WI Portugal ditches Mozambique but keeps Angola?

[Dunois]

Greetings all!

Following the discussion on decolonisation the following idea came up to my mind. What if instead of trying to integrate both Angola and Mozambique, Portugal grants independence to Mozambique but keeps and try very hard to fully integrate Angola into some kind of Lusitanian Union?

In terms of economic potential Angola was clearly a lot more valuable than Mozambique, chiefly because of the oil, iron and diamonds deposits. The territory was closer to home too and surrounded by more or less friendly regimes unlike Mozambique.

Ideally I would like to get a post WW2 POD, even better if its coupled with a clear and honest reassment of the colonial policies (it only happened in 1961 once the wars of independence started OTL). Say Portugal grants Mozambique to South African stewardship in exchange for more help from the western Allies post war?

 

[AdA]

Alternative portuguese decolonization

Greetings all!

Following the discussion on decolonisation the following idea came up to my mind. What if instead of trying to integrate both Angola and Mozambique, Portugal grants independence to Mozambique but keeps and try very hard to fully integrate Angola into some kind of Lusitanian Union?

In terms of economic potential Angola was clearly a lot more valuable than Mozambique, chiefly because of the oil, iron and diamonds deposits. The territory was closer to home too and surrounded by more or less friendly regimes unlike Mozambique.

Ideally I would like to get a post WW2 POD, even better if its coupled with a clear and honest reassment of the colonial policies (it only happened in 1961 once the wars of independence started OTL). Say Portugal grants Mozambique to South African stewardship in exchange for more help from the western Allies post war?

Angola was to tasty a treat for the superpowers to leave in portuguese hands. Portugal lacked the ressources to fight everywhere, and if the Portuguese Armed Forces had a choice they would have ditched Guiné first. What could have been done was to give independence to Guiné Angola and Mozambique in the 50s as part of a comonnwelth, but retain Sao Tomé, Cabo Verde, Cabinda and East Timor as autonomous regions very much like the current situation in Açores and Madeira.
The rational would be that sao tome and Cabo Verde where, like Madeira and Azores, desert when the portuguese got there, that Cabinda wouldn't want to be part of Angola and that East Timor would undersatnd that full independence would leed to an Indonesian invasion.
You would get Portugal has a medium sized power, with oil (Cabinda), a string of bases, and a ready market in it's former, and friendly, colonies.
You can change a lot of European History from this starting point.
For that to happen you need to have a left wing or moderate governemnt in Lisbon that solves the racism problem existing in the colonies (local whites in Mozambique where not just fighting to stay portuguese, they where fighting to keep blacks from power.
The POD would be General Humberto Delgado winning the presidential elections, and the Armed Forces stepping up to prevent the governement from stealing that election.

 

[Archangel]

Greetings all!

Following the discussion on decolonisation the following idea came up to my mind. What if instead of trying to integrate both Angola and Mozambique, Portugal grants independence to Mozambique but keeps and try very hard to fully integrate Angola into some kind of Lusitanian Union?

In terms of economic potential Angola was clearly a lot more valuable than Mozambique, chiefly because of the oil, iron and diamonds deposits. The territory was closer to home too and surrounded by more or less friendly regimes unlike Mozambique.

Ideally I would like to get a post WW2 POD, even better if its coupled with a clear and honest reassment of the colonial policies (it only happened in 1961 once the wars of independence started OTL). Say Portugal grants Mozambique to South African stewardship in exchange for more help from the western Allies post war?

In order to keep to keep Angola in association or union with Portugal, a post WW2 POD would involve the fall of Salazar (or Caetano), and:
(1)- its early replacement by moderate elements in the opposition (remnants of the old parties and more recent dissidents (like Humberto Delgado)), something that can be accomplished by having the Armed Forces switching support to the idea of a return to Democracy, an idea that inhabited the minds of many officers - all that is required is that they get guarantees that the rules will be fair for every party, unlike it was in the First republic;
(2)- its early replacements by modernizing figures inside the regime, as long as they can act unimpeded by hard-liners inside the regime;
(3)- a (closer in time) analogue of the Carnation Revolution, but with a less leftist component, this would require that the career officers maintain predominance instead of losing it to conscripted officers.


Keeping Angola (and Cabinda), also means keeping Cape Verde, São Tomé and Principe and East-Timor (and if the POD is before 1956, Cabinda will still be a protectorate and it will have more chances of being kept in Portuguese hands, regardless of Angola's path).

A good way to help facilitate that scenario, is also increasing Portuguese migration to Angola, for example, making the initiatives of development that happened in the 60's and early 70's taking place earlier, although this may require a change of government like scenarios 1 and 2 mentioned above.

I hope this helps.

 

[Viriato]

The problem with Salazar was that he was all or nothing when it came to the overseas empire. He truly believed that Portugal could not cede anything when it came to territory.

He was not alone, there were those in the regime known as the "ultras" or the hardliners of the old guard. The most important of these was the Portugal's president Admiral Américo Tomás. Before Salazar's fall from power he did not wield much authority, but after 1968 he had the final say on many of the decisions, leaving the new reform-minded Premier Marcello Caetano with little room for compromise when it came to the overseas empire. Américo Tomás was re-elected as president in 1972, but it was known that he was to announce his resignation upon his 80th birthday (November of 1974). Caetano was hoping that he could implement changes once he could get a new reform minded president elected.

