Volume (13): Issue (3)

Close observation of the episodes making up the history of Fátima enables us to identify various combinations of political and religious factors across different points in time. The trajectory of Carlos de Azevedo Mendes, a militant Catholic in the First Republic and representative of the National Assembly to the Portuguese New State dictatorship, suggests a religious attachment marked by devotion to the Virgin, captured by a political project that took shape in the 1920s. In effect, from mid-way through the decade, this Marian religious affection crystallized in a desire for order that inter-related with the political programme of the New State. The collective experience linked to Fátima’s so-called apparitions was strongly fashioned by the political context, even while lived as a religious event. To this Catholic activist, Fátima eventually became an imaginary place where devotion and the vision of a new Christian order were inherently intertwined. This article argues that within this process there were successive reattributions of political meaning that enabled the political ‘order‘ in power, already under the New State, to present itself as religious, while the religious became simultaneously a standpoint from which it was possible to criticize the state.

This article discusses the life cycle of the Portuguese Catholic Centre (CC – Centro Católico) between 1919 and 1940, considering that this organization possessed a structural problem of tactical and strategic weakness that prevented its consolidation as a party formation with wide popular support. It also discusses how the regime question was not the main obstacle preventing it from carrying out its plan for the ‘political union of Catholics’ cherished by the religious authorities. Some fracturing issues within the CC, such as the party question or the emergence of the paradigm of Catholic Action, are considered. The article also reflects on the final years of the CC, from its deactivation policy in 1926 to its extinction in 1940, which was formally decided by the bishops following the negotiation of the Concordat between Portugal and the Holy See, demonstrating that the performance of Salazar on the CC was not the determining factor in its dissolution.

The aim of this article is to reveal the decisive influence of the priest Manuel Nunes Formigão in the process of creating and establishing credibility for the Marian sanctuary of Fátima. From September 1917 to the 1930s, Nunes Formigão (who also used the pseudonym Visconde de Montelo) devoted himself to the construction, through words and deeds, of a historical, religious and ideological message for the apparitions at Cova da Iria, which the senior hierarchy of the Catholic Church has officially acknowledged and disseminated since 1930. It was to be a Catholic nationalist message that abjured the liberal and republican discourses of a secular and secularizing matrix. Thanks to the prudent and persistent action developed in the press by this priest, in the physical and social space of Fátima parish and of Vila Nova de Ourém municipality, as well as by the Catholic hierarchy, the ‘apparitions’ of Fátima eventually gained a reputation as the Portuguese Lourdes and achieved the status of a universal Catholic Marian shrine.

The recent financial and economic crisis has renewed the interest in the relationship between institutions and the economy. The aim of this overview is to analyse the consequences that institutional changes, liberal constitutions and legal framework, and also the financial policy and the creation of the modern banking structure, had on the economic development of Portugal during the nineteenth century.

Since 2008 the international community has come together amid mounting pressure to take action towards tackling the pirate menace off the Somali coast that has posed a multi-pronged threat to global economic, strategic and security interests. However, piracy has also been occurring in the Gulf of Guinea, specifically in Nigeria, and has officially overtaken the Gulf of Aden as the primary piracy hotspot. This article seeks to investigate piracy in Nigeria by tracing its evolution and crosschecking this against the legal definition thereof under international law. It seeks to contextualize the phenomenon with discussion on the nature of the Nigerian state and the legacy of oil in Nigeria. Further, the article establishes piracy in the Gulf of Guinea as unique, by illustrating the differences between piracy in the Gulf of Guinea and the Gulf of Aden. By summarizing the range of efforts designed to counter piracy in West Africa, the article is able to provide relevant prescriptions.

Due to an extensive historical-maritime tradition, Portugal has long considered the South Atlantic as an ocean of possibilities for the projection of its envisioned influence in the near abroad. This article, however, seeks to analyse how such claims fit new security developments in the South Atlantic. It begins by briefly assessing the current main threats in the South Atlantic, followed by a review of Portugal’s strategic guidelines and perceptions towards this same area. The preferred venues for the fulfilment of the country´s Atlantic expectations are then addressed by means of Portuguese technical-military co-operation with Lusophone African countries and Portuguese attempts to make NATO look southwards. The country’s overall goals are contrasted with the unique positioning of Brazil towards the South Atlantic, as a token of existing perspectives not entirely coincident with Portugal’s own aims. Some final remarks are then drawn regarding the sustainability of these expectations and the need to calibrate them in light of an evolving security context in South Atlantic waters.

The Nature of Fascism Revisited, Antonio Costa Pinto (ed.) (2012) New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 158 pp., ISBN 9780880336666, Hardback, £34.50;
Azorean Identity in Brazil and the United States: Arguments about History, Culture and Transnational Connections, João Leal (2011) Dartmouth, MA: Tagus Press, 192 pp., ISBN 9781933227313, Paperback, £18.50

A Concordata de Salazar/Salazar’s Concordat, Rita Almeida de Carvalho (2013) Lisbon: Círculo de Leitores and Temas e Debates, 642 pp., ISBN: 9789896442132, Paperback, €17.90;

Parceiros em Rede: Estratégias Territorializadas para o Desenvolvimento Local nas Áreas do Emprego e Formação/Network Partners: Territorialized Strategies for Local Development in Employment and Training, João Emílio Alves (2012) Oporto: Fronteira do Caos, 250 pp., ISBN: 9789898070975, Paperback, €14.30