Luso-tropicalism in History and Portuguese textbooks of Portuguese primary school in the colonial period: an exploratory study

This research is part from a set of psychosocial investigations centered on the study of the abiding presence in Portuguese contemporaneous society of Luso-Tropicalism as a social representation. This focuses on the themes that point out the absence of prejudice of the Portuguese and their ability for harmonious co-existence among different people along History. The exploratory study presented here seeks to check if these ideas are represented in Portuguese and History school textbooks published in Portugal between 1965 and 1972. In particular, this work aims to explore the existence or inexistence of Luso-Tropicalist traits in the descriptions of Portuguese and African people. We used 23 textbooks, from which selected texts were submitted to content analysis. The main results shows that there is a clear difference in descriptions of African people, depending on which period they refer to. In a synthetic way, we can say that in a "pacification campaigns" phase, they are described as "savages" and "wild"; after that they are considered as "Portuguese brothers". It is around this idea that "we are all Portuguese" in harmony that we found Luso-Tropicalist traits. Additionally, we observed a glorification of Portuguese characteristics and actions and a legitimation of the colonization process as an unquestionable Portuguese right. Lastly, in this study we underline the importance of textbooks in the dissemination of social representations about national identity and in the construction of collective memory.E