25 April 1974 and a clandestine network of naval officers1

The structural reasons that caused the Portuguese revolution of 1974–1975 fit neatly into the general theories of social revolution: an exclusionary and highly repressive regime, riddled with intense elite conflicts, collapsing under severe military and financial pressures, and unexpectedly giving way to a series of autonomous radical and transgressive popular mobilizations and protests. Portugal's revolution started on 25 April 1974, when a coup by a group of young left‐wing middle‐rank military officers, the Armed Forces Movement (MFA), deposed the authoritarian New State regime (1933–1974), then dealing with a 13‐year‐old war in its African colonies of Angola, Guinea‐Bissau, and Mozambique. The reasons for the coup were at once political and professional. Not only were the professional officers unhappy with the fact that they could be overtaken in promotions by noncareer officers, but they believed victory in the colonial war was impossible. A war with no end in sight, for which the regime had no solution, and professional grievances combined to set off the 1974 coup. In its political program, presented soon after the coup, the MFA defended the establishment of a democratic regime in Portugal.

Reviewed by: Testing American Sea Power: U.S. Navy Strategic Exercises, 1923–1940 Timothy S. Wolters (bio) Testing American Sea Power: U.S. Navy Strategic Exercises, 1923–1940. By Craig C. Felker. College Station, Tex.: Texas A&M University Press, 2007. Pp. viii+193. $39.95. From 1923 to 1940, the United States Navy conducted twenty-one major fleet exercises in which it assigned all available ships to one or more opposing naval forces. Simulated wars, these “fleet problems” allowed the navy’s leaders to test doctrine, evaluate new technologies, and train personnel. In 1975, the National Archives compiled and microfilmed the formerly classified records relating to these exercises, and yet they have remained virtually ignored by historians. Until now, that is. In Testing American Sea Power, naval officer and historian Craig Felker provides a valuable examination of the interwar U.S. Navy’s efforts to integrate the airplane and the submarine into warfare at sea. He argues that portrayals of the service as backward and conservative are overly simplistic, and claims that “the fleet” actually functioned “somewhere between a monolith and a group of rival constituencies, each bargaining to enhance its position, and, in some cases, its survival” (p. 4).More broadly, Felker asserts that the navy’s interwar strategic exercises provide a useful perspective on how military organizations learn and transform. The shared experiences of the fleet problems greatly facilitated organizational learning, thereby allowing the sea service to transform itself in the face of untested principles and unproven technology. The legacy of Alfred Thayer Mahan is central to Felker’s exploration of the interwar navy. He begins with a discussion of Mahanian doctrine, focusing especially on Mahan’s concept of sea control. According to Felker, [End Page 1097] officers regarded “the employment of concentrated firepower from battleships in a decisive naval engagement” as the most prudent and efficient use of naval power (p. 24). Initially, the service’s leaders molded aircraft and submarines into this paradigm. Yet as technology and tactics improved, so too did the threat to the battle line. Increasingly capable air and subsurface forces challenged some of Mahan’s maxims, but on the whole Mahanian doctrine maintained its hold on naval officers’ strategic thinking. With respect to aviation, Felker supports previous scholars who have argued that interwar naval officers’ dedication to the battleship stemmed not from inherent conservatism, but rather from the practical difficulties of flight operations at sea. Regarding undersea warfare, Felker makes two interconnected arguments. First, he claims that the navy’s decision to employ submarines as independent attack platforms during the fleet problems resulted in an undersea force tactically ready to carry out unrestricted submarine warfare against Japan. Second, Felker asserts that American naval officers’ initial reluctance to implement a convoy system against German U-boats in World War II derived directly from simulation artificialities in the interwar fleet exercises. For various reasons, these artificialities obscured the dangers posed by a technologically sophisticated undersea opponent. The fleet problems thus led to a service that was tactically ready, but strategically unprepared, for unrestricted submarine warfare. Although well written and solidly researched, Testing American Sea Power has some limitations. Regrettably, Felker’s analysis fails to engage Mahan’s views on the art and science of command. For Mahan, sea control entailed more than just concentrating force in pursuit of decisive battle; it required leaders capable of exercising independent judgment in the face of difficulty and uncertainty. The study of history was one way to teach officers how to deal with the inherent complexities of naval warfare. Simulation offered another. Yet both methods sought the same end: improved decision-making under conditions of rapid and unpredictable change. Rather than being a constraint, as Felker portrays them, Mahan’s ideas actually may have enhanced naval officers’ willingness to draw important lessons from the annual fleet exercises. A second problem with the book is its inattention to the interwar U.S. Navy’s efforts to improve “command and control” technologies, most notably fire control and radio communications. Not only would such an examination have strengthened Felker’s argument that the navy generally was receptive to new technology, it would have added valuable perspective to his exploration of...

