WI: Guinea Remain an Overseas Province

Iori · Oct 4, 2009

Viriato said:
Salazar was devoutly Catholic and therefore anti-Communist so it would have been hard to see him allying Portugal with the Soviet Union. Also, the country had been a founding NATO member so I think this would be a little far fetched. I suppose if Salazar had been gotten rid of things could have been different.

That's what I was saying, if Salazar had never come to power, but rather a moderate leftist governemtn that was'n pro-decolonialism.

As for Portuguese India, the Indian government had already occupied the exclaves of Dadra and Nagar Haveli in 1954 and it was no secret that eventually they were going to annex Goa, Damão and Dio. Salazar would have probably been better off granting Portuguese India independence in the early 1950s. Seeing as at that time a majority of the population was Catholic, this probably could have been a pro-Western country with one of the best deep water ports (Mormugão) on the subcontinent as a naval base for the Americans.

Would India have accepted this do you think, or might they just invade and annex anyways?

Viriato · Oct 4, 2009

Iori said:
Would India have accepted this do you think, or might they just invade and annex anyways?

Well the main difference is that when Nehru invaded and annexed the Portuguese enclaves in India he did so under the guise of liberating the people from colonialism. If they were an independent country he could not use that justification. If Portuguese India had become an independent country in the 1950s and joined the UN, I'm sure that the invasion would have sparked much more outrage in the international community.

Also, as India was generally pro-Soviet, so the U.S. and its allies would have probably not taken the same attitude that they did towards the Indonesian annexations of Western New Guinea and later Portuguese Timor. When India did invade Portuguese India, the U.S. did condemn India in a UN resolution that was defeated by a USSR veto. Invading a small independent pro-Western country would have drawn much more criticism.