The Impact of the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War on Portuguese and Spanish Africa
In the present stage of research, it is easiest to discern the economic effects of war on the Iberian colonies. These were diverse in chronological, regional and sectoral terms, but the overall results were to tie the economies of the Portuguese and Spanish colonies more firmly to those of the metropoles. This did not exclude two processes pulling in other directions. Firstly, the foreign trade of the colonies persisted but was reoriented away from Europe and towards North America. Secondly, shortages and insecurity of transport led to a significant degree of import substitution and regional African trade in the colonies, in the fields of both industry and agriculture. The social impact of war resembled that in much of the rest of Africa, great hardships and labour pressures on the mass of the population, but windfall profits for a few, both black and white. The political consequences of the two conflicts remain most shadowy at present, but they appear to have heightened the covert struggle between pro-fascist and anti-fascist groups in a situation of strong repression, flaring up into open strife only in the Spanish territories in 1936.