Auto-determinação, cidadania e organizações internacionais: reinventando as políticas do império português, 1955-1962

Abstract

In 1961-1962, the Portuguese imperial administration undertook a number of political, administrative and social reforms, putting an end to the indigenato regime. This article demonstrates that, both in timing and content, the dynamics of legal and political change were closely related to actors, events, and processes located beyond imperial borders, in articulation with local dynamics, in national and colonial settings. Such reforms can only be rigorously understood if these dimensions are analytically integrated. With a longer history, not reducible to this two-year period, such dynamics of change were significantly marked by the participation of the Portuguese authorities in a disputed conversation – of global origin, scope and impact, involving different institutions and across distinct geographies – about the multiple configurations of ethnic-racial and socio-cultural difference and the contested postulates of sovereignty and self-determination politics. This article is part of the special theme section on International Organizations in the Era of Decolonization, guest-edited by José Pedro Monteiro.

Keywords

• citizenship
• Portuguese empire
• self-determination
• late colonialism
• native statute
• international organizations