0:01

This episode is brought to you by Reliefband.

0:04

If you regularly suffer from nausea, listen

0:06

up. Reliefband is a clinically proven

0:08

wearable nausea solution with no

0:10

drugs or unwanted side effects. It treats

0:13

nausea caused by motion sickness, anxiety,

0:15

migraines, and more. Using technology

0:17

that sends signals to your brain to stop nausea

0:19

quickly and effectively. Get relief

0:21

today. Shop now at reliefband.com.

0:24

And to get 20% off your purchase, use

0:27

the code RELIEF20 at checkout.

0:31

Welcome to The New Books Network.

0:34

Welcome to New Books in History, a channel

0:37

on The New Books Network. I'm your host, Michael

0:39

Van of Sacramento State University. Today

0:42

I'm speaking with Christophe Coulter about his

0:44

Post-Colonial People, The Return

0:46

from Africa and the Remaking of Portugal, out

0:49

with Cambridge University Press in 2022. Dr.

0:53

Coulter is a historian of Western Europe in its global

0:55

context. Currently, Professor

0:57

of Modern History at the University of Agder. He holds

1:00

a PhD from 2010 and a Vignette

1:03

L'Agende 2019 in Modern

1:06

History from the Free University of Berlin, where

1:08

he taught and conducted research from 2011 to 2020. His

1:12

first book is The Discovery of the Third World,

1:15

Decolonization and the Rise of the New Left

1:17

in France, circa 1950-1976. Also

1:21

out with Cambridge in 2016. However,

1:24

this was originally published in German in 2011

1:26

before the English translation.

1:29

Post-Colonial People, The Return from Africa

1:31

and the Remaking of Portugal is his second book. Christophe Coulter, Christophe,

1:35

if I may, welcome to New Books in History. Thanks

1:37

a lot, Mike. Thanks for having me. I

1:39

really appreciate the interest you putting

1:42

in the book and you taking the time. It's great. I'm excited to talk

1:44

to you today. Yeah, I'm excited about this book. As

1:47

you point out in the introduction, this

1:50

is a topic that really has not been discussed

1:52

in the larger history of decolonization in Western

1:55

European history. But before we get

1:57

into post-colonial people,

1:59

tell us a little bit about yourself. How did

2:02

you come to be a historian of post-colonial

2:04

France and Portugal? And I'm

2:06

also curious about your trajectory

2:08

because you are speaking to us from Norway

2:11

now. Someone

2:13

who's from Germany who writes on

2:17

Portuguese who returned

2:19

from Africa. So I'm very curious in your

2:23

roots and your roots.

2:25

Okay, yeah, no, sure. Great question.

2:29

I think I have three possible answers

2:31

and I'll just let you pick one. So the first one would

2:33

be to speak about the contingencies of

2:35

life. A second one would

2:38

be to speak about personal inclination.

2:41

And a third one would be to speak about

2:44

academic and intellectual trajectories. Give

2:47

us the second and the third.

2:49

Okay, the second

2:52

and the third is, I think

2:54

as an undergrad I did, so

2:56

I studied in Berlin. I'm from Germany,

2:59

from South Germany, but moved up to Berlin

3:01

where I spent the last 25 years. And as an undergrad

3:04

I took some classes in German history and I thought they

3:06

were fascinating, really, really important

3:09

and good stuff and I learned a lot. But

3:11

at the same time it soon turned out that

3:14

what I was most attracted by

3:16

were in fact histories that went

3:18

beyond local or national German

3:21

histories or in fact histories

3:23

that did not have anything to do

3:25

with Germany in first place. And

3:28

at the time this was a very sort of traditional

3:31

German history department. So you had European

3:33

history which was basically German history and

3:35

there was a little bit of British history and

3:38

a little bit of French history and

3:41

maybe here and there a little bit of Italian history.

3:44

The one thing I went for was French

3:46

history at the time. So that

3:48

was how it sort of started.

3:51

And I think

3:52

the point is for me that

3:55

it's not a, it's a time on that idea

3:57

that reading is a way

3:59

of traveling.

3:59

And

4:01

that's actually one of my stock

4:04

answers. I grew up in Hawaii

4:06

on islands, which I only

4:08

left the islands about four or five times before

4:11

I was 18, and got interested

4:13

in history because I was able to travel the world.

4:15

See that makes sense. That

4:18

makes perfect sense to me. And for

4:21

me, I think researching writing

4:23

history is a form of traveling, not only

4:25

back in time, but also

4:27

in space, in language and in cultural background.

4:30

And it's a way of going

4:32

beyond the confines of whatever

4:34

place I found myself stuck in. So that

4:37

was Berlin for a long time, and now it's Southern

4:39

Norway, and it's just really a pleasure to be

4:42

sitting in Southern Norway and to be reading

4:45

about Portugal or Angola.

4:45

So I think

4:47

that that's the sort of personal inclination.

4:50

As for the more

4:53

academic and intellectual trajectory, I did

4:55

an MA thesis actually on German

4:57

history. So I was interested in the German

5:00

you left in the 1960s and 1968 and that kind of

5:02

thing, and the Vietnam

5:05

War, about which you must

5:07

know a ton of things that I don't. But at the

5:09

time, it just struck me that these kids

5:12

living in a sort of post-fascist consumer

5:14

society

5:15

would be interested in the Vietnam War. Because

5:18

that's a very well-known story, but it was a new

5:20

story for me at the time.

5:22

So I was trying to understand what is going on here

5:24

and discovered that, well, this

5:27

idea of the third world, of a revolutionary

5:30

third world, a new force in

5:32

world politics that was really attractive

5:35

to people on the left

5:37

of the political spectrum and discontent

5:40

with the old left of the communists and

5:42

the social democratic parties. And so

5:44

that was kind of my MA

5:47

thesis, but it turned out that these West

5:49

German guys, they

5:52

really got a lot of inspiration from the Algerian

5:54

War of Independence, as

5:56

everyone did at the time. It's really such

5:59

a foundational moment.

5:59

And so that gave me

6:02

a reason to get interested in French

6:04

history actually, because lots of the arguments

6:07

circulating in the German you left were

6:10

in fact directly imported from the French

6:12

you left at the time. And that led

6:14

to my first book, which is a

6:16

sort of political, conceptual,

6:19

intellectual history of the third world concept

6:21

in

6:22

revolutionary politics in the 1960s and 70s, but

6:24

in that

6:26

French context. And

6:28

that, I think it triggered my

6:31

broader interest in the history of decolonization.

6:34

So that made me a historian of

6:36

France.

6:37

So we've been watching you being pulled

6:40

steadily southwest

6:43

from Berlin down into France.

6:46

And then so how did you wind up in Portugal

6:48

and beyond and

6:51

the tail end of the Portuguese empire?

6:53

That's in LA such a boring story

6:56

because I did my, yeah, unfortunately,

6:58

like I did my PhD and then

7:02

I had an opportunity to apply for

7:04

a position with

7:05

a professor that had been supervising

7:08

my PhD

7:10

postdoc position and in order to be able

7:12

to apply I needed to come up with a new project.

7:15

And doing work on France

7:17

and decolonization, I had come across the

7:21

famous case of the Pienroix. So

7:23

Algerian settlers returning after independence, 1962

7:27

from Algeria to metric wallet in

7:29

France. And that history fascinated

7:32

me because it's, there's just something about

7:34

these people

7:37

returning or going to a

7:39

place where there's supposed to be long and

7:41

in many ways they do and many others they

7:43

don't.

7:44

Many of them aren't ethnically French,

7:46

right? I mean, there's Italians and Maltese

7:50

and Spaniards. I

7:52

mean, yeah, yeah,

7:55

it really is a fascinating story. Yes.

7:59

And best is wonderful.

