Hello everyone,
Today, guntracks are commonly associated with islamist terrorists (aka snackbars), but one thing’s for certain, the middle eastern “engineering school” didn’t invent them. They were around even before the First World War. Even after the second world war, they were used by some first world armies.
This is a guntruck of sorts, deployed by the Portuguese during the Portuguese Colonial War in the 1960s. I can’t imagine that driving around off road was comfortable for the person inside the armored “news stand” (or however you call it), but against insurgents armed with vintage WW1 rifles, it was probably enough. Of course, then the war escalated and only ended 15 years later with the collapse of the Portuguese colonial empire, but during the early days, such trucks were not uncommon.
It took me a while to realize what you meant by “guntrack”, even looking at the photo as the turret looked like a silo in the background. Never heard the term before.
A far more common term is a technical, a name originating from the Somali civil war when UN forces hired local militias to escort their convoys and noted it in the documents as “technical assistance”
minor correction, did not end with “the collapse of the Portuguese colonial empire” but with the Portuguese revolution, one of the questions in the origin of the portuguese revolutionary “forces”, the MFA (Movimento das Forças Armadas, or «Movement of the Armed Forces»), was the feeling of being fighting for nothing, ending the war was one of the ojectives of the revolution and that meant signing the independence for the colonies, of course it did not happen immediatly after the revolution
P.S: curious enough the UK, our oldest allies, was the one that pressured the portuguese regime the most to free the colonies, in a very hypocritical fashion with how they dealt with their own, and yet they keep colonies even today in the 21st century
Gibraltar, Falklands, etc… (including 2 islands close to the french coast)
I don’t normally do politics, but I can’t let that pass.
Gibraltar and Falklands are not colonies in any normally accepted sense of the term. And as for the Channel Island (to which you are presumably referring) they have been self governing jurisdictions with their own separate political and legal systems for about the same amount of time as Portugal (12th Century), ie. not colonies.
so? Portugal controlled Macau until the 1990′s, it had an autonomous government but was still a colony, same for Goa
in a broad sense a colony is any territory, away from a nation mainland, that was taken from the locals, that’s exactly what the Falklands, Gibraltar or the Channel islands are, or do you think the british did not take them from the french during the many wars between them
“a colony is a territory under the immediate political control of a state, distinct from the home territory of the sovereign”
don’t forget they (british overseas territories) were formerly known as “crown colonies”
Nope, the British did not ‘take’ the Channel Islands from France (Britain did not even exist at that time). The Channel Islands freely chose allegiance to the English crown around 1200, but in case were part of the dutch of Normandy rather than France prior to that, which was allegiant to the English crown rather than the French. Also, the Channel Islands have never been British Overseas Territories or Crown Colonies. You might be well advised to check your facts more thoroughly before forming your opinions.