Paper short abstract:

This study is a cultural interpretation built upon ethnographic fieldworks and multidisciplinary hermeneutical efforts. It advances the argument of the present Portuguese cultural heritage containing a unique thalassocratic mythology that combines dominion over the sea and the domination by the sea.

Paper long abstract:

The ocean is fundamental to Portugal in both material and symbolical terms. A thalassocracy (Gr.: thalassa [Θαλασσα]: sea; and kratiā [κρατία]: rule) usually denotes a nation that achieved the measure of naval supremacy to rule the sea. But it also reveals a more literal sense of a nation ruled by the sea.

This study is a cultural interpretation (Geertz, 1973) that posits that the contemporary Portuguese cultural identity contains a unique thalassocratic mythology combining dominion over the sea—as the celebrated Lusitanian heroic navigator—and the domination by the sea—as the farmer removed from the mainland by the forces of elements. Supported by ethnographic fieldwork in a Portuguese diaspora community (Montreal in Canada) and in Lisbon, the study also draws from a multidisciplinary hermeneutical effort comprising anthropological, historical, literary, and political studies.

Fernando Pessoa alluded to the Portuguese dominion over the deep sea by calling his Mensagem poem' second part, Possessio Maris. The Lusitanian daunting maritime achievements stands for a heroic odyssey that could be told in three acts: the Portuguese create the Atlantic as second Mediterranean Sea (Mauro, 1992:100); they reach an apotheosis as a grandiose Indian thalassocratic empire during the Manueline period; and they retreat to a more stable and viable configuration of a seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Atlantic thalassocracy (Mauro, 1960:509). As an epilogue to this maritime saga, the loss of colonies relegates the thalassocratic memories and aspirations to a reminiscence that, nevertheless, lives strongly at the core of the Portuguese national mythology (Lourenço, 1992:90).