By Kenneth Maxwell
My observations on Portugal in 1964 typed up on my portable Olivetti typewriter.
This evaluation was written ten years before the “Revolution of Carnations” of 1974, when Portuguese junior army officers, tired of endless wars in Africa, overthrew Europe’s oldest dictatorship.
This in turn ended Portuguese rule in Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and Angola.
I had spent much of 1964 in Lisbon and had just arrived in the United States in October 1964 to begin my graduate studies at Princeton University.
On 25th April this year Portugal will mark the 50th anniversary of the Coup d’etat in Lisbon which ended the Salazar-Caetano Regime and ushered in the Democratization and Europeanization of Portugal after over half a millennium of overseas Portuguese military and commercial and imperial engagement in China, Japan, India, the Persian Gulf, Africa, and Brazil.
Featured Photo: To the left, Francisco Franco Bahamonde and in the middle António de Oliveira Salazar.
Lisbon 64For Dr. Maxwell’s complete book of essays published on our websites and the first volume in our series in looking back at the last 15 years in global change, see the following:
For his collection of essays focused solely on Brazil and including his complete assessment of the Brazilian insurgency fueled by the input from Benjamin Franklin, see the following: