The Membership of the Executive Council: Portugal’s Highest Aspiration in the League of Nations

Abstract

In this chapter, we propose to analyse Portugal’s participation in the League of Nations by focusing on Portuguese efforts to take a seat on the Executive Council as a non-permanent member. For Portugal, a seat on the Executive Council represented the starting point for finding solutions to the vast majority of the problems that afflicted the country. Portugal, as a small power, was aware of the prestige it could gain from membership of the Council, which, in view of the way events unfolded since 1919, seemed restricted to the stronger and better-positioned powers. Its entry into this coveted body took place in October 1933, with António de Oliveira Salazar, the founder of the Estado Novo regime, already at the helm of Portugal’s destiny. The financial stability achieved by Salazar, in the face of the political and economic crisis of the First Republic, suggests that the country’s internal situation was a key factor in its entry into the Executive Council of the League of Nations.