7:59

book also about the Maltese

8:02

returning. What is it

8:05

again?

8:06

It will come to me later, but it's just

8:08

a fascinating story. And so they're

8:10

supposed to be French and they're supposed to be

8:13

going to France and to

8:15

somehow be at home there, but

8:17

they don't really want to. No one wants them there.

8:19

So I thought that was interesting. And I thought, okay,

8:22

I'd like to do something like that,

8:24

but not that, because it seemed to me that

8:26

there was a lot of work on this already. And

8:29

also, frankly, I was fed up with

8:31

the French history at that point

8:33

in time.

8:35

And I wanted to do something new, something

8:37

else. And so I was systematically looking for

8:39

similar cases. And

8:41

then the Portuguese case popped up.

8:44

And it is in many ways

8:46

comparable

8:48

in other ways that I'm sure we will

8:50

explore. It's even more dramatic, if you will.

8:54

And that Portuguese case, it turned out,

8:56

was one on which there was not a lot

8:58

of research. So I thought, I'll go

9:00

for this. It was a strange decision to make, because

9:03

I had never traveled

9:05

to Portugal at this point in time. I've

9:07

never consciously met a Portuguese

9:09

person. And

9:11

still, I decided to do that. And then,

9:13

of course, the first thing to do was learn the language. Yeah.

9:16

Yeah. Well, I mean, great

9:19

success. I mean, I think the books are extremely

9:22

informative and readable. And

9:24

a readable is an understatement. But

9:28

it really fills an important void in, at

9:31

least what I thought I knew of decolonization

9:34

and about European history in

9:37

this time period. So before

9:39

we get into the book itself, could you give us

9:41

a little bit of context on the history of the Portuguese

9:43

empire, which I teach these

9:45

big world history classes. So the Portuguese empire

9:48

is always pretty amazing, because in some ways, it's

9:50

the first and the last of these great colonial

9:52

empires.

9:55

Could you give us a little short

9:58

history of the Portuguese empire just to give

10:00

us the context.

10:02

Right, of course. Yes,

10:04

I'll try to keep it short and concise.

10:07

So as you said, it's only 500 years, right? Right.

10:11

So it is 500 years. So that's pretty

10:13

amazing. And it is, as you said, it

10:15

is the first and the last European,

10:18

obviously, his empire, going

10:20

back to the 15th century and

10:23

going in ending

10:25

only in the last

10:28

third of the 20th century, because

10:30

they were really stubbornly resisting

10:33

the trend towards decolonization.

10:35

After everybody else had basically given up on

10:37

empire, they were still continuing. And that's something

10:40

we'll talk about more. Yeah, just

10:42

as a footnote, even Macau outlasts

10:45

Hong Kong.

10:46

It's true. I'm going to say about a year and a half. I actually

10:48

visited, in 97,

10:50

I visited Hong Kong and

10:52

Macau.

10:53

So I've seen the

10:55

Portuguese empire, the tail end.

10:58

I would love to travel to Macau one day.

11:01

I don't think I could advise

11:03

it now. No. It's Las

11:05

Vegas. It was amazing

11:08

in 97, because there was this mid-century

11:10

architecture, and

11:13

there's a real

11:15

Sino-Luso culture, and

11:18

the food was incredible. But my

11:20

understanding now, and I've taught in China for a couple of years, and

11:23

my very well-off students at those universities,

11:25

they go down to Macau, and they're like, oh, yeah,

11:28

it's like Vegas. It's wonderful. I'm like, no, no. Maybe

11:32

that's fun. That's fun for you. That's fun for you guys. But

11:36

that's not what I want. But anyway,

11:38

we digress. So it's this

11:40

incredibly long-lived empire. It

11:42

is a long-lived empire, which starts in 1415,

11:46

when the Portuguese

11:48

begin their overseas expansion by conquering

11:50

a sutta. I assume it's pronounced

11:52

in English. So

11:55

today, a Spanish autonomous city is strangely

11:57

enough on the north coast of Africa, bordering

11:59

the south. Morocco and from there the

12:01

Portuguese begin exploring

12:03

the Atlantic Ocean and sailing along the

12:06

western coastline of Africa with

12:08

all those incredible famous

12:11

so-called explorers that the Portuguese

12:14

are still very proud of today.

12:16

So it's a whole thing in Portuguese contemporary

12:19

culture. But

12:21

through mere years of sailing around the southern tip

12:23

of the continent and and

12:26

opening up a sea route to

12:28

Asia for the Portuguese. And

12:32

the Portuguese are establishing trading posts

12:34

and colonies along these

12:37

routes throughout Africa, Asia, also

12:39

go to South America to Brazil, of course,

12:42

famously. And what

12:44

they do is establish look

12:48

at cheap trade and spices

12:50

in gold and other valuable

12:52

commodities and making really

12:55

Portugal one of the wealthiest

12:57

countries in Europe for some time,

12:59

which is really surprising

13:02

if you look at the later history of Portugal.

13:04

So during the 16th Empire, Lisbon

13:09

is a truly global city at

13:11

the time. I think the population there has 10%

13:16

black people, something that is

13:18

never reached again before the end of the 20th century

13:21

in Portugal. But

13:23

in the 17th century, the Portuguese

13:25

Empire begins to decline

13:28

as other European colonial

13:30

powers, the Dutch and British, begin

13:32

to challenge the Portuguese dominance

13:34

and overseas trade.

13:37

In 1822, Brazil is lost, as

13:41

the Portuguese like to say. So Brazil is

13:43

declaring its independence from Portugal

13:45

and empire begins to

13:47

shrink further. But at the same time, the Portuguese

13:49

are then turning towards what they call

13:52

their third empire, the African

13:54

Empire. So what had

13:56

been just a number of trading posts along

13:58

the African coastline?

13:59

now becomes a

14:03

bridgehead for establishing

14:06

a

14:06

typical European-style

14:09

colonial rule in these territories

14:13

in the wake of the infamous Berlin

14:15

Conference in 1885.

14:18

They're playing a role in the scramble for Africa

14:20

and Angola and Mozambique and pushing in

14:22

the interior.

14:24

They are absolutely and they

14:26

spend the better part of the 1890s to 1920 with

14:28

so-called pacification campaigns,

14:33

which are of course not peaceful.

14:37

Not peaceful. Not peaceful in any way. Extremely

14:40

brutal and that

14:43

is sort of when we really see

14:45

the third Portuguese empire in Africa

14:48

emerging, but it's not yet the

14:50

point in time where we see large

14:53

settler communities in these places.

14:55

That comes a little later.

14:58

And they've also got little footholds

15:00

in Southeast Asia with

15:03

East Timor, Southern

15:06

China with Macau I mentioned,

15:08

and India with Goa.

15:10

Yeah, absolutely. Even

15:13

though we think the Portuguese empire

15:15

has gone into this decline with the sort of greater

15:18

Iberian colonial world, there's still

15:20

a

15:21

significant global reach in

15:23

some strategically

15:26

very interesting places. Could

15:34

you talk a bit about the moment of decolonization?

15:36

I mean, how did this empire come to an end? And

15:40

obviously we need to talk about Portuguese

15:42

decolonization in the context of the Carnation

15:44

Revolution. So maybe I'm asking you

15:47

to do two things here. Or

15:49

maybe they're so intertwined that you can't separate

15:51

the Carnation Revolution and decolonization. But

15:55

also note how Portuguese decolonization

15:57

differed from other examples of decolonization.

15:59

colonization, particularly the French or

16:02

British? Yeah, right. That's

16:04

an interesting question. So

16:06

how did Portugal's empire end?

