Cairo 2006

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Portugal is not a Small Country: Maps

and Propaganda in the Salazar Regime
a
Heriberto Cairo
a
Facultad de Ciencias Polticas y Sociologa , Universidad
Complutense de Madrid , Spain
Published online: 23 Nov 2006.
To cite this article: Heriberto Cairo (2006) Portugal is not a Small Country: Maps and Propaganda in
the Salazar Regime, Geopolitics, 11:3, 367-395, DOI: 10.1080/14650040600767867
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Geopolitics, 11:367395, 2006
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ISSN: 1465-0045 print / 1557-3028 online
DOI: 10.1080/14650040600767867
Portugal is not a Small Country: Maps and

Geopolitics, Vol. 11, No. 3, June 2006: pp. 144
1557-3028
1465-0045
FGEO
Geopolitics
Propaganda in the Salazar Regime
HERIBERTO CAIRO
Maps and Cairo
Heriberto Propaganda in the Salazar Regime
Facultad de Ciencias Polticas y Sociologa, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain

Downloaded by [Gebze Yuksek Teknoloji Enstitsu ] at 01:38 26 December 2014
The representation of territory is one of the most important ele-

ments 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 pro-
paganda 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 rele-
vant, 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.
INTRODUCTION
Representation of territory is one of the main elements in the construction

of national identity. Not only is a nation without territory unthinkable; but
territory is the real body of the nation according to nationalist iconogra-
phy. The map is the perfect symbol of the state,1 because of the illusion of
reality it causes. Maps are used in political propaganda because they make
very real and visible certain facts or fictions: its on a map, so it must be
real.2 According to Raffestin, this is linked to the old conception of
Address correspondence to Heriberto Cairo, Facultad de Ciencias Polticas y Sociologa,

Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 28223 Madrid, Spain. E-mail: hcairoca@cps.ucm.es
367
368 Heriberto Cairo
Herodote, that to see by oneself is the foundation of the real and therefore
it is the truth.3
The usual perception of the nature of maps is that they are a graphic rep-
resentation of the real world. However, maps, as Harley proposes, are not
mirrors but texts.4 In this sense, thinking that maps can lie5 is misleading (it
would direct us to a naturalistic strategy of identifying what is real and how it
has been distorted). It is more convincing to understand the relation between
maps and propaganda as just an example of the relation between maps and
the interests they serve, as Wood states, because distortions are inherent in
the map, and the problem is not how they lie, but why was I so inclined to
wholeheartedly believe in it in the first place?6 Probably, the answer is that
maps serve better as a vehicle of myths than of thoughts.7

Crampton8 has recently made a good summary of the challenges that posit
the Harleyan consideration of the map as a site of power/knowledge to the tra-
ditional approach to cartography, what he calls the map communication
model, and points out some limitations of Harleys approach. One of them,
important for this study, is his misconception of the Foucauldian concept of
power, which is not negative, but includes the possibility of resistance.9
There is a recent growing multidisciplinary literature on the interrela-
tion of maps and nations. There has been research on the use of maps for
nationalistic purposes: Dodds on the use of narratives of space and cartog-
raphy by South American states in order to justify the appropriation of ter-
ritories and construct identities over those spaces;10 Kosonen on how the
Finnish press used maps in the Finnish nation-building process during the
first half of the 20th century;11 or Guentcheva on the exploitation of carto-
graphic products of Bulgarian linguists by the renascent nationalists of that
country since the 1970s.12 The employment of maps in order to constitute
new national territories has also attracted investigation: Campbell has writ-
ten on the performative role of cartography employed by international
diplomacy in the apartheid partition of Bosnia in the 1990s;13 or Bar-Gal
has shown the cartographic strategy . . . used to create a map of the Land
of Israel14 through the Blue Boxes used to collect money for the Jewish
National Fund. And the negotiation of new imaginations of the nation has
also been made through maps: Lasserre has pointed out the publication of a
new map of Quebec in 1998 as a possible departure for a foundation of a
civic nation;15 or Zeigler has shown the importance of maps in the (re)imag-
ination of the nation in post-communist Eastern European states.16 All in all,
popular and formal cartographical geopolitical material is being fruitfully
researched,17 showing that mapmaking is a fundamental process in nation
building.
Closer to the theme of this paper, there have also been studies about
the use of maps as a tool of propaganda in several European dictatorships
in the twentieth century. Herb analyses the history, relevance and tech-
niques of mapping in inter-war Germany.18 The Nazis made frequent use of
Maps and Propaganda in the Salazar Regime 369
propaganda maps, the suggestive mapping, already developed by geogra-

phers and vlkisch nationalists in the Weimar Republic, particularly those
that show the new spatial definitions of national territory. The main contri-
butions of Nazis to propaganda mapping, according to Herb, were the
introduction of emotive allegorical symbols and the use of maps in public
displays.19 Raffestin also analyses the relation between cartography and
propaganda in Nazi Germany in a major work about the history of different
Nazi and Fascist geopolitics in Europe. According to him, Geopolitik maps
are a-historical and a-geographical, or utopian and ucronian in the ety-
mological sense of the words, that is to say, utopian in reference to the
absence of place in these maps (the lack of interest in the content of places)
and ucronian because of the absence of time (time is considered only in a

linear form). Geopolitik maps would be extremely simplistic, because they
were developed according to the principles of a Schmittian political geom-
etry: to identify friends and foes.20
Atkinson describes how the maps used in Italian Geopolitics and par-
ticularly in the journal Geopolitica were deliberately simplified to translate
straightforward messages visually. The techniques of the German suggestive
cartography were adapted to Italian objectives and interests, particularly in
Africa.21 Minor studies the use of maps as public art by Mussolinis Fascist
regime, particularly the series of marble stone maps attached to the wall of
the Basilica of Maxentius, which showed the growing extension of the classi-
cal Roman Empire and the foundations of the new one. These maps and
others displayed in public spaces were very useful for Fascists to promulgate
the idea that Roman history was Italian history, and the idea that one of the
logical outcomes of this shared Roman past was colonial expansion.22
The New State (Estado Novo) in Portugal, which lasts from 1933 to
1974, had good relations in the beginning with national-socialist Germany
or fascist Italy, but it is not considered a fascist state because of the lack of a
fascist movement or culture. It is a good example of a corporatist dictator-
ship organised around Salazar.23 No specific studies exist about the use of
cartography in Portugal during the Salazar regime. In fact, there is not much
written about Portuguese geopolitics, which is surprising, because, as James
Sidaway one of the few specialists in the field states, geopolitical dis-
course has a central role in the official ideology of the regime, and issues
of empire figure prominently in Portuguese geopolitics.24 He points out
that the dissemination of the geopolitical discourse took place in an
intense series of colonial expositions and also through display of maps in
public buildings, schools and universities. In fact, he analyses briefly the
map of Henrique Galvo which gives the title to this paper, Portugal is not
a small country, and concludes that unlike the suggestive cartography
produced in Germany or Italy in the 1930s and 1940s, the map of Galvo
was not of any real threat or source of alarm to other European powers.25
Marcus Power has also researched the geopolitics of Portugal and its
370 Heriberto Cairo
colonies, particularly on the cultural construction of colonial subjectivities, such

