Anarchism, colonialism and the question of “race” in Portugal (c.1890-1930)

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores, through a close reading of newspapers and publications connected to the Portuguese libertarian movement, anarchist discourses and practices around understandings of “race” in Portugal in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A contribution is made both to studies of Lusophone anarchism as well as broader labour movement history where analyses of the interconnections between race and colonialism have been sparse. Portuguese anarchist understandings of race are placed within the context of broader ideas on internationalism within the anarchist movement, contemporary theories of the inheritance of racial characteristics and contestations against notions of nationhood and nationalism. The specific context of Portuguese colonialism and the development of anthropology in the country form the backdrop against which anarchist ideas are analysed. The article argues that while anarchism disrupted certain tropes within racial and colonialist discourse, it also reinforced some cultural categories and rigidified understandings of race, culture and social development.