“People’s Diplomacy:” European Solidarity with Portuguese African Liberation

The historiography of European decolonization and anti-colonialism generally divides itself along national lines. Historians have documented the growth of anti-colonial protest in places like Britain and France, as well as the impact of this activism on official policy. But what of states like Portugal that lacked domestic freedom itself? Though historians have been slow to identify it, just such a movement took shape in the 1960s and 1970s as the colonial wars raged in Africa. It operated not on the national or imperial level, but in the realm of the transnational, where Lusophone Africans mobilized Europeans in countries allied with the metropolis. Groups of activists in Sweden, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom pushed their governments to adopt an array of policies that helped isolate the Lisbon regime and strengthen the colonial movements.

My paper will examine the growth and activities of this trans-national movement as it developed in Europe. It will recover the specific national campaigns of a handful of key organizations, as well as the ways they cooperated across borders to support freedom in Africa. Importantly, African nationalists were central to this European activism, providing guidance through personal diplomacy and conferences. This intercontinental coalition helped empower the liberation groups and revitalized European social engagement regarding questions of African freedom. The result was a small contribution to independence in the countries of Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau and a new momentum, which would inform the more famous Anti-Apartheid struggle of the 1980s.