The Colours of the Empire

A specialist in the history of Portuguese anthropology and colonialism, Matos (anthropology, U. of Lisbon) looks at the role race played in the country's colonial thinking and behavior. She covers the roots of racial discrimination, the place of the colonies and their populations in the Portuguese colonial empire, and representations of the colonies and the overseas Portuguese in the great exhibitions. Among the topics are the emergence of modern racism, colonial representations in primary and secondary school readers, racial fixity and the invention of human types, a "Guinean village" at the Lisbon Industrial Exhibition (1932), and the exotic versus familiar status of the colonized populations at the exhibitions. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Patricia Ferraz de Matos is an anthropologist whose work focuses on the history of Portuguese anthropology and Portuguese colonialism. She received the Victor de Sa Prize of Contemporary History 2005 from the Cultural Council of the University of Minho, Portugal, when this work was first published in Portuguese. Her doctoral thesis was devoted to analyzing the work of the Portuguese anthropologist Mendes Correia and the production of the Anthropology School of Porto. At present she is a post doctoral researcher in the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Lisbon where she works on the international networks underlying the forging of scientific knowledge.