ANTHROPOLOGY 

COLONIAL ANTHROPOLOGY: A RACIST “SCIENCE”

From the 1930s onwards, under the fascist regime of Salazar, the interest of the Portuguese State turned to research the potential richness of the colonies. One of these “richness” is the workforce of colonised bodies, seen as a resource for exploitation. Therefore, they will be the object of scientific study to determine their "race's characteristics and physical and psychological capacities”, aiming for more efficient exploitation.

The scientific area dedicated to these studies and which laid the foundations of “scientific racism” was anthropology, in its 19th-century formulation, as a branch of Natural History and Zoology. It sought to explain the biological evolution of the human species by applying the principles of Lamarck and Darwin on the evolution of species and heredity. It originated on an evolutionary scale and soon applied to the different peoples of the world and their cultures: “social Darwinism” today is unacceptable.

The non-European cultures and individuals studied were considered “primitive” representatives of “backward” social stages of the past. It was, therefore, necessary to determine whether these delays were recoverable, whether individuals were “civilised”, and to what extent. This was one of the main aims of Portuguese colonial anthropology, which between 1934 and 1975, organised several anthropological campaigns into the occupied territories. Thousands of anthropometric measurements, images and somatic files were produced, and dozens of technical instruments were used to submit the studied subjects. Photography legitimised the idea of “race” by systematising and giving visibility to the described physical differences - the “descriptive characters”.

Although the similarities were also in the photograph, the thought system produced their indifference (or did not value them).

Colonial anthropology started from prejudices that it did not question and suffered from the bias of ethnocentrism: it placed the whiteness of “scientists” as the norm and the greatest good to which all humanity should refer and aspire.

Its premises and conclusions are now discredited.

But the legitimisation it brought to colonialism continues to have harmful effects.