Abstract
The historiography on colonial resistance is plural, encompassing different temporalities and geographies. By taking the questions of colonial labour and social policy within the Portuguese empire as the main analytical foci, this chapter contributes to that literature in two interrelated ways. First, by recovering the multiple instances that challenged Portuguese imperial legitimacy within international and transnational realms. Therefore, it stresses the need to approach, in an interconnected way, the dynamics of local social grievances and the mechanics of internationalization. Second, it shows that despite global pressures for decolonization, European colonial empires were able to give an instrumental use to international organizations. The labour question was a privileged topic through which authorities strengthened claims of imperial legitimacy amidst growing turmoil in other international institutions.
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Notes
- 1.
Among others, see Barbara Bush, Imperialism, Race and Resistance: Africa and Britain (London and New York: Routledge, 1999); Cynthya Brantley, The Giriam and Colonial Resistance in Kenya (1800–1920) (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1981); Leroy Vail and Landeg White, “Forms of Resistance: Songs and Perceptions of Power in Colonial Mozambique”, American Historical Review, 88, no. 4, 1 (1983), 883–919.
- 2.
Neta Crawford, Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonization and Humanitarian Intervention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Matthew Connelly, A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria’s Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); Leslie James, George Padmore and Decolonization from Below: Pan-Africanism, the Cold War and the End of Empire (New York: Palgrave, 2015).
- 3.
Regarding the intersections between imperialism and internationalism, see Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo and José Pedro Monteiro, “Pasts to be Unveiled: The Interconnections Between the International and the Imperial”, in Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo and José Pedro Monteiro (eds.), Internationalism, Imperialism and the Formation of the Contemporary World (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), pp. 1–32.
- 4.
Daniel Maul, Human Rights, Development and Decolonization (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
- 5.
Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo and José Pedro Monteiro, “Internationalism and the Labours of the Portuguese Colonial Empire (1945–1974)”, Portuguese Studies, 29, no. 2 (2013), 142–163.
- 6.
Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo, The ‘Civilizing Mission’ of Portuguese Colonialism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Catherine Higgs, Chocolate Islands: Cocoa, Slavery and Colonial Africa (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2012); Eric Alina, Slavery by Any Other Name: African Life Under Company Rule in Mozambique (Charlotesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012).
- 7.
Frederick Cooper, Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in British and French Africa (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 171–386.
- 8.
Maul, Decolonization, Human Rights, pp. 31–120.
- 9.
José Pedro Monteiro, “‘A very delicate position’: Portuguese ‘Native’ Labour Policies and International Non-Metropolitan Standars in the Aftermath of Second World War (1945–1949)”, Portuguese Studies Review, 25, no. 1 (2017).
- 10.
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- 11.
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- 12.
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- 14.
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- 16.
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- 17.
Informação n° 18/54, ISAU, 19 de Março de 1954, Arquivo Histórico do IPAD (henceforth AHIPAD), Report Compilation, year 1954.
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- 20.
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- 22.
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- 24.
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- 25.
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- 26.
Basil Davidson, The African Awakening (New York: Macmillan, 1955). See also Pedro Aires de Oliveira, Os Despojos da Aliança: A Grã-Bretanha e a questão colonial portuguesa, 1945–1975 (Lisboa: Tinta-da-China, 2007), pp. 145–154.
- 27.
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- 28.
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- 29.
Informação n° 18/54, ISAU, 19 March1954, AHIPAD, Report compilation ISAU.
- 30.
Carta enviada por Egerton a Salazar, s.d., PT/ANTT/AOS/CO/UL-20. About Egerton see Diogo Ramada Curto, “The Debate on Race Relations in the Portuguese Empire and Charles R. Boxer’s position”, E-journal of Portuguese History, II, no. 1 (Summer 2013).
- 31.
Despacho MNE, 2 de Maio de 1955, Soares da Fonseca, AHD-MU-GM-GNP-RRI-0721-00507.
- 32.
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- 33.
Report meeting 7 and 22 May 1957 from Interministerial Committee on Labour, AHD-POI-137.
- 34.
