1945–1950s: (Portuguese and Belgian Colonial Intransigence — Salazar’s Fascist System Exported to Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau, Colonies as Outlets …

1945–1950s: (Portuguese and Belgian Colonial Intransigence — Salazar’s Fascist System Exported to Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau, Colonies as Outlets for Surplus Population, the Belgian Congo’s Economic Boom Fueled by Copper, Rubber, Gold, Tin, and Uranium for the Atomic Bombs Dropped on Hiroshima, and the Fear That Decolonization Would Expose Lusophone Africa to Anglo-French Interference): Portugal and Belgium, economically much weaker than Britain and France, had fewer options and clung to their colonies with particular tenacity. For Salazar’s government in Lisbon, colonies were important outlets for surplus population — much as Fascist Italy had envisaged for Eritrea and Ethiopia — as well as markets and sources of raw materials in the tradition of the late nineteenth century. Portugal’s fascist system was exported wholesale to Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau, where opposition was not tolerated and reform was not contemplated. In the Belgian Congo, an economic boom during and after the war was driven by Congolese copper, rubber, gold, and tin that had buoyed Allied forces — as had Congolese uranium, vital to the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Such economic stimulation benefited an emergent African middle class, but above all Congo was instrumental to Belgium’s postwar recovery. Portugal feared that decolonization, even reform, would expose Lusophone Africa to Anglo-French interference — the weakest of the colonial powers clung hardest because it had the most to lose, a pattern that would ensure the most violent of liberations when the end finally came.