Roberto felix salazar biography books

He successfully managed his country's finances despite the impact of the Great Depression, imposing a harsh policy of austerity. But Salazar was at heart an extremely conservative, even reactionary statesman. He relied on secrecy and a police state to maintain the order which, he believed, was necessary to control progress. Rejecting the anti-colonialist movements in Asia and Africa, he plunged Portugal into a series of wars in Africa it could ill afford.

But during his nearly four decades in power, he survived less through reliance on force and more through guile and charm. This probing biography charts the highs and lows of Salazar's rule, from rescuing Portugal's finances and keeping his strategically-placed nation out of World War II to maintaining a police state while resisting the winds of change in Africa.

It explores Salazar's long-running suspicion of and conflict with the United States, and how he kept Hitler and Mussolini at arm's length while persuading his fellow dictator Franco not to enter the war on their side. Iberia expert Tom Gallagher brings to life a complex leader who deserves to be far better known. Loading interface About the author.

Tom Gallagher 60 books 8 followers. Thomas Gerard Philip Gallagher is a Scottish political scientist. He taught politics at the University of Bradford until and is now Emeritus Professor of Politics at the university. Write a Review. Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book! Community Reviews. Search review text.

Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews. Liam Ostermann. This is an extremely disappointing book which attempts to rehabilitate Salazar by emphasising how he differed from the other mid-twentieth century dictators like Franco, Hitler, etc. It concentrates on his economic policies placing them in context and shows how much he did to stabilise Portugal's economy and currency after a very rocky time in the late 9th and early 20th century.

He then goes on to suggests comparisons between what Salazar did and what governments in the 21st century are doing to tackle economic problems and uses these somewhat forced similarities to suggest Salazar was a farsighted leader. There is very little truth in Salazar's 'foresight' and his failures in economic terms are far more obvious than anything - most notably in terms of his colonial policy - Salazar clung to Portugal's empire with a tenacity that had more to do with outdated ideas of his country's 'glory' and position as a great power utterly illusory of course.

While managing to bring the Portuguese national debt down and stabilizing the currency that accomplishment hardly justified his interminable tenure in office. His failures were far more numerous including his failure to tackle rampant corruption which had a great impact in contributing to the long term problems of Portugal. The fact that Portuguese children under Salazar only managed to be guaranteed 6 years of compulsory education, for boys alone, untilsays more than anything about the Portugal Salazar created for most Portuguese - a land of subservient peasants is what he started and ended with.

He did not believe in improving his peoples lot though he did not like to see their children barefoot. His minions made sure that before he visited any village or town that shoes were distributed, and then promptly took them back as soon as he left. In Lisbon to ensure he wasn't embarrassed by foreign visitors seeing his subjects barefoot he had the police arrest and the courts imprison any children caught without shoes in the posh parts of town - it was ok for them to be barefoot in the slums.

He remained in power until his death but created no political party, ideology, or even government structure. Having said this Salazar was not a bad man, he was not a good one either. But just not being as awful as his Franco, Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini is not exactly a ringing epitaph. Anybody would be pleased not to be bracketed with those four but if the only good that can be said about you is that you were not as bad as them, then that is faint praise indeed.

As there are so few works in English on Portuguese history in this period it is a pity this is such a flawed and unsatisfying work. Charles Haywood. What will be the political system of the future, in the lands that are still optimistically, or naively, viewed as containing one American nation? Certainly, the current system is doomed, which necessarily means that an alternative will rise.

As it happens, I think it would be a bad alternative for America. For post-liberals in particular, Salazar is necessarily interesting, since he is one of the few twentieth-century examples of a long-lived Right regime that successfully opposed the corrosion of Enlightenment liberalism. For some years, in fact, I have looked for a recent Salazar biography.

Although none of these cover Portugal after the system that Salazar built ended inthat is not a defect, since nothing notable or worthwhile has happened in Portugal since Salazar died in Thus, although the odd subtitle of this book refers to Salazar as a dictator, that is really a misnomer, because a dictator implies the suspension of the rule of law.

But like most books even a few years old, it is out of print, and thus only available used. Until quite recently, Amazon and a few other marketplaces offered good liquidity and reasonable prices in the used book market. I assume this is simply algorithmic, figuring that fewer sales at much higher prices will maximize revenue, because the internet allows the desperate to locate what they must have.

Which, for books, it has, up to a point—but only for those with money. And by offering frictionless transactions, the internet has destroyed the serendipity of an unexpected find, and of an unexpected bargain. Anyway, back to Salazar. Why is Salazar so little known today? Well, despite its glorious past, for several hundred years Portugal has been obscure.

Its only neighbor is Spain, and what attention it does get from the English-speaking world is mostly the result of Portugal being closely tied to England for centuries. Despite a long coastline, it controls no important waters though the Azores would matter in a new Atlantic war ; it has no crucial roberto felix salazar biography books in global politics.

Yes, as we will discuss, for a good part of the twentieth century it maintained a significant colonial empire, but even that could not make it a relevant power—rather, it was mostly a millstone, one the Portuguese were loath to give up, feeling they had to keep up appearances, and that the colonies benefitted them economically. It is also Salazar himself that makes him little known.

Beyond this, he appears to have no important roberto felix salazar biography books supporters or detractors, other than perhaps inside Portugal. Franco, with whom Salazar is often lumped, has detractors, because he heroically defeated the Left, in a conflict with global prominence and impact, something for which the Left will never forgive him.

He also has supporters, such as me, but for a little while yet, I lack great power. Wait a year or five. Salazar, though a man of the Right, did not defeat the Left in any spectacular way; he came to power through technocratic skill and because Portugal was tired of leftist-run instability, and gravitated to his quiet competence. And so, because the Left writes all the modern histories of the West, they choose to forget him.

But he is not forgotten in Portugal. Moreover, this poll was before the financial crisis, which hit Portugal hard, whose elites there as elsewhere in Europe doubled down with fresh tyrannies greatly empowering the globalist EU elite and transnational corporations.

Roberto felix salazar biography books

Ironically, though, Salazar would have sneered at the poll that named him the winner. He had no truck with mass opinion. We will see to what this leads, and that right soon. Salazar was born inthe fifth child and only son of a peasant family of modest means, in Vimieiro, a small and unimportant village in central Portugal. Unlike Spain, Portugal had been ruled, badly, by a series of liberal regimes for sixty years, the result of the Peninsular War and its aftermath including ongoing British interference.

It was still a monarchy, of sorts, and the Catholic Church was prominent, but neither Crown nor Church had anywhere near the power it did in Spain. The Church was fiercely attacked by the usual radicals and Freemasons, though it maintained a strong presence in the countryside. In short, Portugal was poor, politically unstable, fragmented, and backward, by the standards of the day.

Series Show sub menu. African Arguments. Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies. Conflict Classics. Crises in World Politics. Critical Strategic Studies. Intelligence and Security. New Perspectives on Eastern Europe and Eurasia. Here's to land for our sons and the sons of our sons! And they sang the songs of ancient Spain and they made new songs to fit new needs They cleared the brush and planted the corn and saw green stalks turn black from lack of rain They roamed the plains behind the herds and stood the Indians cruel attacks and there was death and there was sweat and there were tears and the women prayed and the years moved on Those who were first placed in graves beside the broad Mezquite and the tall Nopal Gentle mothers left their graces and their art and stalled with fathers' pride and manly strength.

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