“Portugal is not a Small Country”: Maps and Propaganda in the Salazar Regime

Abstract

The representation of territory is one of the most important elements in the construction of national identities. It is impossible to imagine a nation without territory, as every irredentist movement reminds us. Territory is the “real” body of the nation, at least in nationalist iconography.

Some recent works show that cartography has been a tool of propaganda for the European dictatorships in the 1930s and 1940s. Political propaganda in a modern sense began in Portugal with the New State (Estado Novo), and the use of cartography was relevant, although it did not have a central role as in Germany.

This paper tries to describe and analyse the ways to see the empire as a nation in Portugal during the Salazar regime. It discusses mainly the use of maps in the great exhibitions of the time, and also the school cartography and its insertion in the general discourse of colonialism in Portugal. Finally it also deals with the resistance to imperial narratives, showing its entanglement with them.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The research leading to this article was mainly done while I was Visiting Researcher in 1999 in the Instituto de História Contemporânea of the Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. I would like to thank Fernando Rosas, Hipólito de la Torre and Juan Carlos Jiménez for the support in relation to that stance. The librarians of the Biblioteca da Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa were extremely helpful during the research. I would like to extend my gratitude to Margarida Fernandes, Alvaro Durántez and, particularly, to Maria Fernanda de Abreu for their help in several phases of the research. I would also like to thank Virginie Mamadouh, Gertjan Dijkink, Klaus Dodds, three anonymous referees and, specially, Ulrich Oslender for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this essay.

Notes

1. Mark Monmonier, How to Lie with Maps (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1991) p. 88.

2. Ibid. p. 88.

3. Claude Raffestin, Dario Lopreno and Yvan Pasteur, Géopolitique et histoire (Lausanne: Payot 1995) p. 245.

4. “In the same senses that other nonverbal sign systems – paintings, prints, theatre, films, television, music – are texts…. They are a construction of reality, images laden with intentions and consequences that can be studied in the societies of their time.” J. B. Harley, The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press 2001) p. 36.

5. Monmonier (note 1) p. 157 (emphasis added).

6. Denis Wood, The Power of Maps (London: Routledge 1993) p. 78.

7. Raffestin et al. (note 3) pp. 245–246.

8. Jeremy W. Crampton, ‘Maps as Social Constructions: Power, Communication and Visualization’, Progress in Human Geography 25 (2001) pp. 235–252.

9. Ibid. p. 242.

10. Klaus-John Dodds, ‘Geopolitics, Cartography and the State in South America’, Political Geography 12 (1993) p. 377.

11. Katariina Kosonen, ‘Maps, Newspapers and Nationalism: The Finnish Historical Experience’, GeoJournal 48 (1999) p. 99.

12. Rossitza Guentcheva, ‘Seeing Language: Bulgarian Linguistic Maps in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century’, European Review of History 10/3 (2003) pp. 467–485.

13. David Campbell, ‘Apartheid Cartography: The Political Anthropology and Spatial Effects of International Diplomacy in Bosnia’, Political Geography 18 (1999) pp. 395–435.

14. Yoram Bar-Gal, ‘The Blue Box and JNF Propaganda Maps, 1930–1947’, Israel Studies 8 (2003) p. 17.

15. Frédéric Lasserre, ‘La Nouvelle Carte du Québec: Illustration de la Nation?’ Cybergeo 195 (2001), http://193.55.107.45/geocult/texte/lasser/quebec.htm, accessed 31 August 2005.

16. D. J. Zeigler, ‘Post-communist Eastern Europe and the Cartography of Independence’, Political Geography 21 (2002) pp. 671–686.

17. On the differences of popular and formal geopolitics see Gearoid Ó Tuathail and Simon Dalby, ‘Introduction: Rethinking Geopolitics. Towards a Critical Geopolitics’, in G. Ó Tuathail and S. Dalby (eds.), Rethinking Geopolitics (London: Routledge 1998) pp. 1–15.

