Portuguese World Research Articles

Female landscapes

The aim of this article is to reflect on the presence of colonized women in photographs and other representations, such as drawings, posters, postcards, exhibition catalogues, newspapers and magazines, which were disseminated in the context of the Portuguese colonial expositions, and in exhibition spaces conceived by the Portuguese with a colonial component. Generally speaking, the exhibitions sought to put forward the progress, taking into account land, rail and sea transport, but also roads, communications, trade, industry, arts, architecture, culture, and the most recent advances in science and medicine. The exhibitions were also places where the logic of colonial models was staged, showing a clear relationship between colonial domination and gender representation. The research includes several materials produced throughout the 1930s (a fertile period regarding the Portuguese participation in this kind of international events) intended to publicize these exhibitions or serve as a complement to them. These materials may include art works or merely propagandistic works, or works that combine both components. The analysis will include materials associated with several exhibitions between 1931 and 1940, such as the International Colonial Exhibition of Paris (1931), the Lisbon Industrial Exhibition (1932), the Portuguese Colonial Exhibition in Porto (1934), the Exhibition of the Portuguese World in Lisbon (1940), and the Portugal of the Little Ones (Portugal dos Pequenitos) in Coimbra (1940). The contexts in which women appear and the way they are represented — as active beings (performing tasks), as contemplative beings (as in natural landscapes) or as objects of sexual desire, revealing the context of power (legislative, administrative, male and colonial) in which the images and the representations were produced — will be analyzed.

Spectacle Politics, Folklorist Practices, Visual Representations, and Printed Media at the 1940 Portuguese World Exhibition

Este ensaio baseia-se na noção de “espetáculo político”, construída a partir da conceção de Guy Debord em A Sociedade do Espetáculo (1967). Através dessa noção, investigaremos a propaganda visual do Centro Regional da Exposição do Mundo Português de 1940, realizada em Lisboa, e a sua relação com o álbum ilustrado Vida e Arte do Povo Português, uma publicação luxuosa sobre etnografia produzida pelo Secretariado de Propaganda Nacional, o organismo de propaganda cultural do regime.Procurando, analiticamente, aproximar dois dispositivos de propaganda – uma exposição e um livro ilustrado o qual reforça as mensagens da exposição – examinaremos o papel que ambos desempenharam enquanto propaganda visual. Exploraremos a interligação entre os dois suportes e com outras publicações, bem como a interação entre a visualidade da exposição e os arranjos gráficos que combinam desenhos, fotografias, textos e símbolos, a retórica da “portugalidade” e a coincidência desses discursos imagéticos. Por outras palavras, a forma como o espetáculo político foi formalmente reencarnado, como memória e instrumento, nesse processo transmediático.

Memories of a Glorious or Difficult Past? Portugal, Padrão dos Descobrimentos and the (Lack of a) 21st Century Reckoning

AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to analyse a particularly influential case of memory continuity in Portugal, that of Padrão dos Descobrimentos. Spaces of collective memory (such as public monuments) raise questions about what we celebrate, remember or rescue from oblivion, providing an opportunity to rethink the trauma. As such, care for public spaces is associated with ethical and cultural values. One of the difficulties with certain monuments has to do with the fact that they recall actions that today we see as traumatic acts. Thus, it is important to reflect on a critical use of memory. On August 8, 2021, Padrão dos Descobrimentos was the subject of a graffiti. One of the sides of the monument could read: “Blindly sailing for money, humanity is drowning in a scarlet sea”. A great controversy immediately arose around the meaning of this gesture, as well as the role played by a monument that, after being temporarily built in 1940 for the Portuguese World Exhibition, was, in its current version, inaugurated in 1960, on the occasion of the fifth centenary of the death of Infante D. Henrique. This episode reignited a deeper cleavage around the uses of history and memory, the Portuguese colonial past, and the role of the Padrão dos Descobrimentos as an instrument for the reproduction of nationalism. In this sense, and with the authors proposing a new theoretical frame of reference based on the thought of Arendt and Ricoeur, its critical reading becomes relevant.

