ABSTRACT
The creation and management of a rationalized system of colonial labour – tentatively organized, administered and regulated by the empire-state – was a crucial element of the political imagination of the Portuguese authorities since the nineteenth century. It was also the cornerstone of both the "politics of difference" and of extractive mechanisms associated with the variegated initiatives to recreate new Brazils in Africa. This chapter demonstrates how the evolution of the "native labour" problem in the Portuguese empire from 1919 to 1962 was significantly, but not exclusively, shaped by international and transnational dynamics, exploring three analytically fruitful instances of the growing interaction between the empire and international institutions. It explores how articulated international and transnational dynamics interacted with – conditioned and were conditioned by – both phenomena, and constituted a fundamental dimension in the definition of colonial labour policies and practices and, more generally, in the overall historical trajectory of the Portuguese imperial and colonial ventures.