16:09

Well, the important thing to

16:11

keep in mind here is that not only, as you said

16:13

earlier, is Portugal the first and

16:15

the last European overseas empire, but also

16:18

Portugal has the sort of longest

16:21

20th century dictatorship in Europe,

16:24

the so-called new state, Stadu

16:26

Novell, in Portuguese, and that new

16:28

state is

16:32

only coming down 48 years after its installation

16:34

in 1974. And in 1974, which is the year of my birth,

16:42

coincidentally, in 1974, we see a

16:45

military coup that is to say that

16:47

it is offices from

16:48

the Portuguese

16:53

army that are toppling the dictatorship,

16:55

and that then transforms into a

16:57

sort of popular uprising

16:59

and a veritable revolution that

17:02

is doing away with the dictatorship

17:05

and doing away with empire at the same

17:07

time.

17:08

And

17:11

the new man in

17:13

power is so this movement of the armed

17:16

forces, as they are called, they

17:18

have a program that they announced in that program is

17:20

called the Three D's. The first one

17:22

is democratization. The

17:24

second is development, because they

17:27

consider Portugal to be under developed

17:30

economically, socially and culturally. And

17:33

the third one is decolonization. And

17:36

that points to one

17:38

of the really most important

17:41

root causes of this Portuguese

17:43

revolution, which is the colonial

17:45

wars that have been going on

17:48

in the Portuguese African territory

17:50

since 1961. In

17:53

three of these five territories,

17:55

and now we're talking about Angola, Mozambique

17:58

and Guinea-Bissau,

17:59

In these territories,

18:02

there is armed resistance against

18:05

the Portuguese and as one

18:07

would imagine, because that's the way the sport

18:09

of decolonization often tend

18:12

to go,

18:13

it's really sort of impossible for

18:15

the national liberation movements to achieve

18:17

a military full-out victory. At

18:20

the same time, it's impossible for the Portuguese

18:22

to push out every fire of resistance.

18:25

They just don't. They just can't do it.

18:28

And what becomes increasingly clear is that they're

18:30

politically losing this war,

18:33

because an international

18:35

opinion, if such a thing exists, is turning

18:38

more and more against Portuguese

18:40

colonialism. And

18:42

this is a familiar story, right? We see this

18:44

in Algeria, we see this in the American

18:47

war in Vietnam, but

18:50

famously in Algeria, the officers

18:52

have a response, right? When

18:55

it looks like the Fourth

18:57

Republic is going to not be committed

19:00

to the war, they revolt in 1958

19:03

and initially support

19:05

de Gaulle, but then when they realize de Gaulle is going to favor

19:07

decolonization, the OAS

19:09

turns on him. And so you have the Office

19:12

of Corps at odds with any

19:15

discussion of decolonization. And

19:17

I think you can make a historical analogy to

19:19

the American military

19:20

and the American war

19:27

in Vietnam, different,

19:30

but a similar commitment from the military

19:32

to continue this war. I mean, there's

19:34

a revisionist school in American historiography

19:37

that

19:39

the United States could have won Vietnam. It

19:41

was just a political weakness,

19:43

right? And

19:45

this is why I find this, your book

19:48

and the Portuguese example, so stimulating

19:50

is that here you have something totally different where

19:52

the Officer Corps

19:54

revolts against the war, right?

19:56

What? Yeah. I

19:58

do.

19:59

and rightly so, of course, as heroes ever since,

20:03

which in a way has the downside of,

20:05

and may just make that common in Portuguese memory culture,

20:07

of not making it clear

20:10

that these people who were in fact ending

20:12

the colonial wars at the same time

20:14

are of course the people that had

20:17

been

20:18

engaging in this war for a

20:20

number of years, committing all sorts of atrocities

20:24

that no one has ever faced

20:26

any consequences for.

20:29

So it's a very ambivalent story,

20:31

but they are the heroes of this

20:34

year, 1974. On

20:37

April 25, 1974, they toppled the dictatorship and

20:42

they make it immediately clear that part

20:45

of the new Portugal has to

20:47

be a decisive

20:48

drive towards decolonization.

20:51

And now that's

20:54

within the, so Antonio

20:56

de Spiñola, who is the new president

20:59

of Portugal, has a sort of different idea.

21:01

He wants to sort of face transfer with

21:04

the idea of making Portugal

21:07

still an important play in African

21:09

affairs, but that really isn't

21:12

the time anymore for that kind of negotiated

21:15

solution. The Portuguese are

21:17

under a lot of pressure in the territories

21:20

in Africa. Their soldiers

21:22

don't want to go on fighting. And

21:25

the population back home wants

21:27

to see those soldiers

21:30

to return to Portugal. So they're

21:32

really speeding up

21:34

negotiations with different

21:37

movements of liberation in the colonies,

21:40

leading to the independence of all African

21:43

colonies within 1974 and 1975.

21:48

So in November, 1975, with the independence

21:51

of Angora, it's over.

21:53

And East Timor. And

21:55

East Timor. And East Timor. That's

21:57

my corner of the world. So

22:01

this brings us to your book.

22:04

So what does this mean for the

22:08

so-called white settler population

22:10

in the colonies? First,

22:14

how many are there? What's the size of this settler

22:16

population? Which colonies are they

22:19

in?

22:20

Who were they? Civilians, administrators,

22:23

soldiers? And what are their choices

22:26

in 1974, 1975? Yeah.

22:31

So what was the size of these settler

22:33

populations? Which colonies did they live in?

22:36

So basically, the Portuguese

22:39

have two settler colonies. In

22:42

Africa, one of them is Angola.

22:44

It's the bigger one, and the other one is Mozambique.

22:49

In Angola, around

22:51

independence, we have something like 300,000, maybe 350,000 Portuguese

22:53

settlers. Whereas in Mozambique,

22:59

they would be numbering

23:01

around 200,000, maybe. The numbers are uncertain.

23:03

What is really

23:08

interesting, I think, about these

23:11

settlers is that most

23:14

of them, like, it's true, there are some

23:17

colonies, there are some families in

23:19

these colonies that have roots that go back

23:21

three generations, sometimes even four.

23:24

But

23:24

that is a very untypical

23:28

story. Most of them, in fact,

23:31

have gone, have migrated to

23:33

the colonies from Portugal in

23:35

the 1950s, 1960s, even

23:38

in the 1970s. So many of

23:40

them have only

23:42

spent part of their adult life in

23:44

the colonies

23:45

before they were actually returning

23:48

to Portugal, likely truly returning, because

23:51

that is where they migrated from a

23:53

couple of years ago.

23:55

That would be the case of around two

23:57

thirds of the people returning in 1970.

23:59

they would have been

24:02

born in the metropole and not in the

24:04

colonies. That's interesting because if we

24:06

compare it to, for example, Algeria,

24:08

in Algeria, we see that 80% of those coming

24:12

to France in 1962 had

24:14

in fact been born in Algeria in the

24:16

colony. So it's a sort of different kind

24:18

of setup. Yeah. And some

24:21

of their families go back for generations. Some

24:23

of their families, they may have been born there, but

24:26

again, their families

24:28

can be traced back to Spain or more Malta

24:29

or Italy. But

24:33

in this case, many of them are

24:36

indeed very much Portuguese who have been

24:39

in Africa for a couple

24:42

of decades, but maybe as short as a few

24:44

years. Absolutely. And

24:47

they really only start coming in substantial

24:49

numbers after the Second World War.

24:52

There's

24:53

a number of reasons for

24:55

that. There is an economic boom in the

24:57

colonies at the time, but it's also

24:59

that there is a conscious settlement

25:01

policy

25:02

by the Portuguese dictatorship at the time.

25:05

And wasn't there a curious

25:07

administrative change? Maybe,

25:09

I want to say 1961, but they're about

25:12

where the territories

25:14

of what we are talking about as colonies became

25:17

Portuguese territory. Do I have that right?

25:19

Yeah, they did. It was in 1951. 51, excuse

25:23

me. Yeah. There was

25:26

what they call the constitutional revision.

