SALAZAR

A Political Biography
PUBLICO Lisbon's Top Daily Praises Salazar Biography!
by Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses

ISBN#9781929631902 • Trade Paper

$ 28.00

The new and definitive political biography of a key Portuguese political leader who left his mark on European and world history: Salazar ruled Portugal while playing an important role in world affairs and yet he remains a largely unknown figure to the rest of the world. This book is now the main reference point that fills that gap.

António de Oliveira Salazar entered the government of Portugal when Herbert Hoover was president and ended his political career at the end of the Johnson Administration: he remained in power for forty years from 1928 to 1968, one of the longest tenures in modern history.

Different in style from Franco, Mussolini and Hitler, he was constantly involved in the infinite daily detail of all the issues that confronted Portugal.

By maintaining strict neutrality, and ultimately favoring Great Britain, the United States and the Allies, Salazar spared Portugal from the horrors of World War II. But he would always remain an arch-conservative and reactionary statesman who relied on secrecy and ruled through a police apparatus. He saw the universal granting of independence to the colonies as a sign that the West was abdicating its civilizing mission.

The battle to keep Portugal’s hold on its African and Asian possessions was to be the final challenge that Salazar ultimately lost.

About the Author
Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses was born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1969 and studied at Trinity College, Dublin, where he was awarded a PhD in history in 1997. He is currently Senior Lecturer at the Department of History, National University of Ireland, Maynooth. He has published extensively on contemporary Portuguese and Spanish history, some of his works include Franco and the Spanish Civil War (2001) and Portugal 1914-1926: From the First World War to Military Dictatorship (2004). He is also interested in diplomatic history, having edited a collection of Irish diplomatic documents about Salazar’s Portugal (2005). His work on Salazar was rewarded with a Research Fellowship from the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences and a Visiting Fellowship by the Instituto de Ciências Sociais at the University of Lisbon.