Portuguese Colonial War

The Portuguese Colonial War (Portuguese: Guerra Colonial Portuguesa), also known in Portugal as the Overseas War (Guerra do Ultramar) or in the former colonies as the War of liberation (Guerra de Libertação), was fought between Portugal's military and the emerging nationalist movements in Portugal's African colonies between 1961 and 1974. The Portuguese regime was overthrown by a military coup in 1974, and the change in government brought the conflict to an end. The war was a decisive ideological struggle in Portuguese-speaking Africa and surrounding nations, and mainland Portugal.

Unlike other European nations during the 1950s and 1960s, the Portuguese Estado Novo regime did not withdraw from its African colonies, or the overseas provinces (províncias ultramarinas) as those territories were officially called since 1951. During the 1960s, various armed independence movements became active in these Portugal-administered territories, namely in Angola, Mozambique, and Portuguese Guinea. During the ensuing conflict, atrocities were committed by all forces involved. The decolonization and independence of several African states after the World War II, the Invasion of Goa by Indian Armed Forces and the Santa Maria hijacking, as well as the achievements of the African-American Civil Rights Movement, were also signs of the "Winds of change" supporting independence movements in Portuguese Africa.

Throughout the war period Portugal faced increasing dissent, arms embargoes and other punitive sanctions imposed by most of the international community. By 1973, the war had become increasingly unpopular due to its length and financial costs, the worsening of diplomatic relations with other United Nations members, and the role it had always played as a factor of perpetuation of the entrenched Estado Novo regime and the non-democratic status quo. The combined guerrilla forces of the MPLA, the UNITA, and the FNLA, in Angola, PAIGC in Portuguese Guinea, and FRELIMO in Mozambique, succeeded in their 13-year-long pro-independence rebellion through guerrilla warfare, when low-ranking elements of the Portuguese Armed Forces staged a military coup at Lisbon in April 1974.

The Portuguese Armed Forces' Movimento das Forças Armadas overthrew the Estado Novo government in response to the ongoing and stalemated war in Portuguese Guinea, as well as in rebellion against the unpopular new military laws that were to be presented the following year (Decree Law: Decretos-Leis n.os 353, de 13 de Julho de 1973, e 409, de 20 de Agosto) whereby militia officers who completed a brief training program and had served in the overseas territories' defensive campaigns, could be commissioned at the same rank as military academy graduates. After the coup, the newly installed revolutionary Portuguese government withdrew all overseas military forces and agreed to a quick handover of power for the nationalistic African guerrillas.

The end of the war after the Carnation Revolution military coup of April 1974 in Lisbon resulted in the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Portuguese citizens plus military personnel of European, African and mixed ethnicity from the former Portuguese territories and newly independent African nations. From May 1974 to the end of the 1970s, over 1 million citizens left these former colonies, and would restart their lives predominantly in Portugal, South Africa, North America, the rest of Western Europe and Brazil. This migration is regarded as one of the largest peaceful migrations in the world's history.

The former colonies faced severe problems after independence. Devastating and violent civil wars followed in Angola and Mozambique, which lasted several decades, claimed millions of lives and resulted in large numbers of displaced refugees. Economic and social recession, authoritarianism, lack of democracy and other elemental civil and political rights, corruption, poverty, inequality and failed central planning eroded the initial revolutionary zeal. A level of social order and economic development comparable to what had existed under Portuguese rule, including during the period of the Colonial War (1961–1974), became the goal of the independent territories.

Portugal had been the first European power to establish a colony in Africa when it captured Ceuta in 1415; it became one of the last to leave. The former Portuguese territories in Africa became sovereign states, with Agostinho Neto in Angola, Samora Machel in Mozambique, Luís Cabral in Guinea-Bissau, Manuel Pinto da Costa in São Tomé and Príncipe and Aristides Pereira in Cape Verde as the heads of state.