The Portuguese Revolution

This book interprets the Portuguese revolution of 1974–75 and emphasizes its significance as a political and economic rapture. It describes the events leading up to the coup of April 25, 1974, the coup itself, the role of the Armed Forces Movement (MFA), subsequent institutional conflict among the MFA and the political parties including the Portuguese Communist Party, and the impact of labor unions and new popular and social movements. Advancing a class theory of the state, Chilcote (Univ. of California, Riverside) argues the November 25, 1975, countercoup ended prospects for any socialist transition and ensured the state's control over the eventual consolidation of capitalism and parliamentary democracy. He believes Portugal's revolution failed for many reasons, including the country's conservative nature, its traditionally weak proletariat, and a lack of an independent workers' movement under the António Salazar/Marcelo Caetano regime. Chilcote's key argument, however, is that the continuity of the state throughout Portugal's uneven movement from authoritarianism to liberal democracy best explains the revolution's political and economic outcomes. This analysis is well grounded in extensive archival research, numerous interviews of the revolution's participants, and a careful reading of the academic literature's vast coverage of the topic. Summing Up: Recommended. * CHOICE *
Ronald Chilcote’s The Portuguese Revolution is an outstanding analysis of the political economy, state formation, and emergence of capitalism in Portugal. . . . It is also a pivotal study that will generate significant comparative interest, not least because the concern with the delays and advances of bourgeois revolution in Portugal has clear import to cases of state formation across European and postcolonial contexts. * Bulletin of Latin American Research *
[An] important new work. . . . Chilcote has not only presented a wealth of information including the debates inside and outside of Portugal on the events of 1974–75 and their impact but also a model of how to analyze the dynamics of revolutionary struggle in the context of an enduring yet changing political economy. -- Rosemary Galli, author of Peoples' Spaces and State Spaces: Land and Governance in Mozambique * World Tensions *
Professor Chilcote has thoroughly and meticulously researched a massive archive that he himself constructed to make an important contribution to our knowledge of the Portuguese democratic revolution and transition. Moreover, his analysis is developed within a theoretical framework that makes the work all the more interesting and challenging. -- Alan Stoleroff, Instituto Superior de Ciéncias do Trabalho e da Empresa, Lisbon
Chilcote paints a vivid picture of a state first in formation and then in crisis, of the impact of the African wars on the traditional imperial economy and upon the army fighting them, the rise of social movements, the rebirth of civil society and the emergence of socialist and democratic ideologies. Yet, at a more profound level, he analyses the forces—the state, economic groups, and classes—that, despite the revolutionary moment, maintain control and historical continuity. This also resonates with the experience of the former colonies. The book provides students of historical change with tools for a deeper analysis and understanding not only of the Lusophone world but beyond. His proposition that the state remains decisive to capitalist development is stunningly proven by the rescue of financial capitalism in the recent global crisis. -- Rosemary Galli, author of Peoples' Spaces and State Spaces: Land and Governance in Mozambique
The Portuguese Revolution marries seminal works in class-based theory with a rich analysis of recent Portuguese social and political history. It marks an important contribution to the literature on the only social revolution in post–World War II Western Europe. -- Nancy Bermeo, University of Oxford
Portugal was once a country of 'discoverers.' Today, it is still to be discovered by social scientists. Which other country in the twentieth century experienced a bloodless revolution led by young military officers anxious to put an end to an unjust war, a revolution moreover promptly appropriated by the popular classes and leading to the consolidated democracy of today? Here is a decisive book to solve the puzzle. Ronald Chilcote has dedicated much time to the study of Portuguese society. He offers us the best work on the Carnation Revolution written in English. Very well researched, thoughtfully conceived, and elegantly written, this fine book is obligatory reading not just for those interested in knowing more about Portugal but also for all those interested in understanding the works of progressive social change in our world. -- Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Professor of Sociology, University of Coimbra
This is a carefully crafted, richly documented, and powerfully argued study. It will be of great interest to historians, political scientists, and other scholars interested in contemporary Portugal, the larger Lusophonic world, and broader questions of state power and decolonization. It has particular relevance for students working on Portuguese Africa. -- Allen Isaacman, University of Minnesota
In a rare glimpse of Portugal's 1974 revolutionary paradoxes, this masterly and systematic study reveals a conjuncture of class struggle, divisions within the left, and conservative counterrevolutions. This is essential reading not only for scholars of European politics, but also to analysts of global capitalism, its dominant forces, and political patterns. -- Jawdat Abu el Haj, Federal University of Ceará, Brazil