José Norton de Matos
José Maria Mendes Ribeiro Norton de Matos, GCTE, GCL was a Portuguese general and politician.
1880s
After attending school in Braga, and attending the Escola Académica in Lisbon starting in 1880, Norton de Matos started his degree in mathematics at the University of Coimbra in 1884. During that period, he joined the army, and, between 1888 and 1890, he completed the General Staff Course in the Military Academy. After several minor assignments in the armed forces, in 1898, he departed for Portuguese India as the head of the newly-formed Department of Surveying of Portuguese India. He remained in that position until 1908. The year after, he traveled in Macau and China as part of a diplomatic mission tasked with redrawing the borders between the two.In 1911, after the proclamation of the republic, he joined the Democratic Party. His political influence continued to increase and, in April 1912, he was nominated Governor-General of Angola, a territory bordering German South West Africa.
1910s–1930s
Norton de Matos returned to Portugal in 1911, after Portugal became a republic in 1910. He was prepared to serve the new regime, and he soon became the chief of staff of the 5th military division. In 1912, he was initiated into the Free Masons. That same year, he gained the post of Governor-General of Angola. His leadership was considered instrumental in protecting the Portuguese colony from foreign powers such as Britain, Germany and France.Norton de Matos was recalled to Portugal in 1915 due to the new political situation in Portugal during the First World War. There, he was named Minister of War. In this capacity, he was responsible for organizing the Portuguese intervention on the Western Front.
In 1917, Norton de Matos exiled himself to London after disagreements with the new republic. He later returned and became the Portuguese delegate to the Paris Peace Conference, which led to the Treaty of Versailles. Later he returned to Angola as High Commissioner of the Republic, from 1921 to 1923, before becoming Portuguese ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1923 to 1926. With the start of the Portuguese Military Dictatorship, he was removed from this position.
In 1929 he was elected Grand Master of the Free Masons in Portugal, a position he held between 1930 and 1935. In 1935, Salazar banned all secret organizations and removed from state functions a number of people deemed insufficiently faithful to the regime, among them Norton de Matos. Matos then stepped down from his position as Grand Master.
1940s
Norton de Matos returned to teaching, accepting a position as professor at the Instituto Superior Técnico, but was dismissed from his chair. He then became a leading opposition figure against the Salazar regime. In 1943, he was named to the National Council of Movement of National Antifascist Unity, or MUNAF, and on his 81st birthday, he was named the candidate of the opposition now united under the Movement of Democratic Unity for President in the election of 1949, under the dictatorial Estado Novo regime, while demanding freedom to advertise his message and the close inspection of votes. The regime refused these demands, and Norton de Matos withdrew from the election on 12 February 1949.Despite his fierce opposition to Salazar, Norton de Matos also defended Portuguese colonialism. In 1953, he published a book titled Africa Nossa where he made an appeal for policies that would promote massive territorial occupation by Portuguese white settlers in Africa and at the same time support the gradual assimilation of the African populations.
Norton de Matos continued to lead a democratic opposition movement centered in the city of Porto. He died in his hometown of Ponte de Lima in 1955.