Thirty years after the April Revolution, Portugal is in the midst of the most successful democratic experience of its history. A product of the pact signed by the principal political parties and the Armed Forces Movement, the Portuguese constitution established a semi presidential system of power, which ensures that the principal organs of sovereignty exercise reciprocal control over each other. The presence of a unique political-military body — the Council of the Revolution — acted as a safety valve for the system during the transition period until 1982. Successive revisions of the constitution have perfected this architecture of power, while eliminating the ideological rhetoric inherited from the revolutionary period This article describes the functioning of the system on the basis of the evolution of electoral results, of the various arrangements attempted for forming governments, and of characteristics of the principal political parties. The growing tendency toward abstention is the object of particular consideration. The highly autonomous judicial system and the armed forces, increasingly under civ ilian control, is also be analyzed. In conclusion, the article considers the challenges of Portugal's immediate future, including the deepening of participatory democracy, the need to lessen both the bureaucratic weight and the excessive centralism of the state, and the quest for a system of justice that will be at once speedier and more efficient.

: The Air Force is dependent upon technology to ensure we can meet our national security objectives. Acquisition of new weapons systems is expensive and a significant portion of the Air Force budget. However, organizational changes which could possibly increase our capability to meet acquisition goals are relatively inexpensive. Through an analysis of organization structure and technological innovation, the study presents characteristics of organization's likely to innovate. Next, the project addresses technology and organization structure in the Air Force and looks at some selected Air Force Systems Command organizations. The report ends with project conclusions. The study approach was developed in response to the problem statement, 'Can organization structure enhance the integration of new technology into Air Force weapons systems? In order to resolve this problem, the first step is to determine the relationship between organization structure and technological innovation. The second step in the study approach was to determine if recognition of the above relationship can affect integration of technology into Air Force weapons systems. The analysis examined the structure of Air Force organizations responsible for acquisition of weapons systems and reviewed the procedures for weapons systems acquisition to determine how the Air Force acquires new technology.

The Portuguese Revolution and the Armed Forces Movement by Rona M. Fields New York, Praeger, 1976. Pp. xviii + 288. $26.95. - The Portuguese Armed Forces and the Revolution by Douglas Porch London, Croom Helm, 1977. Pp. 273. £7.95.

Located at the eastern end of the Lesser Sunda island chain of the Indonesian Archipelago and occupying half of the island of Timor, East Timor has been marginalized and occupied for most of its recent history. Notwithstanding intermittent revolts against the Portuguese colonial presence, the largest, the Manufahi War of 1910–13, and the Viqueque Revolt in 1959, Portuguese Timor, unlike Portugal's African colonies, had no systematic or sustained opposition movement to the 450 years of Portuguese rule. The Carnation Revolution of April 25, 1974 and subsequent decolonization process started by the Armed Forces Movement (Movimento das Forças Armadas) (MFA) thrust East Timorese society into an unexpected era of insurrection against occupation.

The attitudes and actions of Lisbon's new rulers will obviously be a crucial factor in determining the course of developments in Angola and Mozambique. Despite the recent shift in position, under pressure from the Armed Forces Movement, of President Spinola's junta from vague promises to hold discussions about progress towards 'self-determination' to an 'immediate recognition' of the right to 'independence' of the peoples of Angola, Mozambique and GuineaBissau there is still no clear indication of how such policies are to be implemented in practice. Recognition of the independence of GuineaBissau (expected in mid-September, but leaving the status of the Cap Verde Islands to be settled), where the nationalist movement PAIGC is already recognized as the government of an independent republic by over 90 United Nations members is unlikely to set the pattern for the transfer of power in Angola and Mozambique. However, an examination of the differing military and economic situations in these two territories may at least offer some idea of the parameters within which Portuguese policy is likely to have to operate, as well as suggest some implications for the other states of southern Africa.

A 25 de abril de 1974 um golpe de Estado levado a cabo pelo Movimento das Forças Armadas (MFA) põe fim a 48 anos de ditadura do Estado Novo e inicia o período que ficaria conhecido como Revolução dos Cravos. O MFA granjeia de imediato apoio popular e mais tarde um crescente prestígio político que o levará a ocupar um lugar de destaque na estabilização do Estado e na consolidação do regime democrático. Porém, sucumbirá na crise de governação imposta pela tensão social da segunda metade de 1975. Neste artigo analisamos a ascensão e queda desse movimento de oficiais, a forma como ganhou apoio popular e as razões explicativas do seu desmoronamento, um caso de estudo a nível mundial pela participação destacada que teve no derrube da mais longa ditadura militar da Europa Ocidental do século XX.

