ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to identify the emergence and contours of colonial policing as a government issue in Portugal, the debates and main measures undertaken at the end of the 19th century and throughout the first-half of the 20th century. It focuses on the emergence of the police as an issue in the debate on the nature of the colonial state at the end of the 19th century. The chapter focuses on the period from the 1930s through to the outbreak of colonial warfare in 1961; a period marked by the emergence and consolidation of an authoritarian dictatorship headed by Antonio Oliveira Salazar. The Portuguese elites were entirely aware of the need for new institutions, personnel and administrative procedures that were capable of enforcing colonial order and installing more effective control over the territories and the populations. Portuguese colonialism in general seemed more concerned with establishing administrative rules and maintaining good relations within administrative apparatus than with enforcing those same rules.
