Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the role of historical narratives both in the work of Portuguese mid-20 century anthropologists, who promoted the colonial empire as the cradle of a new humanity, and in the knowledge producing practices of contemporary population genetics.

Paper long abstract:

During the late period of Portuguese colonialism, the nationalist and imperialist rhetoric strategies of the regime became dependent on a new anthropological inspiration that argued for the higher value of miscegenation as a tool to a successful colonization process and to the accomplishment of Portuguese civilizing missions at colonial territories. At the core of this new anthropological perspective was the luso-tropical paradigm defended by some Portuguese anthropologists under the influence of Brasilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre. The nationalistic vision of European superiority and the defence of race admixture practices were then harmoniously articulated in newly crafted anthropological imaginaries. As a new type among mankind, these tropical mixed populations would represent a turn-point in humanity's natural history.

Before long, this idea was being articulated with the rising field of genetics and producing new eugenic visions of miscegenation, as opposed to more orthodox views of a colonial anthropology still operating in the field and looking for racially and ethnically defined populations.

This paper is grounded on the cross study of works by mid-20th century anthropologists and of the works of contemporary geneticists and molecular anthropologists, in order to explore past and present articulations of biological/ genetic data with humanistic knowledge and to analyse the ways historical narratives are used to interpret biological information. I argue that a historiographic informed perspective on contemporary genetics is important to understand the ways geneticists still use historical knowledge and its temporality structures, leading to the reconceptualization of history, identity and imaginaries of belonging.