O Feitiço do Império: a encenação do universo colonial português nas exposições de 1932, 1934 e 1940

This article focuses on the Estado Novo in the early 1930s and 1940s. The aim is to examine the Portuguese colonial imaginary, based on the visual narrative developed at three exhibitions: the Great Portuguese Industrial Exhibition of 1932, the First Portuguese Colonial Exhibition in 1934, and the Colonial Section of the Portuguese World Exhibition in 1940. In all cases, the Empire was exhibi-ted in miniaturised form through groups of villages and dwellings characteristic of the different colonies, including indigenous people and specimens of local fauna. These visual communication forms provided a sensual immediacy that allowed access to the general public, inspired by the staging techniques of ethnographic environments that had been established in major exhibitions since the mid-1800s. The purpose is to analyse the expositive scenographic forms used, drawing on the resulting iconographic universe, of a propagandistic nature — mainly magazines and films — seeking to understand the process of cultural objectification to which the Portuguese colonial universe was subjected.

Reflexos do Império na educação portuguesa (1906 - 1951). Desbravando um campo pouco explorado

Abstract Repercussions of the Empire in Portuguese Education (1906 to 1951). Breaking new ground in a little-explored field, this text addresses the question of the image of the colonies and the colonized in the context of Portuguese education (1906 to 1951) through Portuguese textbooks and a manual to teach indigenous Angolan children. The latter was edited in two moments - we suppose at the beginning of the Republic and in re-editions during the Dictatorship. We used materials referring to the first colonial exhibition in 1934 and the 1940 Portuguese World exhibition. The work is situated in the perspective of postcolonial studies, attempting to re-read colonialism in Portuguese education. We used heterogeneous sources and raised some questions to point out that much is yet to be studied.

The lusophone world of Iberoamerica: between the “left wave” and the “right turn” (the example of Portugal and Brazil)

The authors analyze political cycles of the Portuguese (Lusophone) world, which is based on Portugal-Brazil civilizational axis. The authors seek to prove the existence of synchronicity and parallelism in the context of the movement of political pendulum from right to left and back within the Lusophone world of Iberoamerica. The main thesis of this study is that the Ibero-American transcontinental macro-region is sandwiched between a “left wave” and a “right turn”, with the conclusion that further continuation of the “left wave” with right-wing fluctuations in the current context is going to continue. As far as Portugal is concerned, the case of the municipal elections of September 26, 2021 is used as empirical material and is subjected to a detailed analysis from the perspective of the Portuguese party-political landscape. In addition, some attention is paid to the early parliamentary elections of January 30, 2022 in Portugal. The authors also assess the development of populism in Portugal, given that in European countries, left-wing and right-wing populist movements are gaining popularity. Similarly, the authors consider the results of the 2020 municipal elections, and political situation in Brazil on the eve of the 2022 presidential elections. We give a forecast about further shift to the left of the Ibero-American Lusophone world, if after the confident victory of the Portuguese socialists under the leadership of Costa the socialist president Lula da Silva comes to power in Brazil, and, as a result, about formation of the left-socialist power pole within the framework of the Ibero-American Lusophony.

The Portuguese World as a Transnational Space: Political Dimension

The Portuguese World as a Transnational Space: Political Dimension

Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship and religion in the African Portuguese World, 1441-1770. By James H. Sweet (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003)

Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship and religion in the African Portuguese World, 1441-1770. By James H. Sweet (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003)

Diversity of economic development in Portuguese-speaking countries

The rates of growth and stability of economic development of the countries of the Portuguese world in the years 1870-2018 are investigated. The comparison has been carried out for 15 economic cycles, which are grouped into following historical periods: monarchical, dictatorial and democratic. The developed method for researching economic development policies makes it possible to quantitatively assess the historical fate of territories in terms of growth and risk. The indicators of the standard deviation of the growth rates of real gross domestic product were used as an indicator of sustainability. The features of progressive, regressive, conservative and aggressive policies of economic development are described. It is shown that during the entire studied period, only Spain which is beyond the Portuguese-speaking word demonstrated similarity in development with Portugal. Brazil's development trend deviated from the metropolis after 130 years of independence and 60 years of obvious institutional differences. African colonies in their turn immediately began to demonstrate a drastically different development policy. This proves that culture has a more significant and long-term impact on economic development than state and social institutions. The results obtained show that the Portuguese world has not formed a separate civilization with special and peculiar traits to be united with the common historical fate.

