The Colonization of Portugal

The Colonization of Portugal: Late Fall Workshop

SEMINÁRIO | 14 dez. das 14h00 às 18h30 | 15 dez. das 09h30 às 18h30 | Sala de Formação | Entrada livre, sujeita a inscrição: martamacedo@fcsh.unl.pt

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.

Program

December 14

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

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

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


December 15

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

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

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


***

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

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

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

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

The IHC is funded by National funds through FCT — Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., under the projects UIDB/04209/2020, UIDP/04209/2020, and LA/P/0132/2020.