Legacies of portuguese colonial rule: political volatility, welfare, and state formation in Mozambique and Goa (India)

Abstract

Despite of growing body of scholarship on colonial legacies, Portuguese colonialism remains relatively under-theorized in the field of global comparative colonial studies. Moreover, the scholarship on colonialism in India has undermined the colonial past of Goa, alongside Daman and Diu (another Indian state formerly under Portuguese rule). The colonial history of these states has received limited scholarly attention and is often treated as a peripheral case rather than being situated within broader debates on colonial governance and postcolonial state formation. The research demonstrates the importance of decolonisation in Mozambique and Goa, through the use of the comparative-historical approach and the concept of contingent path dependence. Whereas Mozambique's violent decolonisation resulted in a bureaucratic capacity vacuum associated with decades of political instability, on the other hand Goa's negotiated integration into India produced comparatively stable institutions, due to the continuity of the bureaucratic, legal, and educational systems. This divergence in state formation and welfare provisions is caused by the way in which decolonisation has occurred in these two contexts. The study does not regard decolonization as a single moment of rupture, but rather as an extended and uneven process through which postcolonial states reworked and inherited institutions.