Presentation of the book “Ideologia e Propaganda Colonial no Estado Novo” by José Lima Garcia

The book “Ideology and Colonial Propaganda in Estado Novo”, by José Lima Garcia, will be presented by Luís Reis Torgal, who also signs the foreword (both are CEIS20 researchers). The current mayor of Coimbra, José Manuel Silva, will also attend the book launch.

The book is the result of the research carried out by José Lima Garcia for his doctorate at UCoimbra, under the supervision of Luís Reis Torgal, defended in 2011, with the title “Ideologia e propaganda colonial no Estado Novo: da Agência Geral das Colónias à Agência Geral do Ultramar : 1924-1974 (Ideology and colonial propaganda in Estado Novo: from the General Agency for the Colonies to the General Agency for Overseas Territories: 1924-1974).

Until recently, my Faculty of Arts had an Institute for the History of Overseas Expansion. I had no objection to this name, as long as it was properly analysed, but I always proposed - unsuccessfully, by the way – that it should be supplemented by the history of colonisation, of colonialism, anti-colonialism and of the former colonised territories.

In this context, I have supervised or followed some theses and final papers, such as those on Amílcar Cabral and the PAIGC, or, at the other end of the spectrum, on the colonial propaganda of the so-called Estado Novo (New State), which, moreover, extended the propaganda of our First Republic, which was also (as it had to be in the second and third decades of the 20th century) colonialist or colonial. Hence José Luís Lima Garcia’s dissertation on the subject and, within it, on the Agência Geral das Colónias (General Agency for the Colonies), which became the General Agency for Overseas Territories in the 1950s. The author began researching this subject at the end of the last century and in 2012 he completed his doctoral thesis on the subject

It is finally being published on paper, which will make it more widely known, or at least more resistant to time. In the end, it will be another contribution to the understanding of colonialism and the realisation of the idea of “Empire”, a concept that has been trivialised even in the common names of various companies. This idea of the “Colonial Empire” encompasses the vast territory stretching from Africa to Timor and the period from 1924 to 1974, although from the 1950s the cosmetic process of calling each of the (so different...) possessions “Overseas provinces” rather than “Colonies” began and the “Indigenous laws” were abolished.

Luís Reis Torgal (in Foreword).

José Luís Lima Garcia was born in Mozambique in 1951. From 1965 he lived in Angola, where he completed his Bachelor’s degree in History from the University of Luanda. In 1975 he moved to Portugal and two years later finished his undergraduate studies in History from the University of Lisbon. Later, as a secondary school teacher, he attended Universidade Nova where he defended his thesis on "Mozambique's relations with neighbouring territories in the period between the two world wars", under the supervision of Professors José Medeiros Ferreira and Joel Serrão. In 2012, he received his doctoral degree from the University of Coimbra with a thesis on "Ideology and Colonial Propaganda in the Estado Novo", supervised by Professor Luís Reis Torgal. He was Coordinating Professor at the Polytechnic Institute of Guarda until 2010 and is currently a researcher at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies (CEIS 20) at the University of Coimbra. He has published several books, book chapters and articles on Portuguese colonialism in Africa.

©Sérgio Neto