18. See Guntram Henrik Herb, ‘Persuasive Cartography in Geopolitik and National Socialism’, Political Geography Quarterly 8 (1989) p. 289–303, or Guntram Henrik Herb, Under the Map of Germany. Nationalism & Propaganda 1918–1945 (London: Routledge 1997).

19. Ibid. (1997) p. 181.

20. Raffestin et al. (note 3) pp. 265–267.

21. David Atkinson, ‘Geopolitics, Cartography and Geographical Knowledge: Envisioning Africa from Fascist Italy’, in M. Bell, R. A. Butlin and M. Heffernan (eds.), Geography and Imperialism, 1820–1940 (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1995) pp. 265–297.

22. Heather Hyde Minor, ‘Mapping Mussolini: Ritual and Cartography in Public Art during the Second Roman Empire’, Imago Mundi 51 (1999) p. 159.

23. See Stanley G. Payne, ‘A Taxonomia Comparativa do Autoritarismo’, in O Estado Novo das Origens ao Fim da Autarcía (1926–1959) (Lisbon: Fragmentos 1987) vol. I, pp. 23–29.

24. James Derrick Sidaway, ‘Iberian Geopolitics’, in K. Dodds and D. Atkinson (eds.) Geopolitical Traditions: A Century of Geopolitical Thought (London: Routledge 2000) p. 122.

25. Ibid.

26. Marcus Power, ‘Aqui Lourenço Marques!! Radio Colonization and Cultural Identity in Colonial Mozambique’, Journal of Historical Geography 26 (2000) pp. 605–628.

27. Marcus Power, ‘Geo-politics and the Representation of Portugal's African Colonial Wars: Examining the Limits of ‘Vietnam Syndrome’’, Political Geography 20 (2001) pp. 461–491.

28. Heloísa Paulo, Estado Novo e Propaganda em Portugal e no Brasil (Coimbra: Minerva 1994).

29. Films of colonial propaganda like Imperial Charming (Feitiço Imperial) in 1940 or documentaries about the regime's colonial exhibitions or the colonies were financed by governmental departments, like the Secretary of National Propaganda. See Luís Reis Torgal, ‘Propaganda, Ideology and Cinema in the Estado Novo of Salazar: The Conversion of the Unbelievers’ http://www.cphrc.org.uk/essays/torgal.htm, accessed 22 July 2004, or Luís Reis Torgal (ed.) O Cinema Sob o Olhar de Salazar (Lisbon: Temas e Debates 2001).

30. For instance, from 1926 to 1974 there was an official prize of colonial literature established by General Colonies Agency.

31. See Margarida Acciaiuoli, Exposições do Estado Novo, 1934–1940 (Lisbon: Livros Horizonte 1998), or Sérgio Lira, Museums and Temporary Exhibitions as Means of Propaganda: The Portuguese Case during the Estado Novo (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Leicester 2002).

32. In 1944 this governmental department became the National Secretary of Information, Popular Culture and Tourism (Secretariado Nacional de Informação, Cultura Popular e Turismo – SIN).

33. In 1951 this governmental department became the General Overseas Agency (Agência Geral do Ultramar).

34. Henri Lefebvre, La Production de l’Espace (Paris: Anthropos 1974) p. 48–49.

35. Ibid. p. 30–31.

36. See Joanne P. Sharp, Paul Routledge, Chris Philo and Ronan Paddison, ‘Entanglements of Power: Geographies of Domination/Resistance’, in J. P. Sharp, P. Routledge, C. Philo and R. Paddison (eds.), Entanglements of Power: Geographies of Domination/Resistance (London: Routledge 2000) pp. 1–42.

