The European concept in the period between the two wars: the Briand Plan and the Portuguese standpoint

Abstract

The European federal union proposal presented in 1929 at the League of Nations by the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, Aristide Briand, and the memorandum which followed, raised public support, either critical or unconditional, and rejection, either discrete or fanatical, both in Portugal and elsewhere.

On the power's side, the Portuguese government, encouraged to give some response, seized the opportunity to lay down the strategic bases of what would become for the following decades its official standpoint in foreign policy in general and in the country's connection to Europe in particular. Although it was a European country, Portugal was also (or it was above all), under the regime's perspective, a Nation which had deeply rooted "lusitaneity" and permanent civilisational links in other places of other continents; with rights it could not hear of being questioned and with obligations which it was not willing to give up nor wished harmed due to possible participation in any European association. On the face of the disappointment, the selfishness and the disorientation of a Europe on the verge of a catastrophe, Portugal's option seemed clear: the "regeneration" of the country, the rebirth of the empire, and the revitalisation of the "colonial mission".

These were the shades and changes in the Portuguese standpoint, in politics and civil society, towards the effort of uniting Europe in order to avoid war within the scope of the League of Nations, which we have approached in the study below.