Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

An Account of the Portuguese African Empire, 1885–1975

1998; Centro de Estudios Constitucionales; Volume: 16; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s0212610900007114

2041-3335

Pedro Lains,

African studies and sociopolitical issues

From the independence of Brazil in 1822 down to the independence of the African colonies in 1975, successive Portuguese governments became engaged in maintaining, enlarging, developing and, ultimately, in defending an empire in Africa. The literature on the Portuguese African empire is largely concerned with discussing the economic and political motives behind imperial policy 1 . Thus, the evaluation of the costs and benefits of the empire for the metropolitan economy —or, for that matter, the colonial economies— has not received much attention. This paper attempts to provide some of the evidence necessary to conduct such an evaluation 2 .