25:28

And

25:29

that constitutional revision

25:31

proclaimed that there were no Portuguese

25:33

colonies any longer. Instead,

25:36

these were overseas territories

25:40

of an indivisible nation. It's

25:42

very much like the French like to

25:44

think about Algeria,

25:46

only that the Portuguese applied this

25:49

to their entire empire, saying this is just

25:51

basically one country, even

25:53

if it's

25:57

sort of on different continents. really

26:00

only one country and these are overseas

26:03

provinces. And that was a sort of

26:05

legalistic argument that they used in the United

26:07

Nations where of course everyone was pressing them to

26:09

decolonize and they said we don't know what you're

26:12

talking about, there are no colonies, we

26:14

cannot decolonize a nation can we?

26:16

Who me? I don't have any

26:18

colonies. And

26:21

I'll note that this is within a few years

26:23

that my home got statehood.

26:26

Hawaii became the 50th state in 1959. Reading

26:29

this book, I

26:30

couldn't help but sort of reflect on

26:32

my family's history and

26:41

had things taken a different turn

26:44

in Hawaii with the sovereignty movement.

26:51

There's interesting parallels, there's very interesting parallels.

26:53

But moving on, so come 1975, you have,

26:55

we're talking about half a million

26:59

people coming into Portugal

27:08

and they're leaving it

27:09

under duress, right? So many of them are

27:11

leaving with a suitcase. Maybe

27:14

some of them are bringing some wealth, they've enjoyed a certain

27:16

lifestyle as settler

27:18

colonists in Africa. And

27:21

then how did, what happened when, initially

27:24

what happened when they arrived and what's

27:28

the Portuguese term for them? I will

27:30

horribly mispronounce it, so if you could give us

27:33

one time in Portuguese for the

27:35

returned. Okay,

27:36

so the return or the returnees

27:38

in Portuguese would be called, ús, khatrunadus,

27:41

meaning those who have returned.

27:44

Those who have returned, okay.

27:46

And

27:47

they're different than the pied noir,

27:49

we touched on because many of them don't

27:52

have the same roots, but

27:54

also the economic conditions that await them

27:56

are very different. The pied noir

27:58

come to France.

27:59

in 1962, where

28:02

we're in still in the 30 glorious years.

28:05

We are. But Portugal, Portugal's

28:08

economy is as has not really taken

28:10

part in the 30 glorious years in the same way.

28:13

And this is post oil shock.

28:16

And so now we're getting into the economic

28:18

malaise of the 1970s. So

28:20

what awaits them in what conditions economic

28:23

conditions await them in Portugal in 1975?

28:25

Right? Yes. You basically gave

28:29

the answer yourself. Like the point is

28:31

that the economic conditions are

28:34

extremely unlike those the

28:37

Pinois find in a booming post-war

28:39

economy in France. Portugal

28:41

at the time is sort of by

28:43

all indicators, one of the least

28:47

performing economies in

28:49

Western Europe. They

28:52

have

28:52

terrible unemployment,

28:54

have a terrible

28:56

housing situation, which of course is

28:59

a crucial thing to consider when

29:01

all of a sudden you have half a million people

29:03

at your doorstep. And

29:06

as you said, the country is suffering

29:09

as everybody else

29:11

is from a sort of international

29:14

economic crisis, a recession, which

29:17

among other things leads to a drop

29:20

in the number of tourist

29:22

visitors to Portugal. Something

29:25

that is a mainstay of the economy already

29:28

back then, even more today, but already back

29:30

then tourism is a very important

29:33

economic sector.

29:37

And all of that chaos is of

29:39

course compounded by the fact that they're

29:42

transitioning from dictatorship to,

29:45

well, they don't really know for some

29:47

time, it's really, it's an open situation. So

29:49

no one knows are they steering towards

29:52

some sort of socialist

29:54

experiment? Is this going to

29:56

be a liberal democratic

29:59

representative?

29:59

the system, it's all

30:02

up in the air,

30:03

part of the economic elites of the

30:05

old regime are forced to leave the country,

30:09

factories are down, and they

30:11

experiment with collectivization

30:13

that works well in some cases not

30:16

so well in others, so it really is

30:18

a period of intense turmoil

30:22

both politically, socially

30:24

and economically. And that means

30:26

that yeah, those people coming

30:29

well home, for some of them not

30:32

home but to a place

30:34

that they've only heard about for a third

30:36

of them, they

30:37

have a hard time fitting in

30:39

in the beginning.

30:41

And they've enjoyed a certain level of privilege

30:44

previously as a racial

30:47

elite in the colonies,

30:49

right?

30:50

They have absolutely, and that brings me back to

30:52

the question you asked that I

30:54

did not answer about the

30:57

motives for leaving the colonies

30:59

in the first place. So I think that's a very

31:01

important point and we can probably not do

31:03

it just this year, but it's true

31:06

that in many ways this

31:09

is what we would call maybe a course

31:11

to forced migration, in

31:13

the sense that of course no one wants to keep

31:16

going in a place where

31:18

competing national liberation movements

31:20

are fighting each other and using

31:24

mortars and guns in your street, where

31:27

you cannot buy milk anymore, and

31:29

where the school and the doctor have closed down. So

31:31

I understand and everybody I think understands

31:34

easily that this is a situation where people

31:36

pack their things and go. And

31:40

that would have been the case in much of Angola,

31:42

which is transitioning from a colonial

31:44

war into a civil war between

31:47

rivaling factions of competing

31:49

national liberation movements,

31:52

making for a sort of very

31:54

volatile and difficult

31:58

situation politically and militarily.

32:00

and people are just somehow really afraid,

32:02

fearing for their lives.

32:04

But that is a fact. It is

32:06

also a fact, however, and I think that is something that

32:09

is not discussed enough in

32:11

Portugal that

32:13

many of them just simply didn't see themselves

32:15

living under black majority rule. They

32:18

had no desire whatsoever

32:20

to experience that. And they

32:23

were used to enjoying a sort of racial

32:25

privilege that made even

32:27

the most modest Portuguese

32:31

a person with privilege as

32:34

compared to what they could have achieved

32:36

in their village in Portugal, like people

32:39

in the colonies, they had servants. That

32:42

was something for the upper middle class back

32:44

in Portugal, inattainable for

32:46

the large number of Portuguese, obviously. And

32:49

all of that really losing all of

32:51

that, I think is also what some of them

32:55

what drove some of them out of

32:57

the colonies. And then there's

32:59

the effect of communal panic, like

33:02

there is a

33:04

sense of the end of the world, the

33:08

sense of the end of our world, the colonial

33:10

settler colonial world. There

33:12

is anxieties

33:15

regarding violence

33:17

by

33:19

the Africans against Portuguese.

33:21

So there's a number of things that make them

33:24

leave these places. Some of them,

33:26

as you said, can prepare

33:29

for that departure. It's

33:31

mostly, it's those who are best

33:33

connected, those

33:36

who are most economically successful,

33:40

they typically have a sort of exit plan.

33:43

And it's the most modest people that really

33:45

stay on longest because yeah,

33:47

they would lose a lot and then they end up

33:50

losing a lot. And so they come to Portugal with a suitcase

33:52

or two. Yeah, so there was the suitcase.

33:55

This episode

33:57

is brought to you by Travelodge by Wyndham.

34:00

There's so much to discover, and Travelodge

34:02

is your base camp for adventure. Whether

34:05

you're exploring a national park, escaping

34:07

to the beach, or discovering a new city,

34:10

Travelodge helps you get up and explore

34:12

with free Wi-Fi, free coffee, and

34:15

a great night's rest. So you can be ready

34:17

for anything, like being ready to

34:19

enjoy the scenic wilderness of Yellowstone,

34:22

the awe-inspiring Crater Lake, or

34:24

the marshes of the Everglades. Adventure

34:27

isn't far away when you stay with Travelodge, one

34:29

of 24

34:29

trusted brands by Wyndham.

