This volume investigates what role colonial communities and diaspora have had in shaping the Portuguese empire and its heritage, exploring topics such as Portuguese migration to Africa, the Ismaili and the Swiss presence in Mozambique, the Goanese in East Africa, the Chinese in Brazil, and the history of the African presence in Portugal.

This collection of essays argues that there is an pre-history, that is, a longer tradition of the transnationalization of historical culture and historical science. It seeks to substantiate the claim that history writing reflected the globality of its time as much as followed the nationalization of the societies in which it was produced.

The Portuguese Colonial Empire established its base in Africa in the fifteenth century and would not be dissolved until 1975. This book investigates how the different populations under Portuguese rule were represented within the context of the Colonial Empire by examining the relationship between these representations and the meanings attached to the notion of ‘race’. Colour, for example, an apparently objective criterion of classification, became a synonym or near-synonym for ‘race’, a more abstract notion for which attempts were made to establish scientific credibility. Through her analysis of government documents, colonial propaganda materials and interviews, the author employs an anthropological perspective to examine how the existence of racist theories, originating in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, went on to inform the policy of the Estado Novo (Second Republic, 1933–1974) and the production of academic literature on ‘race’ in Portugal. This study provides insight into the relationship between the racist formulations disseminated in Portugal and the racist theories produced from the eighteenth century onward in Europe and beyond.