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The article examines the trajectories of 'loyal' African troops in Angola before and after the demise of Portugal's authoritarian regime in 1974. It starts by placing the 'Africanization' drive of the Portuguese counterinsurgency campaign in a historical perspective; it then explores the rocky transition from colonial rule to independence in the territory between April 1974 and November 1975, describing the course of action taken by the Portuguese authorities vis-à-vis their former collaborators in the security forces. A concluding section draws a comparison between the fate of Portugal's loyalists in Angola and the one experienced by similar groups in other ex-Portuguese colonies. The choice of Angola has the advantage of allowing us to look into a complex scenario in which the competition amongst rival nationalist groups, and a number of external factors, helped to produce a more ambiguous outcome for some of the empire's local collaborators than what might have been otherwise expected.

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The international conference held in Lisbon, Portugal in 2016 on Colonial Incarceration in the Twentieth Century: a comparative approach', provided a platform to engage with ongoing debate on political persecution, confinement and colonial rule in empire. The present papers which resulted from the above-mentioned conference provide valuable insights into recent research on politically motivated punishment and internment in several colonial contexts. Mainly concerned with Africa, they focus on the organisation, discourse and practice regarding political internment in Portuguese, German, British and French empires with reference to Angola, Tanzania, Rhodesia, South Africa, as well as Guyana and New Caledonia. The papers engage with the historiography of political incarceration in prisons and detention camps during the colonial period, from the late nineteenth century to the end of empire, while building upon the remarkable dynamic in scientific research over the last decades. Penal legislation, policies of convict transport and political imprisonment, resettlement, prison regimes, resistance and liberation struggles, counter insurgency, prisoner agency, prisons as cultural spaces and memory are discussed here in different time periods and locations from a variety of multidisciplinary angles.

The article examines the role played by the Portuguese oppositionist diaspora in the final years of the Estado Novo dictatorship (c. 1968–c.1974). It advances an explanation for the apparent lack of success met by several exile groups when trying to persuade the Western democracies to withdraw (or at least reduce) their support for Lisbon's authoritarian regime during a period in which the public was increasingly aware of human rights abuses. The choice of this particular juncture is justified for several reasons. Firstly, it was a time of renewed expectations regarding a possible liberalisation of the regime in the aftermath of the replacement of the incapacitated Oliveira Salazar by the younger Marcelo Caetano (September 1968), an event that confronted the different sections of the Portuguese opposition with a number of dilemmas, both at home and abroad, and exposed rifts that would take some time to repair. Secondly, this was also an epoch of momentous social and cultural change in Europe, with obvious ramifications for the political orientations and attitudes of those who, for different reasons, had decided to leave Portugal in the 1960s. Finally, the vicissitudes of the East–West détente are seen here as equally important for understanding the opportunities and limitations of the anti-Estado Novo opposition abroad.

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