for Portuguese colonialism. (For representative accounts, see Chaliand 1969, pp. 5-12; Dependency…, pp. 3-6; Davidson 1969, pp. 25-28.)

Type
Research Article
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , December 1973 , pp. 405 - 416
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1973

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References

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