The importance of the media in the Portuguese 1974 Revolution is recognized by the military, politicians, and journalists. In this context, the major role of the radio broadcast in the course of events is undisputable. In the dawn of April 25, a popular Portuguese song was the start signal for the military coup and other counter signals followed, sounds that became symbols of the Revolution. Radio was the medium chosen by the Armed Forces Movement (MFA or Movimento das Forças Armadas in the original) to communicate with the parties involved in the coup and it was also used to inform the population of the goals and progress of the military operations. The following manoeuvres eventually transformed Radio Clube Português, one of the radio stations, in the commanding post of all the operations and the Portuguese people became aware of the MFA goals and victories by the bulletins that were broadcasted by the military on the radio. In a country with high illiteracy, radio played a crucial role in terms of information, which confirms its unquestionable centrality in the course of the April Revolution (also known as the Carnations Revolution). This study aims to explain how this process was achieved and it is based on the recollection of documents, archives, and other information. The recovery of testimonies and reconstruction of events allow us to explore the way military interacted with radio personnel and how radio logics prevailed and helped the military to successfully achieve their goals.

This essay traces the presence of British left-wing radicals in Portugal during the Carnation Revolution of 1974–5, a phase of significant sociopolitical change that fired the imagination of layers of activists across Europe. The revolution, sparked by a captain’s coup within the military, also effectively ended Portugal’s colonial wars, and with its new armed forces movement and proliferation of workers’ commissions, held out the possibility of revolutionary socialism – and not simply the transition to a Western-style democracy. The revolution acquired wider international significance given the shock to the global Left of the right-wing military coup in Chile in September 1973. Moreover, British respondents refer to the period as a key moment of “revolutionary tourism” in the arc of revolt that swept the 1960s and 1970s. Groups such as the International Socialists sent delegations to Portugal to forge links with trade unions and left parties, and numerous individuals came as observers, or indeed to participate more fully in the events. Beyond generic analyses on the course and impact of the Portuguese Revolution, I conduct an oral and archival history which identifies the visitors’ motivations and experiences, their exchanges with Portuguese militants, the “lessons learned” and any political reorientation of the British radical Left prompted by the uprising. Indeed, the military counter-coup of 1975 proved a decisive moment, leading ultimately to a “normalization” of Portuguese society, and dashing the hopes of the European radical Left. For some on the British Left, Portugal 1975 came to represent the end of the European revolutionary movement that had begun in the late 1960s.

In the wake of Portugal’s Carnation Revolution on April 25 1974, several East Timorese political parties emerged as Portugal’s Armed Forces Movement (Movimento das Forças Armadas) announced a rapid decolonisation agenda. Each bore a distinct “nation-of-intent” or ideological vision of nationalism. The clashes between these nations-of-intent would define the fault lines within early East Timorese nationalism. This chapter applies the concept of “nation-of-intent” to the case of Timor-Leste. It examines these competing conceptions of the nation in Timor-Leste, their evolution over time and the ways these nations-of-intent informed the strategies and organisational evolution of the resistance from 1974 to 1999.

When a dictatorship is overthrown and a transition to democracy begins, the police force's place in the new regime becomes a contested issue. Can they be trusted? Are they to be held responsible for having enforced the dictatorship's rules? The April 1974 Carnation Revolution put an end to Europe's longest right-wing dictatorship. The Armed Forces Movement, in order to consolidate its power after the revolution, dismantled the political police (PIDE) and imprisoned its officers. Other police forces were ordered to remain in their headquarters and wait for democratic reorganisation. During the two revolutionary years that followed, the provisional governments could not count on the police and did not exercise effective authority: workers occupied factories, shanty town dwellers occupied empty houses and angry mobs destroyed the headquarters of political parties. How could the new authorities deal with the people's disruptive mobilisations if repression was the mark that stigmatised the overthrown fascist dictatorship? The post-revolutionary governments had to devise a new interpretation of the police's repressive practices, learning to distinguish which were a mark of fascism, and which could simply be understood as the exercise of ordinary public order duties.