as in his analysis of radio broadcasting in colonial Mozambique,26 and the
post-colonial re-imagination of colonial wars.27 The works of both authors
underline the central role of propaganda in the construction and reaffirma-
tion of the Portuguese geopolitical imagination during the time of Salazar.
In fact, political propaganda in a modern sense begins in Portugal with
the Estado Novo.28 One of the more important fields is that of imperial pro-
paganda, which is made through very different means. Films,29 literature,30
or museums and exhibitions31 were a good vehicle for conveying the mes-
sage: the Empire is the Nation, therefore Portugal extends from the Minho
(the northern province in Europe) to Timor (in Oceania). And, of course,
maps were used in order to assert this vision, although they were not used
as frequently as in interwar Germany. The Secretary of National Propaganda
(Secretariado de Propaganda Nacional),32 the General Colonies Agency
(Agncia Geral das Colnias)33 and the Lisbon Geographical Society
(Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa) were some of the more active institu-
tions in the field of colonial propaganda, and all of them used (and in some
cases produced) maps as a powerful tool of communication.
Propaganda maps are part of the signs, codes and understandings neces-
sary to make intelligible spatial practices, which are associated with the particu-
lar arrangement of specific places and spatial sets that ensure the relatively
coherent continuation of the production and reproduction in a specific social
formation. But representations of space are subverted in very different ways by
representational spaces, in terms of Lefebvre. Representations of space refer
to the conceived space, that of sages, of planners, while representational
space is the lived space . . . [that of] the inhabitants, the users, but also of cer-
tain artists and maybe of those that describe and think that they only describe:
the writers, the philosophers.34 Representations of space are related, according
to Lefebvre, to a kind of intermediary space, a procedure that is essential for
spatial practices.35 Therefore, we can conclude that if representational spaces
are the main threat for representations of space, they also subvert dominant
spatial practices. The relation between both categories is entangled, like that of
domination and resistance.36 Of course maps can be powerful tools of repre-
sentational spaces,37 but literature is also a common vehicle of counter-narra-
tives, and we will use some examples later. Moreover, literature is a legitimate
and useful source in social sciences,38 and fictive geographies of novels are part
of the imagined geographies . . . [that] are central to the geographies used by
people when going about their daily lives . . . it is important to understand
these texts as part of social process, and so be aware of the power dynamics
involved in the different voices raised.39
I will deal in this paper mainly with the use of maps in the creation of
an imagined multi-continental community. The structure of the paper
responds to the intent of showing the entanglement of the colonial narra-
tives of domination and the counter-narratives of resistance. First, I present
the main features of the political discourse of the Salazar regime and the
relevance of territory in the narratives of nation and empire. I will then anal-
yse three strategies of representation: the use of world maps in order to
show the manifest universal destiny of Portugal; the use of overlapping
maps comparing the extension of the Portuguese colonies and the main
countries of Europe in order to show the greatness of Portugal; and the
representation of the Empire as a Nation to transmit the image of Portugal
as a multi-continental nation. I will then evaluate the objective, scope and
effectiveness of these representations of space, and finally, I will try to grasp
some of the representational spaces of the colonised, particularly through
literary references.
In relation to methodology, this paper starts from the notion of the map
as a text. Then, they are seen as a multitude of signs (symbols) related to
one another as part of a total system.40 But of course they are not univer-
sal, because all knowledge is knowledge in place, produced and circulated
in specific cultural contexts.41 Therefore it is very important to discern the
context of the Portuguese maps and the general discourse of colonialism
where they are inserted, because maps, as texts, are constitutive of dis-
courses that are guided by the hegemonic structures of expectations and
carry with them the weight of authority and prestige. On the other hand the
counter-discourses of resistance subvert those hegemonic structures and
(usually) try to construct an alternative (geographical) imagination. All in all,
this intends to be a semiological approach [that] treats intelligibility on the
basis of the interrelationships within a system of signs rather than in terms
of the word-object relationship.42
TERRITORY IN THE COLONIAL DISCOURSE OF THE

ESTADO NOVO
The Estado Novo had its origins in the military dictatorship imposed by the
coup of 1926. Its beginning is clearly defined by the election of Salazar as
president of the Council of Ministers (Presidente do Conselho), in 1932 and
the new Constitution of 1933. The period between 1926 and 1933 is usually
considered a transitional phase, the Military Dictatorship, towards the
Estado Novo, which lasts from 1933 until the Carnation Revolution in 1974.
This corporatist and authoritarian state was organised around Salazar,
whose ideology was characterised by his catholic fundamentalism, tradition-
alism and anti-liberalism,43 and who constructed a regime with periodical
elections but only one political party, the National Union (Unio Nacional).
From the beginning the new regime tried to delineate a new relation-
ship between the metropolis and the colonies, in such a way that Nation
and Empire are not very different terms in the political discourse of the
regime. The Estado Novo tries to imagine the Nation only as an Empire, and
372 Heriberto Cairo
from the Colonial Act (Acto Colonial) of 1930 onwards tries to underline its
unity and indivisibility. The Empire would be the natural achievement of the
destiny of the Nation. In fact Article 2 of the Colonial Act sanctions that:
It is part of the organic essence of the Portuguese Nation to carry out the
historical function of colonizing and owning overseas dominions and
civilizing indigenous populations.44
Salazar used different words to convey the same idea in a speech to the 1st
Congress of Unio Nacional, in 1934:
Amongst the dominant characteristics of our nationalism Characteris-

tics which clearly distinguish it from all other nationalisms adopted by
the authoritarian regimes in Europe is the colonising aptitude of the
Portuguese, a force which is not of recent growth but has been rooted
in the soul of the nation for centuries.45
The Empire would be the natural destiny of the Portuguese, and this would
make Portugal a unique nation, because it was a National Empire. Later, in
the 1950s, the uniqueness theme would be associated with the supposed spe-
cial capacity of the Portuguese to mix with the colonised populations, which
the Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre refers to as luso-tropicalism.46 This
would make the Portuguese colonial enterprise completely different to those
of the other European states. These changes in the colonial discourse, and
some shifts in the legislation, may imply that there have been different stages
in the colonial policy of the Salazar regime: the first, from 1930 until 1947
(when the independence of India was the beginning of an unstoppable wave),
characterised by a strong imperial affirmation of the metropolis; the second,
which would formally begin with the constitutional revision of 1951 that abro-
gated the Colonial Act, favoured a policy of integration and assimilation of
every part of the Empire; and the last one, from 1961, when the natives spe-
cial regime was abrogated (a fact that was obviously related to the beginning
of the colonial war), and every inhabitant of the Empire became formally a
Portuguese citizen. It would even be possible to discern a last stage from 1971,
when a new constitutional revision opened the way for a final attempt to pre-
serve the Empire through an autonomist solution. However, most of the
changes were stratagems of the Portuguese government in order to avoid the
pressure for decolonisation coming from the UN, and many authors underline
the continuity of the colonial policy, stating that the legal and discursive
changes were more cosmetic than substantial.47
In any case, the spatial definition of the nation remained basically
unchanged during the whole period of the Estado Novo. Article 1 of the
Constitution of 1933 described Portugals territory as a possession of the
nation, not of the state:
Portugals territory is that currently belonging to the Portuguese nation, viz:
1. In Europe: continental Portugal and the archipelagos of Madeira and

of the Azores;
2. In western Africa: The archipelago of Cape Verde, Guinea, Sao Tome
and Principe and its dependencies, St John the Baptist of Ajuda,
Cabinda and Angola;
3. In eastern Africa: Mozambique;
4. In Asia: The State of India and Macau and their dependencies;
5. In Oceania: Timor and its dependencies;
The nation does not renounce the rights it presently has or may come to
have over any other territory.48
The metropolis and the colonies were listed without any differentiation
(including possessions already lost at the time, like the fort of St. John the
Baptist of Ajuda in western Africa), ordered simply according to the part of
the world in which they were found. This is certainly not a textual strategy
particular of the Estado Novo, as it was common in previous Portuguese
constitutions (the monarchic constitutions of 1822 and 1838 contained simi-
lar dispositions), as well as in other countries.49 However, it amended the
formulation of the republican constitution of 1911, which stated plainly that
The territory of the Portuguese Nation is the one that exists at the date of
the proclamation of the Republic.50 This amendment was very meaningful,
because the sharpest critical arguments to the republican wording were
nationalistic and imperialist:
The Portuguese Nation owes its autonomy to the territory under its
sovereignty; without its geographical dominions it would be a fifth
of the Hispanic peninsula and without the discoveries of India, first,
and America, later, Portugal would be reduced to a Castilian prov-
ince. . . . It is necessary, therefore, to enumerate our territories. The
purpose is not to show a chapter of geography, but just to tell the
World that that fifth of the Hispanic peninsula . . . has a raison dtre
as an international factor, because it is one of the great colonial
powers.51
But territory is not the only foundation of the Portuguese narratives of national
identity; as in many other cases, history and culture are also a basic part of
these narratives.52 These three elements are particularly well articulated in the
Salazar regime, constituting a well-organised colonial discourse. The great
exhibitions conceived by the regime, as we will see now, are a manifesta-
tion of this discourse, a proof of the propagandistic use of ethno-cultural,
geographical and historical arguments and stories and a good example of
the use of cartography for propaganda purposes.
374 Heriberto Cairo
CARTOGRAPHIC STRATEGIES OF REPRESENTATION