37. See, for instance, the processes of autolinderación (self-boundary-marking) done by the Organización de Pueblos Indígenas de Pastaza (OPIP) in Ecuador described by Sarah Radcliffe and Sallie Westwood, Remaking the Nation: Place, Identity and Politics in Latin America (London: Routledge 1996) pp. 125–130, or the cartographic counter-representations of the fishermen in the Nariva Swamp in Trinidad analysed by Bjørn Sletto, ‘Producing Space(s), Representing Landscapes: Maps and Resource Conflicts in Trinidad’, Cultural Geographies 9 (2002) pp. 389–420.

38. See Margarida Fernandes, Hora di Bai. Os Cabo-Verdianos e a Morte (Lisbon: Nova Vega 2004) pp. 15–18.

39. Joanne P. Sharp, ‘Toward a Critical Analysis of Fictive Geographies’, Area 32 (2000) p. 333.

40. Zeigler (note 16) p. 675.

41. Denis E. Cosgrove and Veronica della Dora, ‘Mapping Global War: Los Angeles, the Pacific, and Charles Owen's Pictorial Cartography’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 95 (2005) p. 373.

42. Michael Shapiro, Methods and Nations: Cultural Governance and the Indigenous Subject (New York: Routledge 2004) p. xv.

43. See Antonio Costa Pinto, ‘Portugal en el Siglo XX: Una Introducción’, in A. Costa Pinto (ed.), Portugal Contemporáneo (Madrid: Sequitur 2000) pp. 1–36. (Originally published in Portuguese in 1998).

44. “É da essência orgânica da Nação Portuguesa desempenhar a função histórica de possuir e colonizar domínios ultramarinos e de civilizar as populacões indígenas …” (art. 2 of the Colonial Act, Decree no. 18.570, 8 July 1930).

45. Translation by Stewart Lloyd-Jones, http://www.cphrc.org.uk/sources/so-ns/26may34.htm, accessed on 29 July 2004.

46. See Cláudia Castelo, “O Modo Portugués de Estar no Mundo”. O Luso-tropicalismo e a Ideología Colonial Portuguesa (1933–1961) (Porto: Edições Afrontamento 1998), or Armelle Enders, ‘Le Lusotropicalisme, Théorie d’Exportation. Gilberto Freyre en son Pays’, Lusotopie (1997) pp. 201–210.

47. See, for instance, Valentim Alexandre, ‘El Imperio Colonial’, in Costa Pinto (note 43) pp. 37–56.

48. Translation by Stewart Lloyd-Jones, http://www.cphrc.org.uk/sources/so-ns/1933.htm, accessed on 29 July 2004.

49. See, for instance, the Spanish constitutions of the nineteenth century where the Philippines or Cuba were simply enumerated as other provinces of Spain.

50. “O territorio da Nação Portuguêsa é o existente à data da proclamação da República” (art. 2 of the Constitution of 1911).

51. Teófilo Braga, quoted in José Gonçalo Santa Rita, ‘A Enumeração Geográfica do Território na Nova Constituïção da República’, Boletim da Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa, 51 (1–4) (1933) p. 10.

52. See Denis-Constant Martin, ‘The Choices of Identity’, Social Identities 1 (1995) pp. 5–20.

53. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso 1991).

54. See Anthony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum (London: Routledge 1999), and Hélène Gill, ‘Discordant and Ambiguous Messages in Official Representations of Empire: Versailles 1845, Cristal Palace 1851’, International Journal of Francophone Studies 7 (2004) pp. 151–167.

55. Bennett (note 54) p. 7.

56. See Patricia A. Morton, Hybrid Modernities: Architecture and Representation at the 1931 Colonial Exposition Paris (Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press 2000).

57. For a detailed list of exhibitions, see Acciaiuoli (note 31) and Lira (note 31).

58. Carlos Roma Machado de Faria e Maia, Apontamentos para um Novo Indice Cronológico das Primeiras Viagens, Descobrimentos e Conquistas dos Portugueses, Incluindo as dos Nossos Pilotos que Serviram a Espanha (Lisbon: Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa 1937) p. 11.