O mito de São Tomé ou Sumé: O nexo teológico-político entre o Oriente e o Ocidente

In Vision of Paradise , Sergio Buarque de Holanda affirms the myth of Sao Tome as the only conquest myth of Luso-Brazilian origin. Unlike the Castilian world, which was guided – as of the earliest letters penned by Christopher Columbus – by imaginary questions on the idea of Paradise on Earth, the source of youth, the Amazon and its treasures, and the white king and his mountains of gold, the Portuguese world was more modestly and uniquely nourished by a fantasy based on the mythology of Sao Tome [Saint Thomas] and his journey around the world. In Brazil, Manuel da Nobrega’s earliest letters on the term “ Sume ” are used to refer to the figure of Tome , to human footprints, and to a mysterious messenger of supernatural truths establishing communication between Brazil and India, and these regions with the Catholic-Portuguese world. The myth of Tome or Sume thus serves as a historical solution or an intellectual and imaginary attempt to link Brazil and Asia and both to the Christian cosmology.

Esther in Early Modern Iberia and the Sephardic Diaspora: Queen of the Conversas

Esther in Early Modern Iberia and the Sephardic Diaspora: Queen of the Conversas

The Challenging Implementation of World Heritage Historic Centres’ Preservation Programmes: A Comparative Case-Study Analysis in Portugal

ABSTRACT The growing complexity of contemporary local public governance is a clear challenge to the success of public policies. The policy domains of culture, broadly, and heritage preservation, specifically, in Portugal are good examples of that complexity, since municipalities are their biggest public funders and promoters, although experiencing several institutional capacity difficulties. These national realities are, nevertheless, largely under analysed in the literature. This paper thus aims to analyse the critical factors for the implementation of the management programmes of three Portuguese World Heritage historic centres: Évora, Porto and Guimarães. Through the analysis of programme documentation and interviews launched on local managers, it was possible to identify that the most decisive factors were issues of local political support, funding, and management structure.

Federico Garcia Lorca as Folklorist: the Ibero-American <em>Romance de don Gato</em>

El interés de Federico García Lorca por los romances populares puede fecharse desde su niñez. Entre sus propios manuscritos aun inéditos conservados en el archivo de la Fundación F. García Lorca (Madrid), existe una versión del conocido Romance de Don Gato, sin indicación de procedencia. En nuestro estudio de dicho texto, utilizamos unas 60 versiones recogidas de la tradición oral, incluyendo una de Isabel, hermana del poeta, y 23 transcripciones musicales de fuentes (inéditas y publicadas) castellanas, catalanas, valencianas, gallegas, portuguesas, sefardíes y americanas.

Celebrate Nation, Commemorate History, Embody the Estado Novo: The Exhibition of the Portuguese World (1940)

ABSTRACTIn 1940, the Portuguese regime, named Estado Novo, hosted its biggest national exhibition: the Exhibition of the Portuguese World (EPW).The event aimed both to commemorate Portuguese history and to justify the teleological nature of the dictatorship. This article discusses the national identity narrative conveyed by the allegorical pavilions conceived for the historical section of the EPW. In examining the ephemeral architecture and the debate which arose among intellectuals at the event, this article explores the process of narration and reinterpretation surrounding the display and elucidates the complex process of reception by the citizenry.

Portuguese vines and wines: heritage, quality symbol, tourism asset

This paper aims to showcase the value and uniqueness of Portuguese wines and wine regions. It has three independent but related parts. The first part focuses the millenary history of vines in Portugal and stresses their value for the regional and national economy. The second part focuses on the role of brands in the wine regions and wine marketing, highlighting the importance of the landscape in promotion. It is claimed that the use of landmarks can help create an identity image, useful for attracting tourism and wine advertising, being also a major asset for the Portuguese world trade of wines. Landmarks identification and promotional suggestions with landmarks related to Portuguese wine regions are presented. The third part presents a short revision of the panorama of wine tourism in Portugal and stresses the role of landscapes in its promotion. A literary route in the Douro Demarcated Region is presented by way of example.

