While there was generally a road network radiating from the colonial capital, the primary routes used clandestinely by insurgents were chiefly the waterways. The Portuguese Navy in developing a specialized naval force clearly foresaw the paramount economic, military, and psychological importance of controlling the interior waterways of Africa, for the infrastructure there was universally primitive.

This naval reorientation was a remarkable achievement, in that Portugal not only learned to fight a new kind of war, it built a navy to accomplish this and did so while shouldering its NATO commitments. This is the story of that conversion and the great 'battle of the rivers' in Africa. Ultimately, it would perform a near wholesale conversion from the blue water or oceanic navy that supported NATO to a brown water or riverine one to fight in Africa.

By the mid-1950s, it became apparent to the Portuguese Navy that it would fight in Africa, and it began to make preparations. Portugal ultimately would fight a 13-year debilitating war against various nationalist movements in Africa to retain its possessions. Without them Portugal saw itself as only a small European country, whereas with them, it would be a great nation. By 1960, when other colonial powers were abandoning their empires, Portugal made the decision to cling to its possessions, as they had been Portuguese for over 400 years. This membership resulted in a modernizing of its navy and its integration into the Atlantic Alliance. During World War II, Portugal played its cards uncommonly well as a neutral and subsequently became a member of NATO.

Brown Waters Of Africa by John P. Cann