Fernando Martins, “A política externa do Estado Novo, o Ultramar e a ONU: uma doutrina histórico-jurídica (1955–1968)”, Penélope, no. 18 (1998), 189–206.
- 35.
Apontamento, Ribeiro da Cunha, 1957, AHD, 2° Piso-Armário 7, Maço 562.
- 36.
Idem.
- 37.
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- 38.
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- 39.
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- 40.
Memo from Direcção-Geral da Administração Política e Civil do MU para MNE, 5 May 1959, AHD/MU/GM/GNP/RRI/0721/00510.
- 41.
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- 42.
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- 43.
Luis Rodriguez-Piñero, Indigenous Peoples, Postcolonialism and International Law: The ILO regime, 1919–1989 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 139–144; Belgian Government, La Mission sacrée de Civilisation: à quelles populations faut-il en étendre le bénéfice? La Thèse Belge (New York: Belgian Government Information Center, 1953).
- 44.
Minute 13th session of the interministerial committee on labour, AHD/MU/GM/GNP/RRI/0770/12539-002.
- 45.
Anonymous note, March 1960, AHD-MU-GM-GNP-RRI-0712-12447.
- 46.
Anexo VI, “Relatório para chefe da repartição dos negócios políticos e administração civil”, Alcambar Pereira, 14 de Maio de 1955, AHD/MU/GM/GNP/RRI/0721/00510.
- 47.
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- 48.
Report Congo District, 1956, AHU-MU-GM-GNP-135 caixa 35.
- 49.
See, among others, Diogo Ramada Curto, Bernardo Pinto Cruz e Teresa Furtado (eds.), Políticas Coloniais em Tempo de Revoltas: Angola circa 1961 (Porto: Afrontamento, 2016).
- 50.
David Wainhouse, Remnants of Empire: The United Nations and The End of Colonialism (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1964); Aurora Almada Santos, A Organização das Nações Unidas e a Questão Colonial Portuguesa, 1961–1970 (PhD dissertation, FCSH/UNL, Lisboa, 2014).
- 51.
ILO, “Report of the Commission Appointed under Article 26 of the Constitution of the International Labour Organization to Examine the Complaint Filed by the Government of Ghana concerning the Observance by the Government of Portugal of the Abolition of Forced Labour Convention, 1957 (n° 105)”, Official Bulletin, Vol. 45, no. 2, Supplement II (Geneva: ILO, 1962).
- 52.
Ribeiro da Cunha, 29 de Abril de 1961, AHD-MU-GM-GNP-RRI-0790-12432.
- 53.
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- 54.
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- 55.
Minute Reynolds, 25 July 1961, NA-UK-CO/859/1645.
- 56.
Ribeiro da Cunha, 29 de Abril de 1961, AHD-MU-GM-GNP-RRI-0790-12432
- 57.
Apontamentos, AHD-MU-GM-GNP-RRI-0790-12529.
- 58.
Report ISAU, 7 de Abril de 1962, AHIPAD, Compilação de pareceres da ISAU.
- 59.
Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo and José Pedro Monteiro, “Internationalism and the Labours of the Portuguese Colonial Empire (1945–1974)”, Portuguese Studies, 29, no. 2 (2013), 142–163.
- 60.
Apontamentos, AHD-MU-GM-GNP-RRI-0790-12529; Draft reply Governor-General Angola, AHD/MU/GM/GNP/RRI/0790/12529. José Pedro Monteiro, “‘One of Those Too-Rare Examples’: The International Labour Organization, the Colonial Question and Forced Labour (1961–1963)”, in Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo and José Pedro Monteiro (eds.), Internationalism, Imperialism and the Formtation of the Contemporary World: The Pasts of the Present (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2017).
- 61.
Júlio Evangelista, Ghana’s Complaint & the Plot Against Portugal (Lisboa: Agência Geral do Ultramar, 1963).
- 62.
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Monteiro, J.P. (2019). The International Dimensions of Resistance: Portuguese Colonial Labour Policies and Its Critics Abroad (1944–1962). In: Domingos, N., Jerónimo, M.B., Roque, R. (eds) Resistance and Colonialism. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19167-2_13
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