Talk:Portuguese Colonial War

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.
B	This article has been rated as B-Class on the quality scale.
Additional information: This article has been checked against the following criteria for B-Class status: Referencing and citation: not checked Coverage and accuracy: not checked Structure: not checked Grammar: not checked Supporting materials: not checked To fill out this checklist, please add the following to the template call: <!-- 1. It is suitably referenced, and all major points are appropriately cited. --> |B-Class-1=yes/no <!-- 2. It reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain major omissions or inaccuracies. --> |B-Class-2=yes/no <!-- 3. It has a defined structure, including a lead section and one or more sections of content. --> |B-Class-3=yes/no <!-- 4. It is free from major grammatical errors. --> |B-Class-4=yes/no <!-- 5. It contains appropriate supporting materials, such as an infobox, images, or diagrams. --> |B-Class-5=yes/no This article has had a peer review which is now archived.

WikiProject Echo has identified Portuguese Colonial War as a foreign language featured article. You may be able to improve this article with information from the Portuguese language Wikipedia.

Portugal Portal Portuguese Colonial War is part of WikiProject Portugal, a project to improve all Portugal-related articles. If you would like to help improve this and other Portugal-related articles, please join the project. All interested editors are welcome.

Portugal To-do: edit purge Portuguese COTW Wikipedia:Portuguese Collaboration of the Week/Current Portuguese COTW Improve to Featured status Portugal Improve More... Review Category:History of Portugal: lots of crap to remove there Requests See Requested articles Listed for deletion Assess Help assessing articles. Need images Translate from Portuguese Wikipedia Wikify Vote: Watch this list — Edit this list

[edit] Factual accuracy

This article treats all three theatres as part of the same war. In fact, there were three distinct independence movements, and three distinct wars. Mozambique's independence movement, for instance, rejected most outside assistance, while Angola's relied heavily on Cuban troops and Soviet machinery. The independence movements, while friendly to each other, didn't necessarily cooperate or assist each other. In short, they weren't allies fighting on the same side in the same war. They were each fighting simultaneous wars of independence. This article needs some significant changes to deal with this bias. The Disco King 19:04, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Although the 3 theatres had different characteristics, they were part of the same war. Your argument is very strange, as no source describes the war like you do. What the article should say is that they had different characteristics, for example, the war in Guinea was the toughest for the Portuguese. Every historian in Portugal considers the war as one, with three theatres. Afonso Silva 20:09, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

From a Portuguese perspective, maybe it was one war on three fronts. From an African perspective, the wars were only related in that they were fighting the same enemy. There was no commonality of strategy, there was no true "alliance" against Portugal. There were three seperate independence movements fighting for the independence of three seperate nations against one common colonial power. This article represents the Portuguese perspective, but not the various African perspectives. The Disco King 20:14, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Agreed -- although this is an interesting article it is heavily geared toward the Portugese perspective, and seems to assume the reader is aware of things that are not obvious. For example, the article says the following:

The war in Guinea also saw the use of two unique units: * African Commandos (Comandos Africanos): Commando units entirely composed by black soldiers, including the officers * Afican Special Marines (Fuzileiros Especiais Africanos): Marine units entirely composed by black soldiers

Were these "unique units" part of the Portugese Army? Or the Anti-Portugese guerillas? I infer the former from the reference to "black soldiers" (since I further infer that the guerilla army was almost entire of black African ancestry,) but I do not know this for a fact.

I also believe that there was a Cuban invasion of Portugese Guinea on behalf of the rebels by a force of around 600 troops/advisers, and I did not see any reference to this in the article.24.3.142.198 05:09, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Translating and copyedit

I did the copy editing from a very rough translation into English from the original Portuguese article. Many of the sentences made no sense to me so I had to do a "best guess". It's an interesting point, though that the article is from the Portugues point of view. It focuses on the political and financial impact on Portugal, which was massive.

If anyone can improve the article, please do. KarenAnn 20:36, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I only translated some parts of the article, the majority was made by User:GTubio. I stopped translating it as I realized that the Portuguese version, despite being a FA, is not that good. Currently, I have no time for improving the article, but I really want to do it in the future. Thanks KarenAnn for your nice job. Afonso Silva 22:18, 5 June 2006 (UTC)