There were several proposals floated within the inner circle of the government in Portugal in the early 1970s.

Firstly Portuguese Guinea was of little value and consumed the largest portion of the military budget, it also produced the largest number of casualties for Portuguese forces. In addition this was the only Portuguese territory at war where fewer than 20% of the Portuguese forces were locals. In Angola that figure was 50% and in Mozambique nearly 60% by 1974. The governor there had entered into secret negotiations with the guerrillas as early as 1972 and was in secret talks with Senegal to provide for an eventual exit.

As for Angola, it was felt that the war after 1972 had been won. The FNLA had been driven out of Northwestern Angola by 1966 and was a shell party that only had the support of Zaire's Mobuto Sese Seko. The other main independence movement, the MPLA had splintered into two rival groups in 1973 and had been driven out of Eastern Angola by the Portuguese and UNITA. UNITA was secretly working with the Portuguese to fight the MPLA in the East.

There were proposals that UNITA's leader Jonas Savimbi could be made the leader of either an autonomous part of Angola consisting of Moxico and Cuando-Cubango districts or perhaps even making this an independent state with him as leader. The goal was use this as a buffer zone between Zambia and Portuguese Angola. This buffer state would be run by UNITA and take care of any MPLA incursions. On the map below I have shown it in pink with the number 3.

Another idea floated around was to cutoff Cabinda and make it a district of Portugal since the native population did not want to be part of Angola. Cabinda had fewer than 100,000 inhabitants by 1974 of which nearly 20% were whites and mestiços. It was thought that with a little encouragement enough Portuguese could be settled so that they'd be the majority of the population. Also, Cabinda produces 2/3 of all of Angola's oil so it would have been a very lucrative area to keep.

Finally when it came to Mozambique there were various proposals. Some people said that Mozambique north of the Zambezi could be dumped since it contained few settlers and most of the wealth was in the south anyway. Also, this area had most of the native population of the country.

Some thought that perhaps Niassa district (labelled 1 on the map) could be given to Malawi so that this area at least could be part of a friendly state. Others said the 3 northern districts of Niassa, Cabo Delgado and Moçambique (Nampula) could be handed over to FRELIMO.

Densely populated Zambézia (#2 in Orange) never had guerrilla activity and its people were traditionally more conservative. It was thought that this area could go to COREMO (later RENAMO). Indeed, after independence this area was RENAMO territory.

The rest of Angola and Mozambique could have stayed Portuguese but even Marcello Caetano agreed that eventually they could become multi-racial independent countries that would be friendly with the west.

If this had been done we'd have the following in Southern Africa c1975.

Cabinda (Portuguese region)
Population 85,000 (17% White, 3% Mestiço)

Angola (Autonomous State of Portugal, eventually independent)
Population 5,400,000 (10% White, 2% Mestiço)

Kuando-Kubango (UNITA run state)
Population 400,000 (1.25% White, 1% Mestiço)

Mozambique (FRELIMO run state)
Population 3 million (1% White, 0.5% Asian and Mestiço)

Zambézia (COREMO run state)
Population 2.7 million (0.8% White, 0.4% Asian and Mestiço)

Sofala (Autonomous State of Portugal, eventually independent)
Population 4 million (7% White, 1% Mestiço, 0.5% Asian)

 

[Marius]

I don't think that this would be too hard.

Jan Smuts, the South African PM, was interested in splitting up Mozambique. He would have purchased the southern half for South Africa, and the northern half would have become British and gone to Tanganyika.

Try make that happen? perhaps Portugal goes through some crisis and decides to sell Mozambique to raise funds, but manages to hang onto Angola.

As an aside, Angola is apparently more "Portuguese" than Mozambique and has quite close cultural and economic ties with Brazil.

 

[Ferreolus]

Jan Smuts, the South African PM, was interested in splitting up Mozambique. He would have purchased the southern half for South Africa, and the northern half would have become British and gone to Tanganyika.


Try make that happen? perhaps Portugal goes through some crisis and decides to sell Mozambique to raise funds, but manages to hang onto Angola.

Of course, that would have been a pre-WWII POD, so the situation is quite different. Decolonisation only got really serious after World War II so if you want Portugal to rid itself of Mozambique you need to find other reasons for doing so.

Considering that one of the reasons that toppled Portugal's monarchy was that the King's action of giving in to British colonial demands was highly unpopular in Portugal any POD making Portugal to give up Mozambique would have quite large side-effects.

 

[Dunois]

Great Post with loads of information!

Many thanks Viriato, "gerrymandering" Angola and Mozambique is an option which I had not considered. I would be very interest to see what your sources are, as you seem to have access to some interesting materials on the subject. I completely agree with your view that the hardliners in the authoritarian government will be a problem. The trick therefore would be to have them sidelined or removed in favour of reform minded politicians. Perhaps some amount of external pressure, along with promises of help and support might do the trick.

Cabinda is litteraly soaked with oil from what I have found, I would even adventure to say that current estimates of reserves are probably on the low end of the scale. The region is too unstable to do a lot of exploration and I bet that more stuff awaits offshore in the deeper seas. If Portugal keeps it, it will become one of the world major oil producing countries and this could become both a blessing and a curse.

I am strongly considering integrating some kind of Angola stays Portuguese stuff as part of my TL. Still I want to be as credible as possible when designing the post war world, so if changes have to happen in Portuguese colonial policies they have to be credible.