Quote: (09-07-2018 04:42 AM)Batka Wrote:
Quote: (09-04-2018 10:02 PM)Rocha Wrote:
Quote: (09-04-2018 06:32 PM)Bienvenuto Wrote:
Quote: (09-04-2018 03:36 PM)Rocha Wrote:
Not to spoil the party in here regarding Vietnam, but since we are speaking about Colonialism, also relevant is a forgotten piece of the 20th century that is the Portuguese Colonial War (1961-1976), a massive war effort by a small nation like Portugal, fighting in 3 different theaters of operations (Angola, Mozambique and Guinea). A lost cause, since the liberation movements where supported by both the communists (mainly USSR and Cuba) and the Americans.
A thread on this I believe would not get much traction, but nonetheless is a conflict worth of research and discussion.
I'll give you a starter..
White Rhodesian soldiers who visited their Portuguese neighbours in Mozambique found that they were using shell petrol station tourist posters as their local maps, no contours, no detail, no proper scale.
It seems that there were good units but in general there was a real problem between unhappy conscript regulars and an out of touch govt. / officer class.
The disillusion with the amount of atrocities that they saw also supposedly led to the domestic revolution back home.
To be fair, Angola and Mozambique where controlled when the revolution happened, mostly in Angola the war was pratically already won. Guinea was a different story, by 1974 the Portuguese where circumscripted only to the capital, Bissau, even though the command there was in the hands of the brilliant General Antonio de Spinola (see operation Green Sea below).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Green_Sea
I would say the comraderie and motivation among the conscripts was not bad, considering that many back home had to share one sardine by 3 people at dinner...
It was the lack of money and time that undid the Portuguese. As Rocha said, while those in the Metropolitan were eating one tuna per 3 people, the Armed Forces were getting everything they wanted. This hurt the economy. Also, the notion of a colonial empire was well passed the stage of being an anachronism by the mid 70s. All the other European colonial powers had long decided to cut their losses and run while the Portuguese were still hanging on in Africa long after the others had left. Time had caught up with Lisbon just as it did with Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa. To resist the winds of change was utterly futile.
Could the Portuguese Empire have been saved? No for the reasons I have outlined above. However had Salazar quit Guinea much earlier on and hadn't been so inward looking, it could have clung on for another 10-15 years at least. The colonies would have been in a better state come departure. There would have been no civil wars and no mass exodus of the White and Black educated elites. The war may have been won for Lisbon in Angola and Mozambique, but decades of poor policy planning had sealed Portugal's fate.
East Timor is an unusual case. Located north of Australia and surrounded by Muslim majority Indonesia, the colony had never witnessed any liberation war. Its local Timorese population was loyal to Portugal. Indonesia and Australia coveted the island and its rich oil resources. When the Carnation Revolution happened in 1974, both Jakarta and Canberra stepped up a gear in a bid to oust the Portuguese from the island, with the help of the US. They instigated a right wing coup against the Governor and the Marxist FRETLIN which had become the biggest political party on the island. Portuguese troops and the FRETLIN put down the coup in mid 1975. During the decolonisation negotiations in late 1975, FRETLIN pleaded with Lisbon not to abandon the island and even discussed pushing back independence which would have Portugal eventually leaving sometime around 1982-86. FRETLIN knew that as long as the Portuguese remained, Indonesia would not dare invade. However the Portuguese facing a massive headache in both Angola and Mozambique abandoned the Timorese to their fate. What happened next was a tragedy.
Anyway, fast forward 4 decades and the Timorese harbour no ill will towards their former colonial rulers. They even celebrated Portugal's victory in EURO 2016 in towns and villages across the island.
It is very well said. The missing part was that the responsability of a such a disastrous decolonization process, and the abandonment of the Timorese to their fate was mostly from Mr. Mario Soares (a freemason from the socialist party), and other forces alligned even more to the left (including the left wing of the army), who demanded total and immediate whithdrawal from the Colonies, during the political chaos of the revolution period.
Btw...when you said a tuna for 3 you probably meaning a tuna can... one atlantic bluefin tuna can feed a whole army (150 kg +-)