IN GREAT EXHIBITIONS
The organisation of great exhibitions, where the new tools of modern pro-
paganda were deployed, was one of the instruments most used by the
Estado Novo in order to construct an imagined community, in the terms of
Anderson53, and evoke a sense of pride in the population for being part of
this national community. The goals of these exhibitions were roughly simi-
lar to those staged by other European colonial powers since the middle of
the nineteenth century. Museums, art galleries and exhibitions played a piv-
otal role in the construction of the modern states through the permanent
display of power.54 Great exhibitions exemplified particularly well the

nationalism of imperial display,55 where the domestic public visualised the
supremacy of its own state over conquered peoples overseas and the rela-
tive importance of its own imperial power. Particularly, colonial exhibitions
in the 1930s and 1940s took as model the International Colonial Exhibition
(Exposition Coloniale Internationale) held in Paris in 1931,56 and tried to
display the colonial artifacts and peoples for the consumption of the people
of the metropolis, with a pedagogical mission: to show the centrality and
civilizing mission of the colonial state. In the Estado Novo the main theme of
the propaganda associated with these exhibitions was that Portugal had
existed as a nation for centuries. Its history and traditions, particularly the
maritime discoveries and the world expansion, gave it the right to a territory
that was multi-continental, yet united and indivisible.
There were a lot of exhibitions in Portugal, mainly in the 1930s and
1940s, and there was also an official representation in world exhibitions of
the time.57 Maps were always central in these exhibitions: sea charts, repro-
ductions of old maps, atlases or artistic recreations of cartography.
And If There Was Anywhere Else To Go, We Would Have Gone

There: Maps of the world and the mission of Portugal
Perhaps one of the most noticeable strategies of representation in these
exhibitions was the common and prominent use of world maps. World
maps in the exhibitions tried to show in different ways that the sphere of
action of the Portuguese Nation was far wider than the small corner of a
European peninsula; it stretched all over the world. This was a crucial
objective for the regime, since the territory of the Portuguese nation was
considered multi-continental as a consequence of the maritime discoveries
that had given the Portuguese historical rights of occupation. The link
between the history of the nation and the Portuguese vocation for a world
empire was represented in geopolitical terms. As the historical advisor in
the design of one of these maps briefly stated in 1937:
Portugal, winner of the battle of Aljubarrota, re-acquired its political

independence in an absolute and definite way. Without Muslim territo-
ries in the neighborhood to conquer and bordering a Christian state,
squeezed between Spain and the sea, . . . its only way of expansion was
the Ocean, that invitingly kissed its beaches.58
Others trace the Portuguese vocation of expansion almost back to the ori-
gins of humanity. During the visit of the Portuguese Minister of the Colonies
to the Colonial Exhibition of Paris in 1931, Joo de Almeida, a high colonial
official, delivered a speech where he told one of the most romantic nation-
alistic stories: the Lusitanian, ancestors of the Portuguese, would be the
descendants of the Homo-Atlanticus (that is from the inhabitants of the

imaginary Atlantis), and, therefore, the origin of todays Portuguese would
be Atlantis. The people that successively invaded the Iberian Peninsula
would only have underlined the oceanic character of the Portuguese. Chris-
tianity would be the other essential element of the Portuguese spirit. Portu-
gals full christianisation marked the beginning of the period of Great
Discoveries, when the Portuguese were ready to stretch into the Universe,
following the eloquent and unmistakable phrase of our national poet,
Cames: Faith and Empire.59 In his story Almeida went on to outline the
uniqueness of the Portuguese colonial enterprise, since the expansion
would have been made according to a veritable Portuguese system of colo-
nization . . . naturally and logically derived from the psychological features
characteristic of our historical mission . . . [that involves] the assimilation of
natives, the total exclusion of any race antagonism.60
Expansion and colonisation would be irrevocably intertwined, up to a
point where colonies would paradoxically disappear: In the Portuguese
Empire there are no colonies there are only provinces of a unitary coun-
try, linked by the sea.61 The use of historical and geopolitical narratives
about the Portuguese mission in the world intended to be, obviously, a
solid argument in order to legitimise the colonial domination. It was a basic
part of the colonial discourse. And therefore it had to be expressed in an
outstanding way. The Historical Exhibition of the Occupation (Exposio
Histrica da Ocupao) that took place in Lisbon in 1937 is a good example
of the use of maps, and particularly world maps, as a tool of propaganda
with the aforementioned goal. The official aim of the exhibition was to
show the works and action of the Portuguese in order to assimilate the
natives and to defend the Portugals Overseas territories, from the nine-
teenth century until the campaigns of the Great War.62 However, the Exhi-
bition was not restricted to that age, because the history of Portuguese
discoveries from its beginning also had a very important role.
One of the most spectacular zones of the exhibition was the Hall of
Mariners (Sala da Marinharia), displaying a luminous map of the Portu-
guese voyages and discoveries and the map of the Tragic-Maritime History
376 Heriberto Cairo
(Historia Trgico-Martima). The latter was adapted from an original of 1502

by the great painter and muralist Almada Negreiros (Figure 1). The main
objective of the maps (and of the whole exhibition) was to establish an
enduring relation between the early discoveries and the colonies at that time.
As the Admiral Gago Coutinho stated in the official guide to the exhibition:
This Exposition . . . will be, therefore, an important step in the useful

propaganda of our rights to keep our colonies, showing that our rights
do not only derive from Tradition or documents. . . . The basis of our
rights are the efforts carried out in order to discover, occupy and civilize
[the colonies].63
The use of world maps was also abundant in the Great Exhibition of the
Portuguese World (Grande Exposio do Mundo Portugus), and some of
them were imposing and dramatic. This exhibition was definitely the most
important effort of the so-called spirit policy (poltica do esprito) of the
Estado Novo, whose main goal was to raise the spirit of Portuguese people in
the knowledge of what they are and what their real value is.64 The aim of the
exhibition was to present Portugal as one of the most ancient and greatest
nations of the world. The presentation of the exhibition was made by Salazar,
in a long unofficial note (nota oficiosa).65 All the propaganda activities were
ascribed to the Secretary of National Propaganda, under the supervision of its
director Antonio Ferro, and all the exhibition works would be performed by
the Ministry of Public Works (Ministrio das Obras Pblicas), under the
supervision of the Minister Duarte Pacheco. The official leitmotif of the exhi-
bition was the commemoration of the eighth centenary of the foundation of
Portugal, and the third centenary of the restoration of the independence from
Spain. In Antonio Ferros words, it was the celebration of three sacred years
of our history: the year of birth [1140], the year of rebirth [1640] and the tre-
mendous year of resurgence [1940].66
The exhibition was strategically located near the Tejo River, and in
front of the magnificent and historic Monastery of Jernimos near the
Tower of Belem, places with a strong imperial significance. The pavilions
were dedicated to different goals, but the set was obviously the greatest
claim ever made of the imperial side of Portugal,67 which culminated in a
majestatic sculpture, the Monument to the Discoveries (Padro dos
Descobrimentos) and the Vessel Portugal (Nau Portugal), a reproduction
of a seventeenth-century ship. The Pavilion of the Portuguese in the
World was one of the most important of the exhibition, and the key to
understand the whole: it was an image of a sovereignty that laid claim to
an ancient domain, permanent and natural . . . a whole people should find
their justification there.68 The Chief Architect of the exhibition, Cottinelli
Telmo, personally made the project of the building. When it was inaugu-
rated, the orators declared it the peak of the exhibition. The faade
377
FIGURE 1 Map of the Tragic-Maritime History, at the Historical Exhibition of the Occupation in Lisbon in 1937 (Photography by Mario Novais,
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation).
378 Heriberto Cairo
towards the Imperial Square (Praza do Imperio), 164 meters long, was
impressive, with an enormous statue representing Sovereignty at its cen-
tre, in front of a huge map of the world in relief adorned at the top with
the words of Camoens: And if there was anywhere else to go/We would
have gone there (E se mais mundo houvera/ L chegara). This monumen-
tal set (Figure 2) is perhaps one of the best representations of the link that
Harley sees between maps and sovereignty: The map has become an
instrument of State policy and an instrument of sovereignty.69 Sover-
eignty, a statue created by Leopoldo de Almeida, was represented as a
defiant woman in battle dress holding an armillary sphere in her right
hand and leaning on a small pillar bearing the different parts of the world
indicated in Gothic characters, metaphorically projected over the world in

