Late Fall Workshop co-organised by the IHC and Drexel University. The challenge is to inquire the importance of colonial dynamics in the making of metropolitan Portugal.

The Colonization of Portugal

This workshop studies the history of Portugal as colonial history. More than discussing Portuguese presence in geographies beyond Europe, the challenge is to inquire the importance of colonial dynamics in the making of metropolitan Portugal. What is the power of the colonial lens to illuminate Portuguese history? How significant are histories of enslavement of Black people, American plantations, or African liberation movements to understand the expansion of the Portuguese state into the Alentejo, large scale transformations of the Douro Valley, or the political democratization of the country? Does colonization imply new periodizations and new historical actors? Is racial capitalism an important concept to make sense of Portuguese capitalism? How colonial was internal colonization?

Answering these questions demands from the historian not only reading familiar archives against the grain but also a renewed engagement with materiality through environmental history, history of science and technology, or archaeology. We invite researchers to share their current work in these fields and collectively explore their potential to produce a new Portuguese history from a Global South perspective.

In this workshop there will be no formal presentations, but rather collective discussions of works in progress. Reading the texts in advance is mandatory. Please register to participate and receive the documents via martamacedo@fcsh.unl.pt.

>> Download the programme <<

Programme:

14 December

14:00-15:00 | Maria do Mar Gago & Sara Albuquerque, Angola as the New United States: Frederick Welwitsch, Portugal and the Empire of Cotton (1830-1875)

15:10-16:10 | Elisa Lopes da Silva, “Fazer a nação crescer dentro de si mesma”. Colonização interna, nacionalismo e transnacionalismo durante o Estado Novo

16:20-17:20 | Amedeo Policante, Engineering Living Infrastructures: The Biopolitical Economy of Poplar Plantations in the Anthropocence

15 December

9:30-10:30 | Tiago Saraiva, The Saber of Saint Simon: Colonial Violence and Technological World Peace

10:40-11:40 | Marta Macedo, Plantation Portugal: Wine, Commons and the Otherness within

11:50-12:50 | Inês Gomes & Frederico Ágoas, Good fire and bad fire: the science of fire and the traditional knowledge of scrub burning

14:30-15:30 | Rui Gomes Coelho et al., Ecologias da Liberdade: Materialidades da Escravidão e Pós-Emancipação no Mundo Atlântico. Um Projeto em Curso em Portugal e na Guiné-Bissau

15:40-16:40 | Miguel Carmo, Ricardo Ventura & Joana Sousa, O Arroz Negro no Velho Mundo: a Cultura do Arroz no Sul da Europa numa Perspetiva Atlântica, Séculos XV a XVIII

16:50-17:50 | José Miguel Ferreira, The Prefect and the Potato: Bernardo Peres da Silva and the politics of agriculture in the ‘Age of Revolutions’

18:00-18:30 | Collective Discussion: Next Steps

Picture: Climate Change, 2021 (Odili Donald Odita)