ABSTRACT

This chapter analyses the relationship between the military and policing in the counterinsurgency campaigns of the late colonial period. It argues that also applies to the case of the late colonial Portuguese state, as illustrated by the rapid replacement of those in charge in Angola when the insurgency started in 1961. The chapter also argues that the Portuguese approach to late colonial policing and counterinsurgency was not fundamentally different from that of the British or the French. Furthermore, framing counterinsurgency as policing was not just a matter of propaganda. It was both natural given longstanding discourses and practices regarding suppression of colonial insurgencies and also a result of the intelligence-centric nature of this far from conventional armed conflict and the fact that police forces were important in this vital dimension of counterinsurgency. The development of an intelligence-centric imperial high policing played an important role in the post-1945 trend towards a stronger late colonial State.