order to fulfill her destiny.
Augusto Castro, the Chief Organiser of the exhibition, at the inaugura-
tion of the Pavilion proclaimed that: Here, inside, there is not only the sym-
bol of a territory, the immense brightness of a universal geographical
projection. There is more than that: it is the miracle of bounding our tem-
per, from eight centuries ago, just with the impossible. According to him,
FIGURE 2 World Map and statue of Sovereignty at the Pavilion of the Portugese around the
World in the Great Exhibition of the Portugese World (Source: Programa Oficial das
Comemoraes Centenrias, Lisbon, 1940).
the singular destiny of the country was explained in the pavilion: The
Portuguese man of today is the same as the Portuguese of yesterday: just
give to the Portuguese of today that portion of the universe that is the mea-
sure of his soul; give him the spiritual air that is natural of him and the
Portugal of those days re-emerges.70
Portugal Is Not A Small Country: Henrique Galvo, the map of the

Porto Colonial Exhibition and the greatness of Portugal
The map entitled Portugal is not a small country (Portugal no um pais
pequeno) (Figure 3) was displayed in the First Colonial Portuguese Exhibition

of Porto (I Exposio Colonial Portuguesa) held in Porto in 1934. It responds to
a different textual strategy to that already seen: the use of world maps tried to
underline the universal orientation of Portugal, while this map tried to show its
greatness, which supposedly was only achieved through the Empire.
Henrique Galvo, who was very active in the colonial administration
and colonial propaganda since the National Revolution of 1926, was the
designer of the map. Galvo was an officer in the Army, and in this capacity
he participated in the military coup of 1926 and began his colonial career as
governor of the province of Huila in Angola. Then he was successively
appointed as representative of Portugal in the Colonial Congress of Paris in
1931, director of the First Portuguese Colonial Exhibition of Porto in 1934,
higher colonial inspector in 1936, director of the colonial section of the
Great Exhibition of the Portuguese World of Lisbon in 1940 and member of
parliament for Angola in 1946. In 1949 he wrote an account of the colonisa-
tion of Angola which was strongly critical of the government and tried to
improve Portuguese colonial activities. He then fell from favour and began
oppositionist activity that led to his exile.71 Galvos life is a good metaphor
for the colonial obsession of the regime, which led finally to its decline. His
fall from favour illustrates well the selfish and authoritarian character of
Salazar, for whom there was only one way to show the greatness of Portugal;
that marked by o Presidente do Conselho.
The original map was reproduced in a brochure entitled In the Course
of Empire (No rumo do Imperio), written by Galvo,72 which was published
on the occasion of the exhibition. The work shows the areas of the Portu-
guese colonies overlaying a political map of Europe. The main intention of
the map is to show that the areas of the colonies, altogether, occupied an
area equivalent to that of the main countries of Europe. A comparative table
at the foot of the map underlines this suggestion, where it is shown that the
surface area of continental Portugal plus its colonies (2,168,077 km2) is
bigger than the sum of the areas of Spain, France, England, Italy and
Germany (2,091,639 km2).
The map in the brochure is printed in a folded sheet of 30 by 23 cm, but
there were several different prints of the map apart from the brochure.
380
FIGURE 3 Portugal is not a small country.
(Source: Henrique Galvo, No rumo do Imperio, Porto, 1934).
One print in particular shows the official character of the map: it was made
by the state-printing house (Lithografia de Portugal) in Lisbon, ordered by the
Secretary of National Propaganda. It is printed in four colours, bigger than the
Porto original (55 37,5 cm) but basically identical and widely distributed
throughout the country. There were also other prints ordered by official or
semi-official bodies. For instance, one ordered by the City Council (Cmara
Municipal) of Penafiel, also bigger than the original (90 65 cm) and with
slight modifications.73 And in the Paris exhibition of 1937, in the colonial
room of the Portuguese Pavilion, there was a similar map to the one used in
the colonial exhibition of Porto.
The greatness of Portugal was a theme particularly emphasised by the
Estado Novo. At the beginning of the regime, Salazar expressed his special feel-
ings for the Ministry of Colonies (he was in charge of this Ministry for six months
in 1930): It is the place on earth where a Portuguese best feels the pride of being
Portuguese. Nothing is small viewed from there. That is not the Terreiro do Pao
. . . it is the head of the Empire!74 Armindo Monteiro, the succesor of Salazar at
the Ministry of Colonies, talking about the colonial history of Portugal, stated cat-
egorically that we look small in Europe, but we are big in the world.75
However, according to Salazars script, Portugal had not always been a
great country. Galvo puts it clearly: We were born in a small country . . .
Portugal stretched from Melgao [the most northern locality] to Olho [the
most southern]. Really, it did not extend beyond the boundaries of the Ter-
reiro do Pao. . . . We did not follow a course, nor did we have an objective
to achieve in the international arena.76 Portugal would have been great in
former times, but decayed in the nineteenth century due to liberal and anti-
national ideas, that deflected the Nation, during more than a century, from
its Mission, its objective.77
The resurgence of Portugal would be a particular achievement of the
Estado Novo. The narratives stressed the importance of the year 1926 as a
shift. The colonial mission of Portugal (its main objective in the
international arena) would be recovered by the National Revolution, and
Portugal would be a European continental power only on the basis of being
a colonial Nation. The greatness of Portugal would be due to the Empire,
so the Empire was an inalienable part of the Nation:
The same reason for our existence as a Nation is an idea of Wholeness,

of inalterable Unity. This Unity includes all the continental and overseas
territories, which are inseparable parts of the Nation.78
This unitary character of the metropolis and the colonies would be an

