Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo

The Ends of European Colonial Empires

to rethink the demise or reconfiguration of European power in Africa. Eschewing morality plays and polemics for historical analysis, the authors add nuance and complexity to the decolonization, the most important phenomenon of 20th century history making their book essential reading for the growing number of students interested in this crucial topic.” – David C. Engerman, Brandeis University

Nações e nacionalismos (a teoria, a história, a moral)

O artigo aborda a contribuicao de Benedict Anderson para os estudos da nacao e do nacionalismo nas ciencias sociais e humanas, tendo como pretexto a reedicao, em lingua portuguesa, da sua mais conhecida obra, Comunidades imaginadas. Num primeiro momento, procede-se a um breve inventario genealogico dos estudos sobre a nacao e sobre o nacionalismo, que visa sublinhar e interrogar o relativo desinteresse que as teorias sociais classicas devotaram a ideia de nacao e as suas formas especificas de incorporacao politica, economica e sociocultural. Num segundo momento, reflete-se sobre o percurso intelectual e civico do autor, contextualizando os seus interesses e as suas propostas analiticas, nomeadamente no que diz respeito a imaginacao das identidades e comunidades nacionais e a sua organizacao em movimentos nacionalistas, mas tambem as nocoes de poder e as virtualidades e limites do metodo comparativo, ao papel das ideias e dos fenomenos culturais. Num terceiro momento, explora-se, de um ponto de vista critico e reflexivo, as nocoes de imaginacao e de comunidade na sua obra, articulando os seus sentidos e os seus usos e apropriacoes com os contextos historicos, academicos e politicos, do seu percurso intelectual.

A Modernizing Empire? Politics, Culture and Economy in Portuguese Late Colonialism

The politics and policies of late colonialism in the Portuguese empire were characterized by a repressive developmentalism, a particular combination of enhanced coercive (symbolic and material) repertoires of rule, programmed developmental strategies of political, economic and socio-cultural change, and processes of engineering of socio-cultural differentiation. At its core, as Frederick Cooper noted, was a ‘repressive version of the developmentalist colonial state’.1 The late imperial and colonial states aimed to co-ordinate policies of imperial resilience in a context of widespread evolving colonial and international pressures which were contrary to their existence, or pressing for their substantial reform.2 They were the institutional loci in which the entangled policies of repressive developmentalism evolved, in which there was a coalescence between idioms, programmes, and repertoires of colonial social contr of and coercion (for instance, the schemes of resettlement, civil and military, of the African population and the strategies of counter-insurgency) — related, but not reducible, to the colonial wars and to the militarization of colonial societies; idioms, programmes, and repertoires of colonial development and modernization (for instance, the developmental plans of the 1950s and 1960s); and idioms, projects, and repertoires of imperial and colonial social engineering (for instance, the indigenato regime or the nationalized version of the doctrine of welfare colonialism and its languages and programmes of native welfare and native social promotion).

A League of Empires: Imperial Political Imagination and Interwar Internationalisms

The emergence of the League of Nations marked an important historical moment in the internationalisation of imperial and colonial affairs. Among other important aspects, the League worked to suppress slavery and all its forms, providing a platform for the circulation of information about colonial realities. Debates about slavery established new consensus about imperial civilization and created novel legal frameworks to consider the relationship between slavery, forced labour, racial discrimination, and “native welfare.” At the same time, through the Slavery Commission, the League created common instruments and questionnaires to analyse and interpret imperial and colonial systems. All these processes were also sponsored by the International Labour Organization (ILO), namely by its Committee of Experts on Native Labour. The international scrutiny and tentative supervision of the imperial and colonial modi operandi, which potentially involved the restriction of imperial sovereignty, were gradually institutionalised. By exploring the historical co-constitution of distinct internationalisms and imperialisms, this paper explores the intersection of political power and shared norms. The debates within the League and ILO and the role played by humanitarian transnational pressure groups are analysed, as are the ways in which European colonial empires dealt with these new frameworks, resisting their potential constraints via strategies of inter-imperial cooperation, but also seizing their actual political and economic opportunities, aiming to enhance their international legitimacy as Empire-states and to consolidate their colonial rule.

Pasts to Be Unveiled: The Interconnections Between the International and the Imperial

By addressing the theoretical, methodological, and epistemological challenges connected to the study of the historical co-constitution and intersection between trajectories of internationalism and of imperialism, this text stresses the fruitfulness of integrating both historical processes in a common analytical framework. It unveils the multiple sites, such as international institutions, non-governmental organizations, and bilateral encounters, where the efforts to develop a more integrated international order coalesced with coeval imperial and colonial dynamics of inclusion and exclusion, and how the analysis of these encounters and processes allows for a more nuanced and elaborated reading of the previous century.