Power and Corruption in the Early Modern Portuguese World

This book is a very readable historical narrative of the Portuguese Empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The author has effectively rewritten his original thesis on the Portuguese overseas board (Conselho Ultramarino) into an overview that accounts for the several centers of power in the Portuguese Empire. The book is clearly inspired by classic works by Charles Boxer and A. J. Russel Wood that sought to provide a holistic view of how Portugal managed its imperial possessions during the early modern period. It nicely complements a volume recently published by Gabriel Paquette that deals with the Portuguese Empire in the late eighteenth century through the mid-nineteenth century.Myrup’s book has many highlights, including his ability to weave together personal narratives to illustrate larger points about the Portuguese Empire. Chapter 1 focuses on the creation of the Conselho Ultramarino through the personal trajectory of his first president, Jorge de Mascarenhas; chapter 2 provides an insightful analysis of the internal dynamics of the Conselho Ultramarino as well as its global ramifications; chapter 3 shifts away from Europe toward the fringes of Portuguese Brazil by reconstructing the trajectory of Antonio Raposo Tavares, a bandeirante whose three-year journey into the heart of South America helped consolidate the Portuguese grip in the region. Chapter 4 looks through the career of Rodrigo Cesar de Menezes, a member of a prestigious noble family whose service on behalf of the Portuguese Crown stretched throughout all sections of the empire, including Africa. Chapter 5 focuses on Macau to analyze the relationship between Portugal and Spain during the Iberian union. Chapter 6 provides the most effective demonstration of the role of social networks in cross-cultural, political, and economic ties by teasing out a crime that occurred in Macau in the mid-eighteenth century.As Myrup skillfully demonstrates, the Portuguese Empire hinged not only on formal structures but also on informal dynamics built around what he calls social networks. Myrup is to be praised for integrating Asia into his narrative, but the fact that Africa is conspicuously absent stands out as a missed opportunity. Africa was the first region touched by the Portuguese and the last pillar of the Portuguese Empire in the twentieth century. For example, Myrup devotes significant attention to Salvador Correia de Sá, the Portuguese military leader responsible for the retaking of Angola from the Dutch in the seventeenth century, but he shies away from discussing the place of Angola in the Portuguese South Atlantic. Nor does he take advantage of his otherwise insightful analysis of bandeirantes in Brazil to fully grapple with similar phenomena in Africa.Myrup’s framing of the Portuguese Empire centers on the power of elites, with minimal attention devoted to the vast majority of free and unfree commoners that the Portuguese ruled in their vast and sprawling global empire. In this sense, the social networks that interest Myrup mostly involve governors, merchants, nobles, high-end clergymen, and state structures. This focus raises several central questions: How did social networks connect elite members to non-elite groups in the Portuguese Empire? How did they pave the way for trans-imperial ties? In which ways were they conducive to the intense cross-cultural exchanges that undergirded the Portuguese Empire in Africa, Brazil, and Asia?

Gasparo Contarini’s Relazione of November 1525 to the Venetian Senate on the divergent dynamics of the Spanish and Portuguese world empires

This contribution seeks to present Gasparo Contarini’s diplomatic report (Relazione), made following three years in Venetian service in Spain between 1522–1525, to unfamiliar readers, as well as to elucidate its contents. It was a time when ground-breaking reports of the first global circumnavigation by Magellan/Elcano and conquests in the New World undertaken by Hernán Cortés were filtering back to the Spanish ruler, Charles V. Projects for the colonization of Brazil in neighbouring Portugal were afoot, as were attempts by other parties to reach the contested Spiceries by new routes. International juries were constituted to decide upon the division of the world’s spaces, culminating in the Treaty of Saragossa, and controversial maps were drawn up both to make sense of potentially new continents like the Americas, and to plead different cases at the upcoming tribunals. It is asked why such a polarized picture of successful Spanish and unsuccessful Portuguese imperial fortunes is provided by Contarini, at a time of great rivalry between Spain and Portugal, and it is suggested that Contarini – who did not personally travel to Portugal – may simply be following a rhetorical precedent fashioned by previous diplomats like Ca’Masser, Vincenzo Quirini and Pietro Pasqualigo. Historical, personal and documentary context (Contarini’s 400 dispacci, for example) is provided, and comparisons drawn to the letters and reports of other contemporary observers, like the Polish diplomat Jan Dantyszek at the Spanish court, as well as contemporary travellers and businessmen, like Jörg Pock in Lisbon.

