Geopolitics, economy, culture and decolonization from the Ministry of Colonies of Marcelo Caetano 1944-47

Abstract

Search here to build a picture, essayistic and necessarily brief, of the world view in the Ministry of the Colonies led by Marcelo Caetano in the critic years 1944 to 1947. We call for particular elements of complexity to an understanding of positioning of the main international actors (in the West) from the post-war period, according to a viewing angle little studied. This allows us to rehearse an exercise in exploitation of grey spaces, ambiguities, contradictions or paradoxes that remained to the present day. In particular, as regards the particularities that characterize the English way and American way of life. To what extent these particularities contributed to impede, rather than facilitate, fundamental processes like post-war decolonization and development? Similarly, to what extent the bipolar confrontation (ideological, propaganda, etc.) worked as an accelerant but also as a destructive element in these processes?
This exercise allows also better understand the vision of Marcelo Caetano, who will be the last leader of the Estado Novo (1968-74), on the world order in gestation, its problems and paradoxes, as well as his perspective on the culture and the Portuguese way of being in the world or a alleged «Portuguese way of life».