A Critical Look at Portugal and Its History
This work brings together studies by English historian Kenneth Maxwell on the political situation in the country since his first visit in 1964.
I
A vision of how Portugal was in the years leading up to the military coup that overthrew the Estado Novo regime, the legacy of Salazarism, on April 25, 1974, opens the book Perspectives on Portuguese History – The 2024 Lectures by Professor Kenneth Maxwell (Great Britain, Robbin Laird, editor, English and Portuguese edition, 2025), which also brings together the author’s latest lectures given in 2024 in São Paulo, Lisbon, and the historic city of São Cristóvão, in Sergipe, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the movement that overthrew the oldest dictatorship in Europe.
Maxwell wrote the initial account in his early years, when he lived in Portugal for a few months in 1964, shortly after his arrival at Princeton University in New Jersey, USA. It shows Lisbon at that time, when the PIDE, the political police, exercised great power over the hearts and minds of the Portuguese people under the leadership of Prime Minister António de Oliveira Salazar (1889-1970), at the time already an “aging caudillo” and confused about the country’s fate amid wars that lasted thirteen years (1961-1974) in Africa in an attempt to maintain the Portuguese possessions (Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and Angola) that were part of what he called “pieces of Portugal scattered around the world.”
Next, the reader will find the lecture that Professor Maxwell gave at the University of São Paulo (USP) in April 2024 on the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution, in which he notes that the overthrow of Prime Minister Marcello Caetano (1906-1980) caused great concern in Washington, especially to the all-powerful Henry Kissinger (1923-2023), Secretary of State (1973-1977) during the administration of President Gerald Ford (1913-2006). Kissinger had already contributed decisively to the fall of President Salvador Allende (1908-1973) in Chile in September 1973 and, despite this dark side, won the Nobel Peace Prize that year.
II
Although General António de Spínola (1910-1996) had assumed the presidency with the support of the Movement of the Armed Forces (MFA) and his political orientation was right-wing, he was forced by circumstances to form a coalition government that included communists and leftists. Over time, however, he tried to strengthen his authority over the MFA, the movement of captains, but the presence of communists in a Western government for the first time since the beginning of the Cold War (1947-1991) horrified Portugal’s allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Kissinger, in turn, reacted in the same way he had reacted to Allende’s election in Chile.
Due to the political strength of the communists and socialists, decolonization took place, which further intensified the Western world’s opposition to the Portuguese government. Spínola even tried to reverse the situation, admitting the possibility of becoming a new Augusto Pinochet (1915-2006). But he was unsuccessful and was replaced in September 1974 by Costa Gomes (1914-2001), another military man, who would consolidate democracy in the country.
Kissinger increased pressure to reverse the situation by sending General Vernon Walters (1917-2002), deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), who had been directly involved in the preparation of the military coup in Brazil in 1964, to Portugal. According to the professor, Kissinger only prevented Portugal from repeating the tragedy of Chile because of the actions of Frank Carlucci (1930-2018), the new US ambassador in Lisbon, who, based on the results of the 1975 elections, managed to circumvent the intentions of the then Secretary of State and support the peaceful path that was opening up for a democratic regime in Portugal.
To get an idea of the totalitarian ideal that marked Kissinger’s personality, one need only look at how, in 2004, Maxwell, in reviewing the book The Pinochet Files by American author Peter Kornbluh for Foreign Affairs magazine, displeased the former secretary of state, who responded in writing to the columnist’s reflections. However, the magazine, probably under pressure from Kissinger, refused to publish Maxwell’s reply, which shows that, in the United States, freedom of the press is nothing more than freedom for those who are most powerful. As a result, in May of that year, the professor resigned from his position as director of Latin American Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
III
A curious fact involving the diplomatic activities of the Brazilian government during the military regime (1964-1985) appears in the last chapter, entitled “The pivot: the Portuguese coup of April 25 and its global consequences,” which reproduces the speech Maxwell gave in Lisbon on October 25, 2024, at an event organized by the Oriente Foundation. In this speech, the professor presented previously unknown documents uncovered by the notable Brazilian journalist Elio Gaspari, which include records of secret conversations between General Spínola, then exiled in Brazil, and secret agents of the National Information Service (SNI) in Rio de Janeiro and Brasília in 1975.