Ordering Resistance: The Late Colonial State in the Portuguese Empire (1940–1975)

Abstract This chapter provides an assessment of how the late Portuguese colonial state (especially in Angola and Mozambique) responded to widespread conflict and anticolonial pressures. Focusing on its structures, idioms, and strategies of social transformation and control-especially as they relate to the domains of development and security-my assessment of state response emphasizes the coming together of: coercive repertoires of rule; planned developmental strategies of political, economic and social change; and processes of engineering sociocultural difference. The late colonial state’s developmental and repressive facets are critically assessed through mobilizing theoretical perspectives and empirical analysis.

New Methods, Old Conclusions: The Ross Report

‘It seems that the League of Nations’ slavery commission will be meeting shortly […] Our African colonies continue to be the main topic of discussion as a result of unfounded accusations that Portugal is tired of destroying, demonstrating, by all means available, that its legislation on native labour and on assistance is one of the most perfect known.’ With these words, Ernesto de Vasconcelos, admiral and ‘permanent secretary’ of the Lisbon Geographical Society, anticipated one of the most important events in Portuguese political life during the 1920s, one that was to unleash a torrent of questions about the importance of the colonial project, its past, present and future. This anticipation of the content and purpose of the Slavery Commission meeting at the League of Nations was derived from a series of requests for clarifications that the commission had addressed to the Portuguese government concerning such matters as taxing the natives for public works, and insisting on the principle of freedom of contract that was ensured to the natives. In short, it questioned, in numerous contentious issues, the actual workings of the native policy in Portugal’s overseas territories. The diverse modalities of slavery — explicit or disguised — assumed a central role in these enquiries. Arguing that the native policies applied in the Portuguese colonies displayed clearly liberal traits, Ernesto de Vasconcelos blamed the eventual persistence of slavery models or practices on factors external to the colonies, claiming that ‘if slavery still exists, it is because there are slave markets, and, if that is the case, then it is necessary to look for them outside of our African provinces and close them’.1

Introduction — The Ends of Empire: Chronologies, Historiographies, and Trajectories

The Ends of European Colonial Empires: Cases and Comparisons provides a plural assessment of the ends of the European colonial empires, made by some of the leading experts of the growing field — in quantity, quality, and scope — of decolonization studies.1 The historiography of decolonization is still work in progress, vibrant in its plurality of analytical approaches, establishing productive conversations with other historiographies and disciplinary fields. It is a field of research marked by the emergence of novel intellectual concerns, political and ideological outlooks and also geopolitical vistas, as John Darwin illustrates in his contribution to this volume.2 For example, the intersections between the scrutiny of the imperial and colonial endgames and local and global researches on the histories of the Cold War, of development, of labour, of human rights or of international organizations are being prolifically explored.3 The establishment of a critical dialogue between historiographies of imperial endgames, geopolitical competition, and trajectories of globalization, for instance, entails many relevant advantages for each domain.4 Of course, these historiographical dialogues may generate some problems.5

‘Redemptive Labour’ and the Missionaries of the Alphabet

Faced with the irregular and fluid nature of available labour, to which the epidemics of disease contributed greatly, the renewal and reproduction of servicais had to be intensified and the mechanisms of its protection reinforced without openly impairing the humanitarian and civilising declarations supporting the legitimacy of Portuguese colonisation. If to this scenario we add the pressures generated by the anti-slavery campaigns of British humanitarian groups, we can frame the geographical broadening of labour recruitment undertaken by the Portuguese. However, there were even more prosaic reasons for the implantation of a system of contracted work, based on the circulation of groups of labourers through the colonies. It could result from voluntary options seeking to secure capital to meet the tax demands made by colonial administrations, or it might represent the product of several types of forced or coerced labour recruitment. It might even result because, according to Sampayo e Mello, ‘the stability of labour’ — ‘an inescapable precondition of colonial exploitation’ — had become ‘almost impossible to achieve in the regime of free contract in which the blacks so easily accept as transgress’.1

Between Benevolence and Inevitability: The ‘Civilising Mission’ of Portuguese Colonialism

During the anti-slavery conference that took place in Brussels between 18 November 1889 and 2 July 1890, the Portuguese representatives (Henrique Macedo, Portuguese ambassador in Brussels and former minister of the navy and overseas; Augusto Castilho, a naval officer who had been governor of Mozambique; Brito Capelo, an explorer and officer in the Portuguese Navy; and Batalha Reis, consul in Newcastle) were ‘armed with memoirs, documents and geographical charts’ with which they would demonstrate Portugal’s secular ‘administrative, scientific and humanitarian activity’ in Africa.1 The conference took place under the sign of the scramble for Africa and of the legacy of the Berlin Conference of 1884, and in particular under the 6th article of the General Act of February 1885.2 This article established and internationally consecrated the obligations upon all the powers exercising sovereign rights or influence over colonial territories to bring home ‘the blessings of civilization’ and to ensure the ‘protection of the native populations’ and ‘the improvement of the conditions of their moral and material well-being’, reaffirming, in general, the aims to ‘abolish slavery, and especially the slave trade’ in these territories. The generic goal, as Marcelo Caetano wrote many years later, was to make the natives ‘understand and appreciate the advantages of civilisation’; how-ever, as we shall see, it meant much more than this.3