34:33

Stay close to adventure at Travelodge

34:35

by Wyndham. Get the lowest price at

34:37

Travelodge.com. Wyndham

34:39

Rewards Membership may be required. Restrictions

34:41

apply.

34:46

This episode is brought to you by ReliefBand.

34:50

If you regularly suffer from nausea, listen

34:52

up. ReliefBand is a clinically proven

34:54

wearable nausea solution with no

34:56

drugs or unwanted side effects. It treats

34:59

nausea caused by motion sickness, anxiety,

35:01

migraines, and more. Using technology

35:03

that sends signals to your brain to stop nausea

35:05

quickly and effectively. Get relief

35:07

today. Shop now at reliefband.com.

35:10

And to get 20% off your purchase, use

35:13

the code RELIEF20 at checkout.

35:15

I was just thinking about their

35:18

arrival in Portugal and what

35:20

I know about Western

35:22

European economic history and labor history

35:24

in this time period. I did a master's thesis on

35:27

immigrant labor in France. And

35:30

it's well, the role of

35:33

North Africans, particularly Algerians,

35:36

as this exploited sub-level

35:38

of labor in the French economy,

35:41

it's very well known. But Portuguese play

35:43

a very important role. There's the sort of stereotype

35:45

of the Portuguese construction worker

35:47

or domestic, a cleaning person.

35:53

And for people's homes being Portuguese

35:55

and in France, when it's an age old stereotype.

35:57

Right. So here they're

35:59

fleeing. these conditions in the colonies

36:02

to return to Portugal, but Portugal

36:06

is in very difficult times. And

36:08

what I mean, it's, you know, that

36:10

cliche, it's a perfect storm here for

36:15

difficulty. So let's go

36:17

through the book. The book has four chapters. Maybe

36:20

you can walk us through them. Chapter one is

36:22

returnees or refugees.

36:25

And what's your argument here about

36:27

the various ways to define the

36:30

return? Right.

36:33

I think the

36:36

argument is that, so

36:39

it's impossible in writing that book to,

36:41

like you have to deal with this notion of katr

36:44

madrej or returnees. It's

36:46

just such a key concept for understanding

36:48

this migration. It's the way that

36:51

people call it today in Portugal

36:53

still. It is a colloquial term

36:55

at the time, but it is also a term

36:57

that has legal value at some point. So

37:00

one has to start by trying

37:03

to understand what, what does that really

37:05

mean returnees. And I think

37:07

there's different ways of going about this. The first

37:09

one would be just answering basic sort

37:12

of, I guess, social

37:14

history questions. What kind of people

37:17

are these people? And obviously,

37:21

there are very different people, according

37:23

to whatever their social economic

37:25

background is, according to which colony they

37:27

came from, according to how long

37:30

their family history goes back in that colony

37:32

or how recently they emigrated

37:35

to Angola or Mozambique, according

37:38

to gender, according

37:41

also to race. And there are

37:44

some mixed marriages, not

37:47

a lot, but some of them, a lot of these things

37:49

make, of course, for very different situations also

37:52

once these people return to

37:54

Portugal.

37:56

But then there's also things that, that

37:59

maybe warrant a sort of general

38:01

term like this returnees term because they

38:03

also share some key experiences.

38:06

One of them is being part of a close-knit

38:09

settler community, like these

38:11

famous what Dane Kennedy called

38:13

the islands of white. So it's

38:16

like they feel that really

38:18

they're just a tiny minority

38:21

surrounded by a potentially hostile

38:24

black majority population. So that brings them

38:26

closer together. And

38:29

then they share this experience of having

38:31

to leave a place, most of them against

38:34

their will

38:35

somewhat.

38:36

So they feel that

38:38

they have maybe undergone a sort of similar

38:41

trauma. And then finally,

38:43

they are being othered

38:46

by the resident Portuguese. I

38:48

call them Khutrunabesh.

38:50

And they don't care so much about their

38:52

internal differences. They just see them as

38:55

those coming from the outside. Does

38:57

it have a somewhat pejorative

38:59

sense? Absolutely

39:02

does at the time.

39:03

So I think what we see is a sort of

39:05

like, yeah, it's really a slur calling

39:08

someone Khutrunado at the time. For

39:12

a number of reasons,

39:15

they were politically suspect. There

39:18

was seem to be particularly reactionary

39:21

fascist, while

39:22

everyone else pretended they weren't anymore.

39:27

People had a tendency of

39:29

putting all the blame for

39:31

colonialism on these people

39:34

returning from the colonies. And of course,

39:36

they had a specific and

39:38

very important role in supporting

39:41

Portuguese colonialism with settlers. But of course,

39:43

other Portuguese

39:44

people were part of this

39:46

too. So it was also sort

39:48

of easy scapegoating.

39:50

And then there's this notion that there's

39:53

a sort of cultural conflict, that these are

39:55

culturally different people.

39:59

500,000 people, what percentage

40:03

of

40:03

the Portuguese population would that be? Was it? Right.

40:07

So it would be like at the time, we have about 9

40:09

million Portuguese residents.

40:12

So in just a couple of months,

40:15

actually weeks, because most of this is concentrated

40:18

in the summer and autumn of 1975. There would be an increase

40:20

of the Portuguese

40:22

resident population by depending on

40:25

which number you pick something

40:27

like 5% to 7%. Yeah,

40:29

that really

40:31

struck me 5% to 7% again in the space of a few

40:35

weeks

40:37

during this

40:38

social and economic

40:41

crisis and then political crisis. I mean, that's

40:44

just astounding. That

40:46

really makes the Pia de

40:50

Noir situation like

40:52

the numbers really pale compared to

40:54

that. It really, really struck me

40:57

there. So obviously, that

40:59

creates a very fundamental problem

41:01

of where these people are going to live, which

41:03

is chapter two. How's that for

41:05

a segue? Very professional, right? So chapter

41:08

two is Hotels for the homeless.

41:10

Take notes here, podcasters. Chapter

41:13

two is Hotels for the homeless. Please

41:15

tell us how Portugal housed these

41:18

returnees.

41:19

Right, okay. No, that was great,

41:22

great transition. So housing is really

41:24

like what everybody seems

41:27

to agree on in Portugal at the time is

41:29

that these people need to be what they call integrated.

41:32

And of course, the discourse of integration is still

41:34

with us today. And in all

41:36

sorts of in felicitous ways.

41:39

If you ask what they understand at the time

41:41

when they talk about integration,

41:44

what do they actually mean? They have actually a very

41:46

basic understanding of integration,

41:49

being that

41:49

everyone needs to have a job, and

41:52

everyone needs to have a place to live. And

41:54

once these things are accomplished, the

41:57

Portuguese government will consider them to be

41:59

integrated.

42:00

Now, that sounds

42:03

pretty straightforward only that, as

42:05

we said, both the job and the housing

42:07

situation are extremely complicated

42:10

at the time. So what the Portuguese

42:13

do is that they put them in

42:15

all sorts of temporary facilities.

42:19

Interestingly, a lot of them are hotels,

42:23

can be small pensions and guest houses,

42:26

but also up to upscale and

42:28

five-star luxury hotels

42:31

that will now take in these refugees

42:33

from the colonies.

42:35

Even if, as

42:37

someone who

42:38

spends a lot of time living in hotels, even

42:41

in nicer hotels, it's still a hotel

42:43

room, which is not, if

42:46

you've had a

42:48

villa or a bungalow in

42:51

Angola, it's going

42:53

to be very, just in terms of space,

42:56

it's going to be very confined. It may be at a

42:58

beautiful beach, it may have a lovely view and all that, but

43:00

you're still trapped in this little hotel room, maybe

43:03

without a kitchen. And that just, I

43:06

found that so fascinating.

