Malacca and Goa and the Question of Race Relations in the Portuguese Overseas Provinces

Abstract

The expression of this viewpoint has taken a variety of forms, often expressed quite categorically and without any qualification whatso ever, and has been supported by official policy and, academically in particular, by the distinguished Brazilian socio-historian Gilberto Freyre. More recently it has been attacked by Professor Charles Boxer in his Race Relations in the Portuguese Colonial Empire, 1415-1825 (Clarendon, 1963), where the author has presented a substantial body of entirely reliable historical evidence of actual discrimination against indigenes and mesti?os within the Portuguese Empire and Provinces, and has argued that whilst this viewpoint is sincerely held it is substantially incorrect in its extreme and bald form.