Reviewed by: Ending Empire: Contested Sovereignty and Territorial Partition by Hendrik Spruyt Krishan Kumar Ending Empire: Contested Sovereignty and Territorial Partition. By Hendrik Spruyt. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2005. Why did some European empires wind themselves up relatively painlessly while others became mired in bitter conflict? Why, in particular, did Britain emerge relatively unscathed while France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Portugal engaged in bloody, drawn-out conflicts with nationalists, leading in some cases to civil war and revolution and in all cases to troubling legacies both in the former colonies and at home? In this theoretically ambitious and historically well-researched study, Spruyt shows that by 1945 the “international environment” had steadily become less and less favourable to empire. The economic gains – if such they had been – were increasingly seen as negligible. The security concerns were less relevant than in the past, especially after 1945 with the new military alliances, such as NATO, forged in the Cold War, and the development of nuclear weapons. Ideological rivalries made western imperialism a handicap in the competition to win friends and clients. The United States, with its interest in economic liberalism, was consistently hostile to imperial possessions and used every opportunity to put pressure on the imperial powers of Europe, most notably at the time of Suez.. According to the “realist” school of international relations, such international forces should have made every European power ready and willing to cede power to the colonial nationalists. Why then, with the exception of Britain, did they resist? Why did they ignore what appear clear self-interested reasons for giving up their colonial possessions? Spruyt argues that rather than look to the international environment we must consider domestic factors in each case. Against the “realist” school he offers an “institutionalist” analysis that focuses particularly on the nature of the political systems of the different European powers. Where there were multi-party systems, leading to a succession of often short-lived coalitional governments – as in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands – the “institutional architecture” offered a multitude of “veto points” allowing opponents of decolonization to resist the efforts of “rational-minded” elites to do the sensible thing. Among these opponents were in most cases the military, important business interests, and especially settler communities. Their ability to thwart decolonizing efforts led the French to get bogged down in Indo-China and Algeria, the Belgians in the Congo, and the Dutch in Indonesia. In countries with established two-party systems and strong executive rule, as in Britain, elites on the other hand were able to ignore opposition to decolonization and to get out of empire relatively peacefully. Spruyt adds the case of the Soviet Union as a further example of this pattern. The centralized power of the Communist Party made it possible for Gorbachev and the reformers to overcome the resistance of the conservatives and, ultimately – though unintended by Gorbachev - for the Soviet Union to dissolve itself with remarkably little violence. Portugal creates an obvious problem with this neat explanation. Under Salazar it was clearly no multi-party democracy but, by Spruyt’s own account, something akin to a military dictatorship in which the army called the shots throughout. For a long time – well past the time that other European empires had conceded independence to their colonies – the military leadership held to the view that Portugal’s African empire was crucial to its well-being. It fought a bitter war against nationalists in Angola and Mozambique. Once however significant groups in the military – the captains in the Armed Forces Movement, high-ranking officers such as Generals Spinola and Costa-Gomez – began to feel that Portugal was compromising its future with these policies, the game was up with the Portuguese empire. In other words, the Portuguese case sounds remarkably similar to the Soviet one. In both cases, an awareness of the international environment and fear that their country might be falling disastrously behind led significant elites to change direction and begin the process of reform. In one case it led to revolution, in another to peaceful disengagement. Multi-party systems and veto groups do not seem to have much to do with any of this. Spruyt tries to distinguish Portugal...

During the summer of 1975, a year after the Carnation Revolution, thousands of Portuguese men and women took to the streets in order to prevent what they feared could be a communist takeover. A military-led government had trumpeted the transition to socialism and the Armed Forces Movement was discussing the dissolution of the recently elected constitutional convention. This article offers a new account of the significance and political impact of the anti-communist rallies, demonstrations and riots during 1975 and provides an interpretation of the mechanisms by which anticommunist mobilization empowered moderate leaders and reversed the balance of power within the military, playing a crucial role in the triumph of electoral democracy.

A priority in General António de Spínola’s agenda once appointed new Portuguese head of state following the Armed Forces Movement (MFA) coup of April 1974 was to unravel the colonial crisis. But he intended to accomplish this by implementing the plan he had elaborately dealt with in his book Portugal e o Futuro published just prior to the coup. In a nutshell, Spínola’s plan was in no way designed to alter the colonial status quo. As he argued, ‘without the African territories, [Portugal] would be confined to a corner of Europe (…) and its independence totally compromised’. Spinola wanted to establish a Lusophone community of nations by granting greater autonomy to the colonies, though maintaining intact the umbilical cord with Portugal. The peoples of the colonies would be given a say in the running of their own affairs, and put on an equal footing with the respective white communities. As for the nationalist movements fighting for independence, Spínola dismissed them as ‘non-representative of the spirit of African emancipation’.1