43:07

It is fascinating. And they're trapped without

43:10

a kitchen, which is why many of them start

43:12

cooking in their rooms,

43:14

which displeases the managers

43:16

of those hotels. So what

43:19

the chapter does is unearthing

43:21

all sorts of micro

43:24

stories about conflicts that come

43:27

up in these confined

43:29

spaces. But I think there is a

43:31

broader point, and that broader point

43:33

is that what we, if you look

43:36

for a

43:37

sort of official narrative of this

43:39

return movement to Portugal today,

43:42

then what you will hear is that, okay,

43:47

this was a really difficult time

43:49

period for them to come home. Basically,

43:52

it was a recipe for disaster. There

43:54

were no jobs, there was no housing. But

43:56

then everyone sort of rolled up their

43:58

sleeves.

45:59

attorneys as political actors. So

46:02

if you could tell us about that, and of course, I'm curious

46:04

to hear how they compare with the the

46:07

Pinot Noir, who were notorious for their

46:09

support of Jean-Marie Le Pen

46:11

and the Fond Nationale in France, the reactionary

46:14

anti-immigrant

46:17

forces. So

46:20

how did the how did the returnees work

46:22

as political actors? Right. So

46:26

now it's interesting that the comment you made

46:28

about the Pinot because it was also an

46:30

assumption that was really

46:33

widespread at the time. People just

46:36

naturally imagined that these Hautreux

46:39

Mathers they would be right wing

46:41

people, basically. And

46:43

of course, that is I mean, you

46:45

can see a lot of stereotyping in this that

46:47

again, is sort of some some facile

46:49

scapegoating. But on the other hand, it

46:52

also makes perfect sense.

46:54

And that people would have believed that because

46:56

here were these people that had

46:58

lost a lot in transitioning

47:00

from the colonies back to the Metropole. They

47:03

may have lost a house, they may have

47:05

lost the business, they may have lost

47:08

a way of life they

47:09

were, they was theirs and that they appreciated

47:13

and they were, of course, blaming

47:16

the left wing governments in

47:19

power that had negotiated decolonization.

47:22

They were blaming them for this outcome.

47:24

So decolonization, the experience of decolonization,

47:27

the experience

47:28

of being a settler, but then becoming a refugee

47:31

sort of naturally pushed many of these people

47:34

to the political right, because

47:36

decolonization had been orchestrated

47:38

by left wing governments in Portugal.

47:41

So, and so they were perceived

47:43

as being a threat to the Portuguese Socialist

47:46

Revolution.

47:48

And you see in government documents

47:51

that they really have a like, what they're

47:53

working with a sort of containment strategies,

47:56

much of what they do in terms of integrating

47:58

these people For all the

48:01

grandiose rhetoric of national solidarity,

48:04

they do it to diffuse political protest.

48:07

Political protest there

48:10

is, as soon as they come, they start

48:13

organizing, there's been spontaneous demonstrations,

48:17

they occupy a bank, they

48:19

occupy government buildings, and

48:21

they basically have sort of very

48:23

concrete material claims

48:26

to begin with. They say, okay, we need

48:28

more planes flying people out of Angola.

48:32

We need someone that helps transport our luggage. We

48:36

need better housing. We need jobs, that

48:38

kind of thing.

48:39

But what is also striking is that

48:42

from the get go, you also see that they

48:44

engage in the sort of memory politics, and

48:47

they want the Portuguese to recognize

48:50

their vision of imperial

48:53

history and its ending. They want

48:56

them to recognize that yes, they

48:58

had been these hardworking pioneers,

49:01

and that it was

49:04

under their watch that

49:06

Angola and Mozambique were transformed

49:09

from atavistic

49:12

places to well ordered

49:14

colonies. They want credit

49:16

for that work of civilizing. They

49:19

want credit for that,

49:21

as they claim traumatic experience

49:24

of returning that they have experienced.

49:27

And at the same time, they want to be told

49:29

that no, they had no special responsibility

49:32

in colonialism. And colonialism as

49:34

a system of exploitation was a bad

49:37

thing that the fascist regime did not

49:39

them.

49:40

And what is interesting for me to see

49:42

is that

49:43

the government and the mainstream media, they're

49:45

very ready to give them that

49:48

recognition. And

49:50

they, they agree on a sort

49:52

of history of Portuguese settler

49:54

colonialism.

49:56

And

49:58

I think makes for a very difficult.

49:59

legacy for debating colonialism

50:02

in Portugal today. Right.

50:04

So where do you take this in the fourth chapter,

50:07

the return of the returned, where you're exploring

50:10

memory in this quote reemergence

50:13

of the return is? Yeah.

50:15

Every time you're asking me the next question,

50:18

I realize it didn't really answer the previous one.

50:21

But maybe I do. Like I'll

50:23

get you there in a second. Let me just ask about

50:26

the Pienoix. So what is striking that

50:28

it is in the Portuguese case that they

50:31

do form associations like

50:33

the Pienoix in France famously

50:35

do. But these associations

50:37

of returnees, they

50:42

are very weakly structured and

50:45

they're not very active after

50:47

a couple of years. Most of them are gone. And

50:50

so what we do not see in Portugal

50:52

is a sort of is a sort of

50:55

Pienoix culture

50:58

that is being

51:01

carried on to new generations through

51:03

these associations. And it's interesting

51:06

to speculate on why that

51:08

would be the case. I think one

51:10

of the reasons is the one we touched upon already

51:12

that many Algerian

51:16

settlers coming to France, they have

51:18

in fact a longer history in Algeria.

51:20

They feel more outside

51:22

to French society than these Portuguese

51:25

region is due because many of them

51:27

do still have family, do still have

51:29

friends, do still have business connections in

51:31

Portugal. And they can reactivate

51:33

these connections. So I think they're more

51:35

easily assimilated into the mainstream

51:37

population. And they're spread

51:40

out in Portugal, they're spread out a bit more.

51:42

Whereas in my

51:44

mind, the Pienoix

51:47

tend to concentrate in coastal

51:49

Provence

51:50

and in a few pockets. Do

51:52

I have that correct?

51:53

You have that correct for France

51:56

and you have that correct in that this

51:59

is a very common idea. idea. Also

52:01

Portuguese policymakers at the time, I think

52:03

one of the fascinating things is that, I mean,

52:05

that shouldn't surprise us, but there is a trans-imperial

52:08

dimension to this in that Portuguese

52:11

policymakers, they're looking to the French example,

52:13

and they say,

52:14

what we do not want to see in Portugal

52:17

is something like the Pinot phenomenon in

52:19

France. So let's try to spread

52:21

them out as evenly as we can. Ah,

52:23

so they're very conscious of that, and they're trying

52:26

to do that.

52:27

They are, but I'm not sure that they actually

52:29

have the means to actively

52:32

spread the population. I'm not sure they

52:35

are better spread out than in

52:37

France. I don't think that's the decisive

52:40

thing here. But

52:43

be that as it may, they never get

52:45

to form these durable associations. And I think

52:47

one of the points that

52:49

can explain that is that the Portuguese state

52:52

never really engaged in any sort of,

52:55

they never paid them any compensation for

52:57

the losses occurred through

53:00

decolonization. In

53:02

France, 10 years

53:05

after the end of the Algerian war, the first

53:07

laws come that provide indemnity,

53:10

what is the word indemnification? Indemnity.