59. João de Almeida, O Espírito da Raça Portuguesa na sua Expansão Além-mar (Lisbon: Parceria António Maria Pereira 1931) p. 13.

60. Ibid. p. 25. This is clearly an antecedent of the theories of “luso-tropicalism” developed later by Gilberto Freyre.

61. Ibid. p. 28.

62. “Essa demonstração terá o fim de mostrar os traballos e acção dos portugueses para assimilação dos indígenas e para a defesa do ultramar portugués, durante o século XIX até às campanhas da Grande Guerra” (art. 2 of the Decree-Law no. 27.269 establishing the exhibition, Diario do Govêrno, 1ª series, no. 276, 24 November 1936).

63. Carlos Viegas Gago Coutinho, ‘Sala da Marinharia’, in Catálogo da Exposição Histórica da Ocupação (Lisbon: Agência Geral das Colónias 1937) vol. I, p. 122.

64. The “spirit policy” (política do espírito) was an expression used by Antonio Ferro, the director of the SPN; it referred to the mission of the Secretary: “elevar o espírito da gente portuguesa no conhecimento do que é e do que realmente vale, como grupo étnico, como meio cultural, como força de produção, como capacidade civilizadora, como unidade independente”. In F. Rosas and J. B. Brito (eds.), Diccionario de Historia do Estado Novo II (Lisbon: Bertrand Editora 1996) p. 894.

65. The use of “unofficial notes” (notas oficiosas) by Salazar was very common, and their importance was as strong as official statements.

66. António Ferro, ‘Carta Aberta aos Portugueses de 1940’, Diário de Noticias, 17 June 1938. Quoted in Acciaiuoli (note 31) p. 107.

67. F. Rosas and J. B. Brito (eds.), Diccionario de Historia do Estado Novo I (Lisbon: Bertrand Editora 1996) p. 327.

68. Ibid. p. 176.

69. Harley (note 4) p. 161.

70. Quoted in Acciaiuoli (note 31) pp. 176–177.

71. Galvão attracted world interest when in 1961 he hijacked a Portuguese vessel, the Santa Maria, in alliance with Spanish revolutionaries (mainly Galicians) of the Iberian Revolutionary Directorate of Liberation (Directorio Revolucionario Ibérico de Liberación), in order to denounce both dictatorships in the Iberian peninsula.

72. Henrique Galvão, No Rumo do Imperio (Porto: Litografia Nacional do Pôrto 1934).

73. The printing ordered by the City Council of Penafiel has some minor differences in relation to the print of the Porto exhibition, although both were printed by the Litografia Nacional do Pôrto: (1) The map extends deeper into the south, showing the North-West coast of Africa; (2) The table comparing area surfaces is in the upper left corner; and (3) The area of Germany is increased by 5000 km². (Map kept in the Biblioteca Nacional in Lisbon.)

74. Antonio de Oliveira Salazar et al., Textos de Salazar sobre Política Ultramarina e Mensagens dos Chefes de Estado (Lisbon, Documentação Política 1954) p. 16.

75. Armindo Monteiro, ‘O País dos Quatro Impérios’, Boletim da Agência Geral das Colónias VII, 78 (1931) p. 22.

76. Galvão (note 72) pp. 11–12.

77. Henrique Galvão, O Império (Lisbon: Edições SPN 1938) p. 5.

78. Galvão, No Rumo do Imperio (note 72) p. 16.

79. Galvão, O Império (note 77) p. 6.

80. Ibid. p. 7.

81. Lefebvre (note 34).

82. Anderson (note 53) p. 175.

83. Olivier Thomas Kramsch, ‘Reimagining the Scalar Topologies of Cross-border Governance: Eu(ro)regions in the Post-colonial Present’, Space & Polity 6, 2 (2002) pp. 175–176.

