African Forced Labour and Anti-colonial Struggles in the Portuguese Revolution: A Global Labour History Perspective

The Carnation Revolution in 1974 in Portugal marked the end of the last European colonial empire. This was an anachronistic empire of a small peripheral country that since 1961 had been waging a relentless war in Africa to stifle the national liberation movements that contested for control of colonial territory and organized growing sectors of the population, namely the forced labourers who guaranteed a significant accumulation of capital for the beneficiaries of the colonial regime. In this chapter we seek to describe the moment and the conditions in which Portugal freed itself from a long dictatorship of 48 years and the decisive influence of the struggles in the colonies on the military revolt that started the revolution in the metropolis and ended the war to stem the movement towards independence in the former colonial territories. Workers in Portugal and its colonies in Africa alike embarked on a process that created the conditions for the Carnation Revolution and the formation of new independent African states in 1974 and 1975. Together, they succeeded in defeating the longest-running colonial dictatorship of the twentieth century.