53:13

Indemnity for whatever

53:16

it is that they claim they

53:18

have lost in decolonization. And that never

53:20

happens in Portugal. And so

53:23

the Portuguese state is

53:25

just saying this is not happening, or it's

53:27

maybe happening another time, but

53:29

not now. So they never

53:31

really

53:33

managed to extract compensation

53:35

payments from the Portuguese state. And because

53:37

they don't, I think they lack

53:40

a reason for keeping

53:43

themselves organized. And

53:45

they try to form a pressure group, but it doesn't really

53:47

work. And so at some point, they just drop

53:50

it. Yeah.

53:50

So then how,

53:53

in that last chapter, then how do you explore

53:56

the memory of the returned and this

53:59

history?

54:00

Yes, like there's been a sort of,

54:02

so for the success

54:04

story of integration seems to indicate that

54:07

just after a couple of years, everyone

54:10

has just blended in perfectly in this

54:12

post imperial Portuguese society. And in

54:14

fact, there is not a lot of talk

54:17

about these returnees

54:18

in the 1980s and 90s that changes

54:21

in the 2000s.

54:23

It changes first, we see

54:25

a sort of mini memory

54:27

boom, this sort of memorial

54:30

literature, novels that

54:32

are set in Africa that treat

54:34

this migration, return migration,

54:37

that become popular there. Is

54:41

a TV show at some point. There

54:44

is the first exhibition on the topic. So there is

54:46

a renewed interest in the history of these

54:48

returnees.

54:51

Much of it is very uncritical. Much

54:55

of it follows the established storylines

54:57

of either the successful integration or

54:59

the traumatic uprooting.

55:05

And at the same

55:07

time, memory scholars,

55:10

memory history, memory studies, cultural

55:12

studies begin looking at this phenomenon.

55:15

I think the explanation for this

55:18

is on the one hand that we

55:20

see that kind of effect typically after

55:22

something like 40 years or so. When

55:24

people, it sounds ridiculous, but

55:27

there seems to be something to it for discussions

55:30

in France about the Arjuna board, they really take off

55:33

in the 2000s. It's

55:35

just when people enter old age and they

55:38

start telling their

55:40

children stuff they didn't tell them before. And

55:42

then the children get interested in that. And so there's

55:44

this, I think there's a family dynamic around this.

55:48

Another thing is that veterans of the

55:50

colonial wars, they had started

55:52

a lobbying for more recognition

55:54

of their fate. And so that kind

55:57

of brought the experience of decolonization

55:59

into

55:59

sharp of focus

56:01

in the Portuguese public sphere in

56:03

the late 1990s. But I think

56:05

it's also that we see a sort of global

56:08

turn to empire these last couple of years.

56:11

And Portugal is not an island. So at

56:13

some point, these trends

56:16

had to have some impact in Portugal

56:18

too. And so I think here, as

56:20

in many other parts of the chapters, but we haven't

56:22

really

56:23

talked about that so much yet. But I

56:26

think this

56:26

is a very national

56:29

story in many ways.

56:31

I tell it as a story in

56:33

which the nation is being reconfigured

56:36

after empire. But at the same time,

56:38

these reconfigurations, they always

56:41

partake in broader

56:43

transnational developments. And this turn

56:46

to colonial memories

56:48

that we see the last couple of years

56:51

is also increasingly being felt

56:53

in Portugal.

56:55

So for the book

56:57

as a whole, what do you want the impact

56:59

of post-colonial people to be, maybe

57:03

as a contribution to this history of memory

57:06

or to what sort of hold

57:08

you want it to fill in the historiographic record?

57:10

Right. I think it really depends.

57:13

Like I think

57:15

I have two audiences in mind, like the book was written

57:17

in English. And I

57:22

was keen to publish with a sort of

57:24

internationally visible publisher.

57:27

Like I wanted this to be part of a sort of

57:30

anglophone conversation

57:33

on decolonization. And

57:35

in that conversation, Portugal

57:37

is mostly absent for a number

57:40

of reasons that really are interesting

57:42

to discuss. Language barriers are,

57:44

of course, one thing, but it's also

57:46

like

57:47

there's a lot of... In

57:49

Berlin, I've worked for 10

57:52

years with people who

57:54

do excellent global history. And

57:57

still, it's interesting to see that these people doing global

57:59

history... in Berlin when we

58:01

talked about how to sell that book to

58:03

Cambridge University Press, they said, be

58:06

careful, don't make this too much about Portugal.

58:09

Like, you have to think about this international

58:11

audience. They will not be interested in Portugal,

58:13

you have to give them something else. And I get

58:16

that, like, of course, all of us should be

58:20

attempting to be placing our case studies

58:22

into a broader conversation.

58:24

But I didn't get the same comments from my book

58:26

and friends. So Portugal is really

58:29

being marginalized

58:31

academically, I would

58:33

venture saying

58:34

that. And

58:37

yes, I do want to show that this

58:40

book can make a valuable

58:42

contribution to broader discussions

58:45

about decolonization, more specifically,

58:47

what decolonization meant for European

58:50

societies.

58:51

And I'm not sure the book is

58:54

wildly original.

58:57

Like, it's a building on a number

58:59

of studies, Todd Sheppard

59:02

for the French case, the book by Crea Eldridge

59:05

on the PNO. And the book

59:07

by Pamela Bellinger on Italian

59:10

repatriates. The

59:12

book by Elizabeth Putner on

59:14

Europe after empire. These are really books

59:16

that help me

59:17

a lot, like,

59:19

make sense of this Portuguese case. But

59:22

I just want to

59:25

use this to make a contribution to

59:27

the history of decolonization, but also to

59:29

think about how is it that we can write

59:31

meaningful national histories after

59:34

the transnational and global turn. And here, my

59:36

point would

59:38

be to say by pointing out how the

59:41

making of the nation, in this case, the remaking

59:43

of the nation after empire is

59:46

an inherently transnational

59:48

affair on many levels. Absolutely,

59:51

absolutely. And just

59:54

for me, as someone who teaches courses in

59:56

20th century world, I need

59:58

to rewrite my decolonization.

59:59

lectures now.

1:00:01

So thank

1:00:03

you for giving me extra work this summer.

1:00:06

But yes,

1:00:08

the Portuguese narrative

1:00:11

is marginalized in discussions

1:00:13

of Western Europe and then marginalized in world

1:00:15

history after the height

1:00:18

of the Portuguese empire several centuries

1:00:20

ago. But this is really significant and

1:00:23

does such

1:00:25

great work.

1:00:28

Working as a contrast to more familiar

1:00:30

cases of decolonization. And again,

1:00:32

we've said them several times, but the Pien Noir story. So

1:00:35

I'm definitely going to rewrite this lecture with

1:00:37

this pairing and that here's

1:00:39

these two cases some 15 years apart.

1:00:41

So thank you for, I

1:00:44

was going to have a relaxing summer, but now I got

1:00:46

to write

1:00:48

some lectures. Thanks.

1:00:50

That's a nice compliment. Yeah. So

1:00:53

you've been really generous with your time, Christophe. But we've

1:00:55

got two more questions before we let you go. And these are

1:00:57

the traditional new books debriefing questions.

1:01:01

First, more homework. Can you

1:01:03

suggest two books for the audience?

1:01:06

Yes. Do you mean by that? Do you

1:01:09

mean books that are specifically related to this

1:01:11

topic or just any books? Up to you. Up to

1:01:13

you. Related to this topic, man. Yeah, right.

1:01:15

Can I make it three then? If I go quickly? Just

1:01:19

because you're nice.

1:01:20

Okay. I'll just take the last three books that I actually

1:01:22

read. So the first one would be

1:01:25

by Burleigh Hendrickson Decolonizing 1968.

1:01:28

It's called. Subtitled Transnational Student

1:01:32

Activism in Tunis, Paris

1:01:34

and Dakar.