original and characteristic Portuguese conception of Empire. The Empire would
mean not only the domination of a territory and its people (the interest of other
imperialisms), but the peaceful, constructive and civilizing constitution of a
political, moral, spiritual and economic unit, between the Portugal of the
382 Heriberto Cairo
Metropolis and the vast Portugal of Overseas.79 Obviously this unity was
not conceived as a sum of equal parts: there is an original Portuguese
atmosphere (that of the Metrpole), which is reconstituted in all the
achievements of Overseas, as a faithful image.80 Notwithstanding, this
desire was not always fulfilled, as we will see.
Culture Of Spirit: The unity and indivisibility of the empire, from the
exhibitions to the school maps
The visual representation of a nation dispersed on four continents is not easy
if one wants to stress its unity. World maps are useful for representing the
historical importance and the will of power of Portugal, but not for represent-
ing simultaneously the metropolis and the colonies and their interrelations,
showing the necessary preponderance of the metropolis. One of the achieve-
ments of the exhibitions of the regime was the a-geographical representa-
tion of the territory of the nation, as can be seen in the panel Culture of
spirit (Figure 4) of the Historical Exhibition of Occupation in 1937, which
shows clearly the social character of the production of the representations of
space affirmed by Lefebvre81. The panel includes simplified maps of metro-
politan Portugal, the islands of Azores and Madeira and all the colonies, all
detached from their geographical context, and some captions in the border of
the panel referred to the construction of a particular Portuguese colonial cul-
ture. European Portugal was at the centre of the panel and the rest of territo-
ries are distributed around it, marking the centrality of the metropolis. This
panel is a good example of what Anderson refers to as maps-as-logo, the
practice of imperial states of coloring their colonies on maps with an imperial
dye in such a way that each colony appeared like a detachable piece of a jig-
saw puzzle. As this jigsaw effect became normal, each piece could be
wholly detached from its geographic context.82 The naturalization of conti-
nuity between colony and metropolis was in fact a common strategy
between the European imperial powers, such as Kramsch shows for The
Netherlands, in such a way that national and imperial identities were co-
dependent and resulted in distinctive national versions of imperialism.83
The communicative strategy of the panel showed that culture was the
cement of the Nation, and this cultural unity was not altered by physical sep-
aration. This way of representing the unity of the Nation went from the exhi-
bitions to the schools. It is important to remember that maps and atlases for
school use are another powerful tool of national identity construction.84 Since
the late 1930s and pronouncedly in the 1950s and 1960s, the Portuguese
school atlases and maps represented the country as constituted by three parts:
Continental, Insular and Overseas Portugal (Portugal continental, insular e
ultramarino) (Figure 5).85 Continental Portugal would be the portion of the
state on the European continent; Insular Portugal would be composed of
the archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira; and Overseas Portugal would
383
FIGURE 4 Panel Culture of spirit at the Historical Exhibition of the Occupation of Lisbon in 1937.
(Source: Catlogo da Exposio Histrica da Ocupao, 1937, vol. II, p. 121).
384 Heriberto Cairo
FIGURE 5 Map of Continental, Insular and Overseas Portugal of a school atlas.

(Source: Albano Chaves, Geografia de Portugal Continental e Ultramarino, Atlas. Porto: Porto
Editora 1957).
include Cape Verde, Sao Tome and Principe, Guinea, Angola, Mozambique,
Goa, Macau and Timor. The maps were usually accompanied in geography
handbooks and atlases by explanations about the geographical characteristics
of these different constitutive parts of Portugal, which provided additional
information about the comparative relevance of the population and area of
the metropolis and the colonies or overseas provinces.
Obviously these maps were a result of the official statement about
Portugal as a multi-continental nation. But the symbolic strategy was
deeper than that: Portugal was not composed of two parts (that could be
seen as opposed), Metropolis and Colonies, but of three. Thus, if nobody
doubted that Continental Portugal, Azores and Madeira were Portu-
guese, why would anyone question the Portugueseness of Overseas

Portugal? Moreover, the triple division would suggest a sort of space of
transition between the far away possessions and the metropolitan centre,
in such a way that the classification of any one portion in every class
would just be a matter of distance.
The idea of indivisibility and common culture of spirit was transmitted
not only through cartography. The propaganda machine of the Estado Novo
also devised ethnographic stratagems in order to make a simultaneous and
fairly equivalent presentation of the constitutive parts of Portugal: the
metropolis and the colonies or overseas. The simultaneous presence of
the peoples of the metrpole and ultramar in the exhibitions was
another tool to show that Portugal was a multi-continental nation. For
instance, on 30 September 1934, the last day of the Colonial Exhibition of
Porto, there was a spectacular parade, the Colonial Parade (Cortejo Colo-
nial), which marched through the streets of the city. This parade included
people from all the colonies (from Cape Verde to Macau), and motifs and
representative people were [also] gathered from the provinces of Minho,
Trs-os-Montes, region of Douro, Beira Alta and Beira Baixa, Ribatejo,
Alentejo, Extremadura and Algarve, that balanced the overseas ethnographic
demonstration.86 The intention was to show the whole Portugal. How-
ever, the result was in part paradoxical. In a certain way the original (the
Metrpole) was constructed following its image (the Alm-mar), or, at
least new conventions of representation were developed for the metropo-
lis that copied those of the colonies; in short, the inner wild was modeled
on the outer wild.87
EFFECTIVENESS OF CARTOGRAPHY PROPAGANDA
The main aim of the cartography used in propaganda was to develop the
sense of space what the German Geopolitikers called Raumsinn. This
sense of space should be definitely imperial, and as a consequence all the
public campaigns and exhibitions tried to develop an imperial mentality in
386 Heriberto Cairo
the Portuguese people.88 It is clear that the main target of this propaganda
was the Portuguese people of the metropolis, but it also reinforced the posi-
tion of the settlers in the colonies mainly in Angola and Mozambique
and to a smaller but not less important extent it also impacted on the
assimilated natives (assimilados), who constituted a very small portion of
the natives but were essential in the control of the colonies.
It is not easy to establish the effectiveness of the nationalist discourse of the
Estado Novo. If we measure it through the populations support of the regime, we
might say that it was considerably effective. For example, when the armed libera-
tion struggle began in Angola in 1961 there were spontaneous and popular dem-
onstrations in Lisbon in support of the colonial regime. Orlando Ribeiro, the most
important Portuguese geographer of the twentieth century, wrote some articles

for the newspaper Diario de Noticias in 1974 after the Carnation revolution where
he expressed his thoughts about the situation and future of the Portuguese colo-
nies. He considered that one of the existing problems was that there were [a] lot
of people [who] have in their head the foolish remarks that they have been listen-
ing for 50 years: Portugal is not a small country. . . . Those territories are prov-
inces like Minho or Algarve.89 However, the good reception of these
nonsense ideas was not only due to the quality of propaganda of the Estado
Novo, and in particular its use of cartography. Colonial discourse had been hege-
monic even before 1926; and unlike other countries, Portuguese nationalism was
always, with a few rare exceptions, imperialist.90
In theory, the reception of the colonial discourse would be different in
metropolitan Portugal than in the colonies. As Luis Cardoso, a Timorese
writer, remembers his school days:
In Timor, at the time of the Portuguese administration, the school handbooks

taught us the names of the rivers, mountains, railroads and cities of Portugal.
It was an imaginary trip of a far away country that we did not know. The
teachings at school were an enchantment . . . [and Timor] was mainly in the
dark side of this light. We still were in darkness; we had to leave the darkness
in order to know the light they offered us. . . . There was an enchantment
spinning in our head. Most of us did not know what was Portugal; it was so
far away. The only chance to know that paradise was maybe to become a
government employee, who could come here on leave.91
However Cardoso was a member of a very limited group, that of the

children who attended school in the Portuguese colonies. Most of the indig-
enous population of the colonies did not attend school at all. Moreover,
only whites and assimilated natives in the colonies followed the same sylla-
bus as the Portuguese. Non-assimilated children attended missionary
schools with a different syllabus. In fact, the assimilated natives were the
other target group of the regimes propaganda. Alito Siqueira, a Goan soci-
ologist, reflects on the experience of assimilation in the Portuguese colonies
in India and concludes that in spite of being a very small minority, the
assimilated believed and do believe that they were and are Portuguese,
and, as a consequence, the people from Goan origin settled in Portugal,
see themselves as Portuguese whose origin is incidentally Goan.92 This
fact, in his conclusions, is more related to the myth of the absence of racial
discrimination that Portuguese colonisation emphasised through theories
like the already mentioned luso-tropicalism. But the identity of the assimi-
lated is also permeated by a territorial imagination of the nation constructed
during Salazars regime. For instance, at the time of the incorporation of
Goa to India in 1961 the people of Goan origin settled in Portugal would
rather use the term invasion and reject the notion of liberation.93
Another Goan sociologist, writing about an essay of Tristao de