Erik Lars Myrup, Power and Corruption in the Early Modern Portuguese World

Erik Lars Myrup, <i>Power and Corruption in the Early Modern Portuguese World</i>

Power and Corruption in the Early Modern Portuguese World by Erik Lars Myrup

Reviewed by: Power and Corruption in the Early Modern Portuguese World by Erik Lars Myrup Jonathan Wade Myrup, Erik Lars. Power and Corruption in the Early Modern Portuguese World. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2015. Pp. 241. ISBN 978-0-80715-982-8. Erik Myrup’s Power and Corruption in the Early Modern Portuguese World explores the composition, function, and consequence of social networks within Portugal’s vast colonial empire, demonstrating the wide gap between imperial theories and colonial practices. Since extant research has much to say about the colonial state but remains relatively silent on the relationships upon which the whole system was built, Myrup’s work focuses on the latter. Over the course of the study he attempts to recreate the “complicated mosaic of social hierarchies” (2) that defined the Portuguese empire by probing “beneath the surface of formal colonial government” (3). The work is divided into three sections (Europe, South America, and Asia), each one consisting of two chapters, along with an introduction, conclusion, and thirty pages of notes. Myrup takes a narrative approach to the topic that gives voice to individuals and groups. The primary focal point for his study is the Overseas Council. The benefits of this choice are at least two-fold: 1) it allows Myrup to narrow a topic that could easily fill several volumes; and 2) it justifies his choice to focus on Portugal’s eastern and westernmost margins (particularly Brazil), which gained in importance even as interest in Africa and India declined. In chapter 1, Myrup examines the role of social networks within the Portuguese court in Lisbon by telling the story of Dom Jorge de Mascarenhas and chronicling the birth of the Overseas Council. Perhaps a victim of bad timing as much as anything, Mascarenhas was appointed viceroy of Brazil in April of 1640, arriving there by June only to see his fortunes change in December, when Portugal declared its independence. An appointment that came in large part thanks to social connections was lost due to the same (he was accused of Spanish sympathies). Unlike the other chapters of the study, chapter 2 lacks a specific protagonist, favoring instead the collective histories of Portugal’s Overseas Councilors. While this renders the chapter less readable than the others, Myrup still succeeds in what he set out to do; namely, to show how the Council “acted as an institutional gatekeeper and powerbroker” (39). Overall, this chapter traces two major progressions, one geographic (from east to west) and the other compositional (from aristocrats to letrados). Myrup reminds readers throughout the chapter that personal [End Page 144] connections made the gaining and retaining of appointments within this extensive web of patronage and paternalism possible. In this reviewer’s estimation, the most compelling of the three parts is Part 2: South America. Here Myrup characterizes São Paulo as an important, yet isolated gateway to the Brazilian backlands, and shows how its governors navigated both western expansion and imperial interests. In telling the stories (and backstories) of António Raposo Tavares and Rodrigo César de Meneses’s respective journeys into the interior of Brazil, Myrup is able to reflect the tensions within patron-client networks. Whereas the former extended the geographic limits of Brazil, the latter’s journey to Cuiabá expanded the empire’s economic interests. As Myrup repeatedly demonstrates, life was difficult on the margins of empire: allegiances were not easily discerned, order was hard to maintain, and relationships were cast in ambiguity. It is not surprising to discover, therefore, that Raposo Tavares and Meneses would seek as much personal gain as they could get away with. That, among other things, is the gamble to which Myrup refers in the title of chapter 4 (“Gambling Governors and Gilded Lead”). What made them gambling governors were the risks that they were willing to take to secure personal wealth. Whether the balance ultimately tips in favor of loyalty or self-interest is a matter of perspective, as Myrup suggests. The stated purpose of Part 3 is to reevaluate Luso-Spanish relations in East Asia. Although Spain shows up throughout the work, it is in chapter 5 (“One King, Two Crowns”) that Myrup sustains the comparison...

Erik Lars Myrup. Power and Corruption in the Early Modern Portuguese World .

Erik Lars Myrup. <i>Power and Corruption in the Early Modern Portuguese World</i> .