The purpose of this chapter is to analyse, in a summarised form, the conditions which made it possible for Portugal – a small and peripheral country – to declare and maintain its neutrality during the Second World War. We will analyse the structural conditions – or geo-strategic conditions – which lay at the basis of the Portuguese declaration of neutrality and its different phases of evolution throughout the conflict, and conclude with a brief examination of the factors which might have contributed to its success.

THE LUSO-BRITISH ALLIANCE AS THE KEY STRATEGIC FACTOR IN PORTUGUESE FOREIGN POLICY

On the eve of the Second World War, Portugal was a country with the singular characteristic of being simultaneously at the edge of Europe, while being relatively dependent on the ‘centre’ of Europe's political and economic system, and of having a relatively large colonial empire in Asia, equatorial Africa, and especially in Southern Africa (Angola and Mozambique).

Portugal's peripheral situation was manifest in its special bilateral relationship with Britain and in the double dependency which resulted from this association. It was, firstly, a strategic dependency: as the principal maritime power and main imperial power in southern Africa, Britain historically provided security for the communications and trade routes between Portugal and its colonies. Britain also guaranteed the integrity and subsistence of these colonies. This was a situation which was founded in the terms of the ‘old alliance’ of 1386, and renewed by the Treaty of Windsor, in 1899.