Braganza Cunha entitled The Denationalization of Goans, published in 1944
as a booklet, states that Cunha like Fanon, but twenty years earlier, believed
that the educated elites of their respective countries had been subjected to
a process of mental enslavement, enabling the colonial rulers to sustain
their rule over the colonised with their consent.94 There was a mimicry
process of the colonisers between the educated colonised elites. Therefore,
national liberation fights did not only have to use warfare weapons but also
cultural weapons, as we will see below.
RESISTANCE AND COUNTER-NARRATIONS
It is possible to find different regards about the multi-racial and pluri-continental

nation predicated by Salazar. Viragem, a novel published in 1957 (just 4 years
before the beginning of the liberation war in Angola) by Castro Soromenho,95
who is considered one of the pioneers of Angolan literature,96 describes a differ-
ent Africa and the fractures between colonisers and the colonised, only overcome
thanks to the assimilated. It supplies a counter-narrative to two foundational
stories of the Estado Novo: on one side, the assumption that Portugal has the
spiritual mission of colonising, and, on the other, the assumption that the Portu-
guese have a special capacity to mix with the colonised populations.
The novel as a literary form originated in Europe in the eighteenth and
nineteenth century, linked to the rise of the bourgeoisie and the construction of
the nation-state.97 It was introduced to Africa, and particularly to Angola,
through the so-called colonial literature, full of exoticism and adventure. The
first works of Castro Soromenho are an example of this colonial literature.98 But
with the publication of Terra morta (Dying Land) in 1949 he gave a radical
twist to his writings, denouncing the colonialism that made Angola a dying
land. Viragem (Turnabout) is part of a trilogy of novels initiated by Terra
morta and concluded with A chaga (The Wound) in 1970. In these novels he
describes his experience as a recruiter of African contract labour for a mining
company and colonial administrator in a lonely post in Angola in the 1930s.
388 Heriberto Cairo
Although white, he was considered a spokesman by Angolans, because he was

able to see (and denounce) both sides of colonialism: the subordinated life of
the colonised, and the arrogant racism and brutality of colonisers in the years of
strong migration from the metropolis to Angola.99
Two of the main characters of Viragem, Paulina and her grandmother, came
from a rural area of Portugal to a post in the interior of Angola in order to live
together with Afonso, the Portuguese official in charge of it. They looked for a
better life in Africa, a new life in a new land, but they found very soon that
everybody was homesick (tem saudade): Africa is only good in order to make
money. There is nothing like our land, everybody told her.100 Paulina noticed
since her arrival the racial difference that the Europeans constructed in their
expansion, the coloniality of power in terms of Quijano.101 She found a society

definitely broken, where the white and the black were antithetical parts.
Because of an illness, Afonso is far away and is replaced by Antnio, an ex-
soldier, who is not interested in the post, or even in Angola: Africa. . . . In this lost
part of the world there are only solitude and fevers. It is horrible this sensation of
being alive in this dead time.102 Antnio lives indolently in the post, indifferent to
what happens there, only interested in Paulina. One of the peaks of the novel is
when, in order to impress her, he tries to show his power over the natives. The
motive was the illegal selling of cotton to non-government traders. Antnio forces
the natives to come to the post to be present at the punishment of one cotton
thief. The scene perfectly shows how the relations between Portuguese and
natives were conducted: only through the native police (os sipaios) and their auxil-
iaries (os capitas). Antnio does not go out of the post at all, the gathering of the
population is made by the sipaios and capitas; he does not speak the indigenous
language and the natives do not understand Portuguese, therefore when he
speaks, the chief of sipaios translates what he says (not always faithfully):
The white of the government is the father of the black people . . . [and]
the blacks show ingratitude to the white that brought civilization to
those lands . . . that were poor until the whites of the Company came
and they taught them how to grow cotton . . . and now they have to sell
the cotton to the Company.103
The speech of the official makes no sense to the natives, but the punish-
ment is understood: the chief of sipaios, following orders of Antnio, sav-
agely beats with a whip the body of the savage.
Speech and punishment came through the sipaios. This mediated relation
gave an extraordinary power to the assimilated, but their position was always at
the mercy of the colonisers. Castro Soromenho reinforces this idea through the
character of Tipia, ex-soldier and one of the ancient sipaios of the post, who had
well interiorised the idea that the white Portuguese give orders and the black
Portuguese have to obey. He is sent to jail because he has lost his weapon while
he was in a mission looking for a capita deserter. Antnio is not interested in his
version of the facts at all, and finally Tipia is dismissed from service. Our chief,
thirty years serving the whites, thirty years, master, our chief . . . , murmurs
Tipia, who puts an end to his own life that is not intelligible to him any more.
In general terms, the supposed Portuguese skill for colonising, proclaimed
by the Estado Novo, is contrasted with the rejection of the new land by the
settlers and officials and the lack of interest for it, except as a source of riches.
Natives are racially discriminated against and economically exploited. And even
the assimilated are treated so arbitrarily that they doubt their position and their
relation with the colonisers. The classification of bodies and the establishment
of geographical and moral boundaries to their free movement are contrasted in
the novel with the proclaimed official policies of assimilation since 1951.
Culture is a ground of fight as well as of hegemonic consensus. The move-

ments of resistance to Portuguese colonialism, for example, place great importance
on the affirmation of the colonial peoples own culture. One of the outstanding
leaders of the resistance in Cape Verde and Guinea was Amilcar Cabral, and he
was very aware of the importance of what he called cultural resistance. He stated
that the colonial theories in practice, are translated into a permanent state of siege
of the indigenous populations on the basis of racist dictatorship (or democracy).
There are not good and bad colonial theories, colonial aggression is not only
linked to apartheid or to genocidal theories, it is in the heart of colonialism:
This, for example, is the case with the so-called theory of progressive ass-
imilation of native populations, which turns out to be only a more or less
violent attempt to deny the culture of the people in question. The utter fail-
ure of this theory, implemented in practice by several colonial powers,
including Portugal, is the most obvious proof of its lack of viability, if not of
its inhuman character. It attains the highest degree of absurdity in the
Portuguese case, where Salazar affirmed that Africa does not exist.104
As we have seen, Guinea, Angola or Mozambique would not be African

countries, in the discourse of Salazars regime, but parts of a multi-continental
nation: Portugal. It is not strange then that Cabral insists on the necessity of a
cultural liberation. The conception of culture by Cabral is mainly defined in
the economistic terms of the traditional schools of Marxism, as a super-
structure of the economic mode of production. However, Cabral thinks that
the role of culture is paramount in national liberation, because culture is the
fruit of a peoples history and a determinant of history:
A people who free themselves from foreign domination will be free cul-
turally only if, without complexes and without underestimating the
importance of positive accretions from the oppressor and other cultures,
they return to the upward paths of their own culture, which is nourished
by the living reality of its environment, and which negates both harmful
influences and any kind of subjection to foreign culture. Thus, it may be
390 Heriberto Cairo
seen that if imperialist domination has the vital need to practice cultural
oppression, national liberation is necessarily an act of culture.105
Culture was (and is) a decisive field of battle for the coloniser and the colo-
nised. There are no fixed laws regulating the way that representational spaces
subvert representations of space. Every time it happens, it is different. And sub-
verting the representational spaces implies more than a change of regime:
Cabral was assassinated in the 1970s, but it is difficult to think that he would
recognise todays Cape Verde as the culturally free nation he dreamed of.
Postcolonial representations of space are not simply the result of the subversion
intended by the resistance movements of colonial times, but it is also true that
current representations of space (which, as a fixed thing, exist only to the ana-
lyst, because it is a never ending process) are derived from the permanent inter-
action with spatial structures and (counter)representational spaces.
CONCLUSIONS
This case study contributes to a wider understanding of popular geopolitics

