Campaign for Portuguese Africa, Volume 1

The Campaign for Portuguese Africa, Volume 1: The Inevitable and Onrushing War examines the historical context that led Portugal, under Prime Minister António Salazar, to seek to relive its long-past colonial heyday, culminating in the 1961–1974 African campaigns, and describes the opening events of the war.

It is a remarkable tale of a small country punching above its weight by leading Europe’s discovery of a new, unexploited world, using trade, not conquest, as its grand strategy. Portugal’s development of navigational breakthroughs, ships that could sail into the wind, and the fearless heroes who braved the unknown is a remarkable story. It brought successive riches: first, the India route, which established a broad trading arc reaching all the way to Japan, and second, the development of Brazil. Wealth poured into the small Atlantic nation until Brazilian independence in 1822. In the twentieth century, the country again sought riches from a Third Empire with its remaining African possessions, Angola and Mozambique. This is the story of how that grand strategy was planned and executed.