Lusotropicalism () is a term and "quasi-theory" developed by

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

ian sociologist

Gilberto Freyre Gilberto de Mello Freyre (March 15, 1900 – July 18, 1987) was a Brazilian sociologist, anthropologist, historian, writer, painter, journalist and congressman born in Recife. Considered one of the most important sociologists of the 20th cen ...

to describe the distinctive character of Portuguese imperialism overseas, proposing that the Portuguese were better colonizers than other European nations. Miguel Vale de Almeida
Portugal’s Colonial Complex: From Colonial Lusotropicalism to Postcolonial Lusophony
/ref> Freyre theorized that because of

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country on the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. Featuring Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point in continental Europe, Portugal borders Spain to its north and east, with which it share ...

's warmer climate, and having been inhabited by

Celts The Celts ( , see Names of the Celts#Pronunciation, pronunciation for different usages) or Celtic peoples ( ) were a collection of Indo-European languages, Indo-European peoples. "The Celts, an ancient Indo-European people, reached the apoge ...

, Romans,

Visigoths The Visigoths (; ) were a Germanic people united under the rule of a king and living within the Roman Empire during late antiquity. The Visigoths first appeared in the Balkans, as a Roman-allied Barbarian kingdoms, barbarian military group unite ...

Moors The term Moor is an Endonym and exonym, exonym used in European languages to designate the Muslims, Muslim populations of North Africa (the Maghreb) and the Iberian Peninsula (particularly al-Andalus) during the Middle Ages. Moors are not a s ...

and several other peoples in pre-modern times, the Portuguese were more humane, friendly, and adaptable to other climates and cultures. He saw "Portuguese-based cultures as cultures of ecumenical expansion" and suggested that "Lusotropical culture was a form of resistance against both the 'barbaric' Soviet communist influence, and the also 'barbarian' process of Americanization and capitalist expansion." In addition, by the early 20th century, Portugal was by far the European colonial power with the oldest territorial presence overseas; in some cases its territories had been continuously settled and ruled by the Portuguese for five centuries. Lusotropicalism celebrated both actual and mythological elements of racial democracy and civilizing mission in the

Portuguese Empire The Portuguese Empire was a colonial empire that existed between 1415 and 1999. In conjunction with the Spanish Empire, it ushered in the European Age of Discovery. It achieved a global scale, controlling vast portions of the Americas, Africa ...

, encompassing a pro- miscegenation attitude toward the colonies or overseas territories. The ideology is best exemplified in the work of Freyre.

Background

The beginning of the

is usually traced to the 1415

Conquest of Ceuta The Portuguese conquest of Ceuta took place on 21 August 1415, between Portuguese forces under the command of King John I of Portugal and the Marinid Sultanate, Marinid sultanate of Morocco at the city of Ceuta. The city's defenses fell unde ...

North Africa North Africa (sometimes Northern Africa) is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region. However, it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of t ...

. In the succeeding decades of the 15th century, Portuguese sailors traveled all over the world: Bartolomeu Dias rounded the

Cape of Good Hope The Cape of Good Hope ( ) is a rocky headland on the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula in South Africa. A List of common misconceptions#Geography, common misconception is that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Afri ...

in 1488; Vasco da Gama reached

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

in 1498; and Pedro Álvares Cabral made landfall in

in 1500. At first the Portuguese were interested primarily in lucrative trade opportunities (including the slave trade), and by the end of the 16th century the Portuguese had established trading outposts in Africa, India, Brazil, the Middle East, and

South Asia South Asia is the southern Subregion#Asia, subregion of Asia that is defined in both geographical and Ethnicity, ethnic-Culture, cultural terms. South Asia, with a population of 2.04 billion, contains a quarter (25%) of the world's populatio ...

. During this time there was some minimal Portuguese intermarrying with and settlement among African and Asian peoples. It was much more common for the Portuguese to bring Asian and especially African peoples to Europe and Brazil, most often though not always as enslaved people. As early as the 1570s,

Lisbon Lisbon ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 567,131, as of 2023, within its administrative limits and 3,028,000 within the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, metropolis, as of 2025. Lisbon is mainlan ...

had a sizeable and well-known Black African population of enslaved and free people. During the New Imperialist

Scramble for Africa The Scramble for Africa was the invasion, conquest, and colonialism, colonisation of most of Africa by seven Western European powers driven by the Second Industrial Revolution during the late 19th century and early 20th century in the era of ...

of the 1890s onward, Portugal expanded its coastal African territories in modern

Angola Angola, officially the Republic of Angola, is a country on the west-Central Africa, central coast of Southern Africa. It is the second-largest Portuguese-speaking world, Portuguese-speaking (Lusophone) country in both total area and List of c ...

Mozambique Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique, is a country located in Southeast Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west, and Eswatini and South Afr ...

, and

Guinea-Bissau Guinea-Bissau, officially the Republic of Guinea-Bissau, is a country in West Africa that covers with an estimated population of 2,026,778. It borders Senegal to Guinea-Bissau–Senegal border, its north and Guinea to Guinea–Guinea-Bissau b ...

inland. Like other European colonial empires, Portugal achieved this expansion primarily through physical and economic violence against native peoples. After the 1910 Portuguese Revolution, and as an official policy of the 1933–1974 '' Estado Novo'' dictatorship, Black people in Portuguese Africa were ''

de jure In law and government, ''de jure'' (; ; ) describes practices that are officially recognized by laws or other formal norms, regardless of whether the practice exists in reality. The phrase is often used in contrast with '' de facto'' ('from fa ...