84. “Knowledge of the geographical space of the country was considered necessary in order to grasp the idea of being a nation, the idea of the motherland. The future citizen had to learn to link an abstract idea (the nation) with a concrete and tangible reality that is the physical and spatial setting of the nation. This was also the reason for the great emphasis given to cartography in schools”, María Dolors García-Ramón and Joan Nogué-Font, ‘Nationalism and geography in Catalonia’, in D. Hooson (ed.), Geography and National Identity (Oxford: Blackwell 1994) p. 207.

85. Albano Chaves, Geografia de Portugal Continental e Ultramarino (Porto: Porto Editora 1957).

86. Quoted from Ultramar (the official journal of the Exhibition) by António Medeiros, ‘Etnicidade e Nacionalismo: “Colónias”, “Metrópole” e Representação Etnográfica na 1ª Exposição Colonial Portuguesa’, in Actas do Simposio Internacional de Antropoloxía “Etnicidade e Nacionalismo” (Santiago de Compostela: Consello da Cultura Galega 2001) p. 514.

87. Ibid. p. 513.

88. Alexandre (note 47) p. 46.

89. Orlando Ribeiro, Destinos do Ultramar (Lisbon: Livros Horizonte 1975) pp. 14–15.

90. Alexandre (note 47) p. 56.

91. Luis Cardoso, “Do encantamento à ira”, interview in the journal Expresso, 21 March 1998, http://www.terravista.pt/ilhadomel/4201/paginas/luis_cardoso.htm, accessed 21 July 2004.

92. Alito Siqueira, ‘Postcolonial Portugal, Postcolonial Goa: A Note on Portuguese Identity and its Resonance in Goa and India’, Lusotopie 2 (2002) p. 212.

93. Ibid. p. 213.

94. Nishta Desai, ‘The Denationalisation of Goans: An Insight into the Construction of Cultural Identity’, Lusotopie (2000) p. 471.

95. Fernando Monteiro de Castro Soromenho (b. 31/01/1910, d. 18/06/1968) was born in Vila de Chinde, Mozambique. His father was Portuguese and his mother from Cape Verde. Very early he was taken to Angola, where he lived until 1937, before he returned to Lisbon where he had gone to school earlier. Because of his political activities and writings he had to go into exile to France, first, and Brazil, later, where he died.

96. See the Web page of the Angolan Writers Union (União dos Escritores Angolanos), http://www.uea-angola.org/bioquem.cfm?ID = 167, accessed 1 August 2005.

97. For a geographical reading of the relation of the novel and the nation-state, see Franco Moretti, Atlante del Romanzo Europeo, 1800–1900 (Torino: Einaudi 1997).

98. In the first phase Castro Soromenho published novels and short stories like: Lendas Negras (1936), Nhári: O Drama da Gente Negra (1938), Noite de Angústia (1939), Homens sem Caminho (1941), Rajada e Outras Histórias (1943) and Calenga (1945).

99. At the beginning of the twentieth century there were less than 10,000 settlers and at the end of 1960s there were 300,000. See A. H. de Oliveira Marques, Breve História de Portugal (Lisbon: Presença 1995) p. 685.

100. Fernando Monteiro de Castro Soromenho, Viragem (Lisbon: Livraria Sá da Costa Editora 1978) p. 50.

101. Aníbal Quijano, ‘Colonialidad del poder y clasificación social’, Journal of World-Systems Research, VI, 2 (2000) pp. 342–386.

102. Castro Soromenho (note 100) p. 44.

103. Ibid. p. 108.

104. Amilcar Cabral, “National Liberation and Culture”, conference delivered on February 20, 1970 at Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York (translated from the French by Maureen Webster), http://www.cwo.com/?lucumi/cabral.html, accessed 1 July 2004.

105. Ibid.

106. Cosgrove and della Dora (note 41) p. 373.

107. ‘Editorial’, Utopia 7 (1998), http://www.azul.net/m31/utopia/7/, accessed 15 July 2004. See also Júlio Henriques, ‘O que a Expo expõe’, in the same electronic journal.