What is surprising is the reaction of General Ernesto Geisel (1907-1996), the dictator on duty, in refusing Brazilian support for a claim by the Portuguese general, despite the extreme right-wing affinities that fed them. Spínola wanted help to undertake an invasion of Portugal and, probably, to become a Lusitanian Pinochet. Geisel’s attitude, combined with the work of US Ambassador Frank Carlucci in Lisbon, in circumventing Kissinger’s desire to make Portugal, like Chile, a shield to halt the spread of what he considered a communist “infection” in the rest of Europe, ultimately prevented much bloodshed on Portuguese soil. And Brazil continued to support the policy of decolonization in Africa. So much the better.
The book also includes a lecture that Maxwell gave in 2024 in the United States, in his last act as a professor at Harvard University, when he participated in the International Colloquium on Luso-Brazilian Art and Literature, held at that institution. This time, he presented his reflections on the reconstruction of three major European cities, London, Lisbon, and Paris, which were compiled in the recently published book The Tale of Three Cities (London, Robbin Laird, editor, published in English, French, and Portuguese, 2025).
The book also includes an interview Maxwell gave to Professor Luís Eduardo de Oliveira, of the Marquês de Pombal Chair at the Federal University of Sergipe (UFS), in June 2024, when he received an honorary doctorate from that institution, as well as a greeting by Professor Dilton Cândido Santos Maynard, pro-rector of Undergraduate Studies, and the acceptance speech by the honoree. IV
Kenneth Maxwell was director and founder of the Brazilian Studies Program at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS) at Harvard University (2006-2008) and professor in the Department of History at Harvard (2004-
2008). From 1989 to 2004, he was director of the Latin America Program at the Council on Foreign Relations, and in 1995, he became the first holder of the Nelson and David Rockefeller Chair in Inter-American Studies. He served as vice president and director of studies for the Council in 1996. He previously taught at Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and Kansas universities.
He founded and was director of the Camões Center for the Portuguese-Speaking World at Columbia and was program director of the Tinker Foundation, Inc. From 1993 to 2004, he was Western Hemisphere book reviewer for Foreign Affairs. He is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and was a weekly columnist for the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper between 2007 and 2015 and has been a monthly columnist for O Globo since 2015.
He was also a Herodotus fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and a Guggenheim fellow and member of the Board of Directors of The Tinker Foundation, Inc. and the Advisory Board of the Luso-American Foundation. He is also a member of the Advisory Boards of the Brazil Foundation and Human Rights Watch Americas. He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree from St. John’s College, Cambridge University, and a master’s and doctorate from Princeton University. He is a regular contributor to the Second Line of Defense website (www.sldinfo.com).
He also published A Devassa da Devassa – a Inconfidência Mineira: Brasil-Portugal 1750-1808 (Editora Paz e Terra, 1978), Marquês de Pombal – Paradoxo do Iluminismo (Editora Paz e Terra, 1996), A Construção da Democracia em Portugal (Editorial Presença, 1999), Naked Tropics: essays on empire and other rogues (Psychology Press, 2003), Chocolate, Pirates and Other Rogues (Editora Paz e Terra, 1999), More Rogues – Tropical Essays and Others (Editora Paz e Terra, 2005) and Kenneth Maxwell on Global Trends – An Historian of the 18th Century Looks at the Contemporary World (Robbin Laird, editor, Second Line of Defense, 2023), among others.
Adelto Gonçalves, journalist, master’s degree in Spanish Language and Spanish and Hispanic American Literature, and PhD in Portuguese Literature from the University of São Paulo (USP), is the author of Gonzaga, um Poeta do Iluminismo (Rio de Janeiro, Nova Fronteira, 1999), Barcelona e Voz de Deus (Barcelona and Voice of God) (Santos, Editora da Unisanta, 1997); Bocage – o Perfil Perdido (Bocage – The Lost Profile) (Lisbon, Caminho, 2003, São Paulo, Imprensa Oficial do Estado de São Paulo – Imesp, 2021), Tomás Antônio Gonzaga (Imesp/Academia Brasileira de Letras, 2012), Law and Justice in the Lands of the King in Colonial São Paulo (Imesp, 2015), The Stray Dogs of Dawn (Rio de Janeiro, Livraria José Olympio Editora, 1981; Taubaté-SP, Letra Selvagem, 2015), and The Kingdom, the Colony, and Power: the Lorena government in the captaincy of São Paulo – 1788-1797 (Imesp, 2019), among others. He wrote the preface for the book.
This was translated from the Portuguese.
The original review was published by Das Culturas on June 21, 2025.
Perspectives on Portuguese History: The 2024 Lectures by Professor Kenneth Maxwell