(or popular geographies, in Cosgroves expression106), in particular the use
of maps in exhibitions with pedagogical goals. The relevant role of maps in
the construction of the geopolitical imagination of Salazars Portugal has
been analysed, which shows that popular geopolitics is not necessarily
linked to formal geopolitical thinking, which was not very cultivated in Por-
tugal. The Portuguese case is interesting not only because it is little known,
but because it shows its particular (and peculiar) inscription within the
much larger network of Western colonial discourses. In relation to this, it
would be interesting to elucidate the connections of the meaning of
empire with the Italy of Mussolini and Spain of Franco, and establish the
links between the use of maps and other images in the propaganda of the
Italian fascist regime and those of Portugal and Spain.
The use of cartography associated with propaganda by the Estado Novo
is not a singular case in 1930s and 1940s Europe. In Nazi Germany and Fas-
cist Italy, at least, maps play a prominent propaganda role. However, in
Portugal during the Estado Novo there was no set of coordinated institutions
and authors dedicated to the production of suggestive cartography as in
Nazi Germany. There were institutions, like the Sociedade de Geografia de
Lisboa, well aware of the importance of space and its representation in the
colonial enterprise, that participated in map making, but, in general terms,
the implication of institutions was not as deep as in Germany. In any case,
the use of maps in order to visualise the mission of Portugal and the
Empire as a unified Portuguese Nation was very relevant. The dominant
political discourse of the Salazar regime stressed the idea of a multiracial
and pluri-continental nation that extended from Minho to Timor.
The prominent use of world maps in great exhibitions and public

spaces, where the Portuguese voyages and discoveries were depicted, tried
to project the idea that expansion was the Portuguese mission and destiny.
It created a particular way of seeing the world progressively: places on
Earth began to exist only when they were discovered by the Portuguese and
remained always part, cultural (spiritual) or political, of Portugal. Another
important theme in the propaganda of the Estado Novo was the relevance of
the Empire to the greatness of the Portuguese Nation. Without the Empire,
Portugal would be just a small European country; with the Empire, Portugal
would be a great world country. Finally, the strategies to represent the unity
and indivisibility of the Nation led to the making of a-geographical maps,
that represented the territories under Portugals sovereignty, detached from

their geographical context, as in a jigsaw.
The colonial discourse of the Estado Novo was hegemonic for almost thirty
years, but it crumbled due to the wave of decolonisation that took place in the
world in the wake of the Second World War. The counter-narratives associated
with representational spaces in the colonies opened their way until the colonial
discursive formation came (at least, formally) to an end. However, it might be
interesting to examine todays relevance of these territorial and national images
created through maps, analysing institutions such as the Commonwealth of Por-
tuguese Language Countries (Comunidade dos Pases de Lngua Portuguesa),
which include all the Portuguese imperial possessions that are currently inde-
pendent countries (Goa or Macao, which are parts of India and China, respec-
tively, are not members of the CPLP), or events such as the World Exhibition
held in Lisbon in 1998 (Expo 98) in commemoration of the first maritime expe-
dition to India in 1498 by Vasco de Gama, whose parallelisms with the Grande
Exposio do Mundo Portugus of 1940 have already been emphasised and
have given rise to a deep self-reflection in some Portuguese people:
Portugal always lived a historical dilemma: the complex of being small . . .

Rulers and citizens feel obliged to prove to the rest of the world that they
are in fact big and not small.107
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The research leading to this article was mainly done while I was Visiting
Researcher in 1999 in the Instituto de Histria Contempornea of the Facul-
dade de Cincias Sociais e Humanas at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. I
would like to thank Fernando Rosas, Hiplito de la Torre and Juan Carlos
Jimnez for the support in relation to that stance. The librarians of the Biblio-
teca da Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa were extremely helpful during the
research. I would like to extend my gratitude to Margarida Fernandes, Alvaro
Durntez and, particularly, to Maria Fernanda de Abreu for their help in
392 Heriberto Cairo
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, Gopolitique et histoire (Lausanne: Payot
1995) p. 245.
4. In the same senses that other nonverbal sign systems paintings, prints, theatre, films, televi-
sion, music are texts. . . . They are a construction of reality, images laden with intentions and conse-
quences 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. 245246.
8. Jeremy W. Crampton, Maps as Social Constructions: Power, Communication and Visualiza-
tion, Progress in Human Geography 25 (2001) pp. 235252.
9. Ibid. p. 242.
10. Klaus-John Dodds, Geopolitics, Cartography and the State in South America, Political Geogra-
phy 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. 467485.
13. David Campbell, Apartheid Cartography: The Political Anthropology and Spatial Effects of
International Diplomacy in Bosnia, Political Geography 18 (1999) pp. 395435.
14. Yoram Bar-Gal, The Blue Box and JNF Propaganda Maps, 19301947, Israel Studies 8
(2003) p. 17.
15. Frdric Lasserre, La Nouvelle Carte du Qubec: 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. 671686.
17. On the differences of popular and formal geopolitics see Gearoid Tuathail and Simon
Dalby, Introduction: Rethinking Geopolitics. Towards a Critical Geopolitics, in G. Tuathail and
S. Dalby (eds.), Rethinking Geopolitics (London: Routledge 1998) pp. 115.
18. See Guntram Henrik Herb, Persuasive Cartography in Geopolitik and National Socialism,
Political Geography Quarterly 8 (1989) p. 289303, or Guntram Henrik Herb, Under the Map of
Germany. Nationalism & Propaganda 19181945 (London: Routledge 1997).
19. Ibid. (1997) p. 181.
20. Raffestin et al. (note 3) pp. 265267.
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. 265297.
22. Heather Hyde Minor, Mapping Mussolini: Ritual and Cartography in Public Art during the Sec-
ond Roman Empire, Imago Mundi 51 (1999) p. 159.
23. See Stanley G. Payne, A Taxonomia Comparativa do Autoritarismo, in O Estado Novo das Ori-
gens ao Fim da Autarca (19261959) (Lisbon: Fragmentos 1987) vol. I, pp. 2329.
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 Loureno Marques!! Radio Colonization and Cultural Identity in Colonial
Mozambique, Journal of Historical Geography 26 (2000) pp. 605628.
27. Marcus Power, Geo-politics and the Representation of Portugals African Colonial Wars: Exam-
ining the Limits of Vietnam Syndrome, Political Geography 20 (2001) pp. 461491.
28. Helosa Paulo, Estado Novo e Propaganda em Portugal e no Brasil (Coimbra: Minerva 1994).
29. Films of colonial propaganda like Imperial Charming (Feitio Imperial) in 1940 or documenta-
ries about the regimes colonial exhibitions or the colonies were financed by governmental departments,
like the Secretary of National Propaganda. See Lus 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 Lus 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, Exposies do Estado Novo, 19341940 (Lisbon: Livros Horizonte
1998), or Srgio 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 Informao, Cultura Popular e Turismo SIN).
33. In 1951 this governmental department became the General Overseas Agency (Agncia Geral
do Ultramar).
34. Henri Lefebvre, La Production de lEspace (Paris: Anthropos 1974) p. 4849.
35. Ibid. p. 3031.
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.), Entan-
glements of Power: Geographies of Domination/Resistance (London: Routledge 2000) pp. 142.
37. See, for instance, the processes of autolinderacin (self-boundary-marking) done by the Orga-
nizacin de Pueblos Indgenas 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. 125130, or the cartographic counter-representations of the fishermen in the Nariva Swamp in Trin-
idad analysed by Bjrn Sletto, Producing Space(s), Representing Landscapes: Maps and Resource Con-
flicts in Trinidad, Cultural Geographies 9 (2002) pp. 389420.
38. See Margarida Fernandes, Hora di Bai. Os Cabo-Verdianos e a Morte (Lisbon: Nova Vega 2004)
pp. 1518.
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 Owens 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 Introduccin, in A. Costa Pinto (ed.),
Portugal Contemporneo (Madrid: Sequitur 2000) pp. 136. (Originally published in Portuguese in 1998).
44. da essncia orgnica da Nao Portuguesa desempenhar a funo histrica de possuir e
colonizar domnios ultramarinos e de civilizar as populaces indgenas . . . (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 Cludia Castelo, O Modo Portugus de Estar no Mundo. O Luso-tropicalismo e a Ideologa
Colonial Portuguesa (19331961) (Porto: Edies Afrontamento 1998), or Armelle Enders, Le Lusotropical-
isme, Thorie dExportation. Gilberto Freyre en son Pays, Lusotopie (1997) pp. 201210.
47. See, for instance, Valentim Alexandre, El Imperio Colonial, in Costa Pinto (note 43) pp. 3756.
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 Nao Portugusa o existente data da proclamao da Repblica (art. 2 of
the Constitution of 1911).
51. Tefilo Braga, quoted in Jos Gonalo Santa Rita, A Enumerao Geogrfica do Territrio na Nova
Constituo da Repblica, Boletim da Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa, 51 (14) (1933) p. 10.
52. See Denis-Constant Martin, The Choices of Identity, Social Identities 1 (1995) pp. 520.
394 Heriberto Cairo
53. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso 1991).

