On Race and Miscegenation: Portuguese Racial Studies During the 1930s and 1940s

In the first half of the twentieth century, miscegenation was widely discussed internationally, particularly as to the possibility of being biologically harmful. In Portugal, the scientific debate on miscegenation was complex, being generally in tune with different positions that aligned with political agendas of the dictatorial regime.

In the 1930s and 1940s, the Portuguese scientific debate regarding miscegenation, which in general favoured its rejection, was nuanced, reflecting different perspectives on inheritance, eugenics, and evolution.

This article aims at elucidating how different racial and inheritance conceptions contributed to the nuanced scientific discourse on miscegenation in Portugal. While considering eugenics, it will focus on publications within the field of Anthropobiology, particularly related to inheritance, physiology and human biochemistry, from the Anthropology schools of Porto and Coimbra. The article opens a window into a rarely studied topic: the way Portuguese scholars regarded miscegenation during the first decades of the Estado Novo, in connection with their ideological and scientific concerns.