1:01:36

And despite

1:01:38

the, how can I phrase this, despite

1:01:40

the unnecessarily

1:01:42

fashionable and somewhat misleading title, this

1:01:45

Decolonizing 68. I think

1:01:47

this is a great

1:01:48

book in that it really makes

1:01:51

a solid case for that

1:01:53

post-Imperial connection. So in this case, between

1:01:56

societies that emerged

1:01:58

from the ruins of the French Empire,

1:01:59

but also perform

1:02:03

an imperial metropole that these connections continue

1:02:05

to matter after

1:02:06

the end of empire in specific ways

1:02:09

so that we actually need a sort of post-imperial

1:02:12

scale of analysis in global history.

1:02:14

That's my takeaway and I think that that is really

1:02:17

a good book. Yeah, it's really not so

1:02:19

much a decolonizing but a post-colonial 68

1:02:21

with the legacies

1:02:24

of imperial connections surviving and impacting

1:02:27

that year.

1:02:28

Absolutely. Then the second one I

1:02:30

just read, Finnish was really nice, it's

1:02:33

by Elara Bertou. It's a

1:02:35

biography of Leopold Siddharth Songor.

1:02:38

So Elara Bertou is a French

1:02:41

literary scholar and historian of Africa,

1:02:44

West Africa in particular, and

1:02:47

it's a cool book because it's such a fascinating

1:02:49

guy. So she is trying to

1:02:51

say, okay, here we have the cliche of the

1:02:53

Poet Presidant

1:02:55

on the one hand and we have

1:02:57

the idea of Songor as a neo-colonial

1:02:59

puppet at the service

1:03:02

of French interests in Senegal on

1:03:04

the other hand.

1:03:05

There's much more

1:03:08

to

1:03:08

the man than this and actually

1:03:11

rereading

1:03:12

his writings today,

1:03:15

also with an eye to the environmental

1:03:17

catastrophe is a good idea. And that actually

1:03:20

made a good case for that. And then finally,

1:03:22

it's really not

1:03:25

because I want to be nice to you, but in

1:03:28

preparation for this,

1:03:29

I read your book, The Great Hanoi

1:03:32

Retent

1:03:33

and I just

1:03:34

must say I'm fascinated by this

1:03:37

graphic history. I think

1:03:39

it's a brilliant idea. I didn't know this series existed,

1:03:42

I didn't know this book existed and I'm really happy

1:03:44

I stumbled upon it because it is

1:03:47

a global micro history that

1:03:49

is just smashing as a global

1:03:51

micro history. But then on top of it

1:03:53

also comes the visualization

1:03:56

aspect and I really appreciate

1:03:58

the work that must have gone into it. that. And

1:04:00

I think it's adding a layer

1:04:02

of richness that is really incredible. So

1:04:05

I'm going to use it like I have

1:04:08

an approaches to history class and one of the sessions

1:04:10

is on urban history. And I will

1:04:13

use that in the fall

1:04:15

and for the urban history session because

1:04:17

I really loved it. Well,

1:04:18

I'm very sunburned

1:04:20

right now, but you may be able to tell I'm blushing. That's

1:04:24

thank you for the very kind words. And

1:04:27

then finally, what are you working on

1:04:29

now? And what can we hope to see from you next?

1:04:33

Okay, so I'm so I'm

1:04:36

I love languages. I love learning languages.

1:04:39

And I

1:04:41

thought I'd do a project on on languages,

1:04:43

actually. And it

1:04:47

would still be a project on decolonization

1:04:49

as as this eternal

1:04:52

contested and incomplete transition

1:04:54

out of empire. So decolonization

1:04:57

as history is something that I'm really

1:05:00

interested in. And what I would like

1:05:02

to do is choose language as

1:05:04

a lens of historical analysis. So

1:05:07

concretely, I would be looking at French

1:05:09

and Portuguese speaking Africans

1:05:12

between nation building and world

1:05:14

making from the 1960s to

1:05:16

the 1980s. One case would be Senegal,

1:05:19

the other would be

1:05:20

Angola. And the idea would

1:05:22

be to well

1:05:25

to look at

1:05:26

the role that European languages French

1:05:28

and Portuguese

1:05:29

played in in nation

1:05:32

building and

1:05:33

world making in these two contexts, post-colonial

1:05:36

contexts. So if we

1:05:40

look at social linguistics, if we

1:05:42

look at ideas like language

1:05:44

policies, language attitudes,

1:05:47

language uses if you use that as a vantage point

1:05:49

for writing political social

1:05:51

intellectual history more broadly, what do we get out

1:05:54

of this? And I'm not sure where exactly

1:05:56

this is leading me, but I feel that it really

1:05:58

that global

1:05:59

history, transnational history, cares

1:06:02

so little about language, ultimately,

1:06:04

is

1:06:06

that can be right. Language

1:06:09

is such a powerful connector.

1:06:12

And

1:06:13

therefore, I think it can

1:06:15

be given a bigger role in writing

1:06:20

transnational and global histories. And

1:06:23

I think I'm just fascinated by the ambivalence

1:06:26

of European languages, which are imposed,

1:06:28

of course, but

1:06:30

at the same time, they're being appropriated by

1:06:32

Africans. And they have been all alone.

1:06:35

They are limiting in many ways, but they are also

1:06:37

enabling. And I

1:06:40

want to find out more about this

1:06:43

ambivalence. And I'm really scared to

1:06:45

do that because I'm not a historian of

1:06:47

Africa by training.

1:06:49

So I will have to

1:06:52

think about this a lot more. And anyone

1:06:54

who listens to that, and has

1:06:57

cues for me ideas, tips, please hit

1:06:59

me up

1:07:01

and help me develop this further. But

1:07:04

that's what I want to be doing next. That

1:07:06

sounds fascinating. And of course, it makes

1:07:08

me think of a Southeast

1:07:10

Asian example with East Timor, where,

1:07:13

you know, post independence,

1:07:17

the real independence after Indonesia

1:07:20

left four languages, four

1:07:22

official languages, Portuguese, Bahasa,

1:07:25

Indonesia, Tithum and

1:07:28

English, and the difficulties,

1:07:30

but also possibilities, having

1:07:33

those multiple language sets offers for

1:07:35

East Timor.

1:07:37

Absolutely. It really is a sort

1:07:39

of universal. I mean, that's not the right

1:07:41

word, I guess, but it's a problem arising

1:07:44

really every single postcolonial

1:07:46

society. So studying this in Senegal

1:07:49

and Angola, yes, why not, but it could

1:07:51

be it could be different places too.

1:07:54

Because all of them have to ask, okay, colonialism

1:07:56

is over.

1:07:57

But the language is still there. What do we do with it?

1:07:59

And then it impacts our

1:08:02

profession, it impacts the historians, the

1:08:05

way in which archives follow the

1:08:07

imperial flag and linguistic training.

1:08:10

Absolutely. And there's divides

1:08:12

between Anglophone and Francophone

1:08:14

and Lusophone Africa,

1:08:16

and that's going to disrupt the historical

1:08:19

record. And I think,

1:08:20

as alluded to earlier with a country

1:08:22

that's sort of marginalized in historiography

1:08:25

like Portugal, that means that

1:08:28

the Lusosphere in

1:08:30

Africa is going to be marginalized. Really

1:08:35

great project. So

1:08:38

Christophe Kultur, thank you so much for chatting with

1:08:40

me today. I really enjoyed this.

1:08:42

So did I. Thanks so much for inviting me.

1:08:45

It was great.

1:08:46

This has been a conversation with Christophe Kultur about

1:08:49

his post-colonial people, the return from

1:08:51

Africa and the remaking of Portugal out

1:08:53

with Cambridge University Press in 2022. I'm

1:08:57

Michael Van of Sacramento State University, and

1:08:59

this has been an episode in New Books and History, a

1:09:02

channel on the New Books Network. Thank

1:09:04

you for listening.