54. See Anthony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum (London: Routledge 1999), and Hlne Gill,
Discordant and Ambiguous Messages in Official Representations of Empire: Versailles 1845, Cristal
Palace 1851, International Journal of Francophone Studies 7 (2004) pp. 151167.
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 Cronolgico 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. Joo de Almeida, O Esprito da Raa Portuguesa na sua Expanso Alm-mar (Lisbon: Parceria
Antnio 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 demonstrao ter o fim de mostrar os traballos e aco dos portugueses para assimi-
lao dos indgenas e para a defesa do ultramar portugus, durante o sculo XIX at s campanhas da
Grande Guerra (art. 2 of the Decree-Law no. 27.269 establishing the exhibition, Diario do Govrno, 1
series, no. 276, 24 November 1936).
63. Carlos Viegas Gago Coutinho, Sala da Marinharia, in Catlogo da Exposio Histrica da Ocu-
pao (Lisbon: Agncia Geral das Colnias 1937) vol. I, p. 122.
64. The spirit policy (poltica do esprito) was an expression used by Antonio Ferro, the director
of the SPN; it referred to the mission of the Secretary: elevar o esprito da gente portuguesa no conhec-
imento do que e do que realmente vale, como grupo tnico, como meio cultural, como fora de
produo, 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 impor-
tance was as strong as official statements.
66. Antnio Ferro, Carta Aberta aos Portugueses de 1940, Dirio 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 Edi-
tora 1996) p. 327.
68. Ibid. p. 176.
69. Harley (note 4) p. 161.
70. Quoted in Acciaiuoli (note 31) pp. 176177.
71. Galvo 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 Director-
ate of Liberation (Directorio Revolucionario Ibrico de Liberacin), in order to denounce both dictator-
ships in the Iberian peninsula.
72. Henrique Galvo, No Rumo do Imperio (Porto: Litografia Nacional do Prto 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 Prto: (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 Poltica Ultramarina e Mensagens
dos Chefes de Estado (Lisbon, Documentao Poltica 1954) p. 16.
75. Armindo Monteiro, O Pas dos Quatro Imprios, Boletim da Agncia Geral das Colnias VII,
78 (1931) p. 22.
76. Galvo (note 72) pp. 1112.
77. Henrique Galvo, O Imprio (Lisbon: Edies SPN 1938) p. 5.
78. Galvo, No Rumo do Imperio (note 72) p. 16.
79. Galvo, O Imprio (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. 175176.
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, Mara
Dolors Garca-Ramn and Joan Nogu-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 Antnio Medeiros, Etnicidade
e Nacionalismo: Colnias, Metrpole e Representao Etnogrfica na 1 Exposio Colonial Portu-
guesa, in Actas do Simposio Internacional de Antropoloxa 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. 1415.
90. Alexandre (note 47) p. 56.
91. Luis Cardoso, Do encantamento 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 (Unio 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, 18001900 (Torino: Einaudi 1997).
98. In the first phase Castro Soromenho published novels and short stories like: Lendas Negras
(1936), Nhri: O Drama da Gente Negra (1938), Noite de Angstia (1939), Homens sem Caminho (1941),
Rajada e Outras Histrias (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 Histria de Portugal (Lisbon: Presena 1995) p. 685.
100. Fernando Monteiro de Castro Soromenho, Viragem (Lisbon: Livraria S da Costa Editora
1978) p. 50.
101. Anbal Quijano, Colonialidad del poder y clasificacin social, Journal of World-Systems
Research, VI, 2 (2000) pp. 342386.
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 Jlio Henriques, O que a Expo expe, in the same electronic journal.

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On: 26 December 2014, At: 01:38

Portugal is not a Small Country: Maps

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14650040600767867

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Portugal is not a Small Country: Maps and

Propaganda in the Salazar Regime

Facultad de Ciencias Polticas y Sociologa, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain

The representation of territory is one of the most important ele-

Representation of territory is one of the main elements in the construction

Address correspondence to Heriberto Cairo, Facultad de Ciencias Polticas y Sociologa,

maps serve better as a vehicle of myths than of thoughts.7

propaganda maps, the suggestive mapping, already developed by geogra-

and ucronian because of the absence of time (time is considered only in a

colonies, particularly on the cultural construction of colonial subjectivities, such

TERRITORY IN THE COLONIAL DISCOURSE OF THE

Amongst the dominant characteristics of our nationalism Characteris-

Portugals territory is that currently belonging to the Portuguese nation, viz:

1. In Europe: continental Portugal and the archipelagos of Madeira and

CARTOGRAPHIC STRATEGIES OF REPRESENTATION

display of power.54 Great exhibitions exemplified particularly well the

And If There Was Anywhere Else To Go, We Would Have Gone

Portugal, winner of the battle of Aljubarrota, re-acquired its political

descendants of the Homo-Atlanticus (that is from the inhabitants of the

(Historia Trgico-Martima). The latter was adapted from an original of 1502

This Exposition . . . will be, therefore, an important step in the useful

indicated in Gothic characters, metaphorically projected over the world in

Portugal Is Not A Small Country: Henrique Galvo, the map of the

pequeno) (Figure 3) was displayed in the First Colonial Portuguese Exhibition

The same reason for our existence as a Nation is an idea of Wholeness,

This unitary character of the metropolis and the colonies would be an

FIGURE 5 Map of Continental, Insular and Overseas Portugal of a school atlas.

guese, why would anyone question the Portugueseness of Overseas

EFFECTIVENESS OF CARTOGRAPHY PROPAGANDA

important Portuguese geographer of the twentieth century, wrote some articles

In Timor, at the time of the Portuguese administration, the school handbooks

However Cardoso was a member of a very limited group, that of the

Another Goan sociologist, writing about an essay of Tristao de

RESISTANCE AND COUNTER-NARRATIONS

It is possible to find different regards about the multi-racial and pluri-continental

Although white, he was considered a spokesman by Angolans, because he was

expansion, the coloniality of power in terms of Quijano.101 She found a society

Culture is a ground of fight as well as of hegemonic consensus. The move-

As we have seen, Guinea, Angola or Mozambique would not be African

This case study contributes to a wider understanding of popular geopolitics

The prominent use of world maps in great exhibitions and public

that represented the territories under Portugals sovereignty, detached from

Portugal always lived a historical dilemma: the complex of being small . . .

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

88. Alexandre (note 47) p. 46.

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