'' eligible for full Portuguese citizenship and its attendant rights. In practice, Black people hardly ever achieved such status, and during the ''Estado Novo'' even white Portuguese born in Africa were denied the same legal rights and protections as whites born in metropolitan Portugal.

Application during the ''Estado Novo''

Prior to Freyre's publication of ''Casa-Grande & Senzala'', few—if any—Portuguese politicians and colonial administrators conceived of the Portuguese Empire as a multicultural, multiracial, and pluricontinental nation (the idea that Portugal was not a colonial empire but a nation-state spread across continents). They were more likely to think of Portuguese colonialism as a logical historical extension or continuation of the ''

Reconquista The ''Reconquista'' (Spanish language, Spanish and Portuguese language, Portuguese for ) or the fall of al-Andalus was a series of military and cultural campaigns that European Christian Reconquista#Northern Christian realms, kingdoms waged ag ...

''. For example,

Armindo Monteiro Armindo Rodrigues de Sttau Monteiro (16 December 1896 – 15 October 1955), known as Armindo Monteiro, was a Portuguese university professor, businessman, diplomat and politician who exercised important functions during the Estado Novo perio ...

, Portuguese Minister of Colonies between 1931 and 1935, is considered a " social Darwinist" due to being a proponent of the traditional colonial " civilizing mission" and

white savior The term white savior is a critical description of a White people, white person who is depicted as liberating, rescuing or uplifting Person of color, non-white people; it is critical in the sense that it describes a pattern in which people of colo ...

ism. Monteiro believed Portugal had a "historic obligation" to civilize the "inferior races" who lived in its African and Asian territories by converting them to Christianity and teaching them a work ethic. Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar strongly resisted Freyre's ideas throughout the 1930s and 1940s, partly because Freyre claimed the Portuguese were more prone to miscegenation than other European nations. He adopted lusotropicalism only after sponsoring Freyre on a visit to Portugal and some of its overseas territories in 1951 and 1952. Freyre's work ''Aventura e Rotina'' (''Adventure and Routine'') was a result of this trip. Salazar adopted lusotropicalism by asserting that since Portugal had been a multicultural, multiracial, and pluricontinental nation since the 15th century, losing its overseas territories in Africa and Asia would dismember the country and end Portuguese independence. According to Salazar, in geopolitical terms, losing these territories would decrease the Portuguese state's self-sufficiency.

Influence on Hispanism

In Hispanic circles, an "''Ibero-tropicalist''" movement has been developed, with the aim of developing an

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, society, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behav ...

mestizaje ( , ; fem. , literally 'mixed person') is a term primarily used to denote people of mixed Ethnic groups in Europe, European and Indigenous ancestry in the former Spanish Empire. In certain regions such as Latin America, it may also refer to ...

based on the similarities between the Portuguese colonial model and the Spanish one to integrate the native peoples and having organically given a

transculturation Transculturation is a term coined by Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz in 1940 to describe the phenomenon of merging and converging cultures. Transculturation encompasses more than transition from one culture to another; it does not consist me ...

that forged a syncretic identity of Iberian and Indies roots. This "Ibero-tropicalism" considers that Iberism should not be understood as something purely European, but as an Ibero-Afro-American identity in which cultures of 3 great civilizations were integrated into a single transcontinental social community, evidenced in the cultural exchange present in food (beans, cocoa or potatoes), genes (Mestizaje), clothes, music (Reggaeton), terminologies, etc. in a common heritage (in addition to mutual migratory currents). This sociological approach would make

Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...

and

be understood as nations that are not purely European, but also American and African; and analogously with the fact that

Ibero-America Ibero-America (, ) or Iberian America is generally considered to be the region in the Americas comprising countries or territories where Spanish or Portuguese are predominant languages (usually former colony, territories of Spain or Portugal). Sp ...

is not purely American, but also European and African, just as Portuguese Africa and Spanish Africa are not purely African, but also European and American; and that all these regions with a common tradition would be part of the Iberian Civilization and its plural character (expressed in the Hispanidad or Lusophonie).

Critique

Freyre's response to criticism

The life of Freyre, after he published '' Casa-Grande & Senzala'', became an eternal source of explanation. He repeated several times that he did not create the myth of a racial democracy and that the fact that his books recognized the intense mixing between "races" in Brazil did not mean a lack of prejudice or discrimination. He pointed out that many people have claimed the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

to have been an "exemplary democracy" whereas

slavery Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavemen ...

and

racial segregation Racial segregation is the separation of people into race (human classification), racial or other Ethnicity, ethnic groups in daily life. Segregation can involve the spatial separation of the races, and mandatory use of different institutions, ...

were present throughout most of US history: "The interpretation of those who want to place me among the sociologists or anthropologists who said prejudice of race among the Portuguese or the Brazilians never existed is extreme. What I have always suggested is that such prejudice is minimal... when compared to that which is still in place elsewhere, where laws still regulate relations between Europeans and other groups". "It is not that racial prejudice or social prejudice related to complexion are absent in Brazil. They exist. But no one here would have thought of "white-only" Churches. No one in Brazil would have thought of laws against interracial marriage ... Fraternal spirit is stronger among Brazilians than racial prejudice, colour, class or religion. It is true that equality has not been reached since the end of slavery.... There was racial prejudice among plantation owners, there was social distance between the masters and the slaves, between whites and blacks.... But few wealthy Brazilians were as concerned with racial purity as the majority were in the Old South".

Background

Application during the ''Estado Novo''

Influence on Hispanism

Critique

Freyre's response to criticism

See also

References

Further reading