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The Captains' Coup:From Dictatorship to Democracy in Portugal (1974-1976)
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The first English edition of a legendary journalist’s eyewitness account of the near-bloodless coup and the Carnation Revolution that ended fascism in Portugal
Wilfred Burchett went to Lisbon in 1974 to cover the military overthrow of the fascist dictatorship that had ruled the country for nearly five decades. Burchett’s on-the-ground reporting details the immediate aftermath of the coup and the civilian uprising that followed, which took its name, the Carnation Revolution, from the flowers demonstrators handed out to soldiers and placed in their rifle muzzles. The people’s victory began a transition to democracy. It prompted the withdrawal of troops from Portugal’s colonies, bringing independence to Guinea Bissau and soon to Angola, Mozambique and other colonial territories.
On the fiftieth anniversary of the revolution’s end, The Captains’ Coup offers an insightful, poignant narrative never before available in English from a journalist of international repute. The text is based on the author’s original typescripts, discovered recently in the National Library of Australia.
Included are a foreword and introductory essay that explore the political and journalistic significance of Burchett’s work. Illustrated by contemporary photographs and political posters, the volume is complemented by the editors’ annotations, providing essential historical context.
Also included is an afterword by historian and filmmaker Tariq Ali.
Reviews
There are two journalists living today who are rocklike in their integrity and in their courage. And one is Wilfred Burchett, the Australian journalist you might say is a universal journalist. He’s been everywhere, and often every side calls upon him because he is right there with his information that others lack, because the information is from his own experience and being there.
Melo and Walker have performed a great service to Portuguese historiography – and the study of revolutionary processes – by resurrecting and carefully editing Wilfred Burchett’s writings writings on the revolutionary period … I can certainly see myself using it with students: it encapsulates brilliantly a certain reading of the ‘Carnation Revolution’ and the interviews are invaluable.
The everyday lived experience of the Portuguese revolution shines through in these pages and in the voices of the key participants. Burchett’s interviews with these victims of the Portuguese dictatorship are the very best and most compelling revelations of the torture, imprisonment and endless harassment and spying to which they were subjected. This is a compelling account, superbly edited by Melo and Walker … a worthy contribution to the fiftieth anniversary of the uprising in Lisbon that ended five centuries of Portuguese colonialism, led to the ending of white rule in Southern Africa, and began a process of democratisation in Spain and Greece, and eventually in Central and Eastern Europe
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This carefully edited book offers a vivid portrait of the breakdown of one of the longest right-wing European dictatorships and of its colonial empire
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Walker and Melo have brought to light an invaluable first-hand account by one of the period’s leading engagé reporters. Burchett’s journalistic eye brings to life the hopes and fears of the people he meets – activists, farmers, soldiers and fishermen – and with them the experience of the Revolution itself