Portuguese tropical geography and decolonization in Africa: the case of Mozambique

The Passing of “Geography’s Empire” and Question of Geography in Decolonization, 1945–1980

“…Postwar geographers studied the gender dynamics of peasant households and agrarian structures, but mostly ignored the vital role that women played in independence struggles (an elision by no means unique to geography). And while largely avoiding bellicose imperial language that sexualized and racialized exotic colonial lands either as supine realms ripe for Western insemination or as failed and dangerous spaces of miscegenation, one of the very few female geographers working in late colonial (French and Portuguese) Africa, Suzanne Daveau (see Sarmento 2018) reflects that this generation of male geographers (including her husband, Orlando Ribeiro, Portugal's leading tropical geographer) barely noticed, let alone queried, the forms of masculinity at work in the passage from empire to independence. They barely acknowledged or unpacked either the colonialist's reliance "on a paternalist masculinity to legitimate their rule (i.e., our dependencies require our rule the way a child requires a father)", or the anti-colonialist's response "with a resistance masculinity (i.e., 'colonialism is emasculating;' 'decolonization is necessary for a return of masculine dignity')", as Vrushali Patil (2008, 196) widens and sharpens the point.…”

Luso-Brazilian geographies? The making of epistemic communities in semi-peripheral academic human geography

“…The second reason was that the relation of Ribeiro, the leader of geographical missions in Africa, with the Estado Novo government became rocky after he presented a report on Goa which was highly critical of the treatment of natives by colonial settlers in Goa (Ribeiro, 1999 [1956]). The 1974 revolution was the final nail in the coffin of Portuguese tropical geography (Sarmento, 2008, 2018). The only studies about tropical regions, including Brazil, that were published in Portuguese geography journals after the revolution were those by Ilídio do Amaral, a disciple of Ribeiro who had specialised in the geomorphology and urban geography of the Portuguese colonies, alongside Ana Amaral (Alcoforado, 2017; Oliveira, 2017).…”

History and philosophy of geography I: Decolonising the discipline, diversifying archives and historicising radicalism

“…In the Journal of Historical Geography ’s special issue edited by Clayton and Kumar, João Sarmento analyses the traumas that the decolonisation of Portuguese Africa provoked in Portuguese tropical geography by focusing on the protagonists’ (mostly women) autobiographies. These recollections show how geography had anti-colonial uses in Mozambique, for instance, at the occasion of ‘a class discussion of Josué de Castro’s book Geografia da Fome ’ (Sarmento, 2018: 7). Materials on African decolonisation are likewise discussed by Marcus Power in his book on histories of geopolitics and development during the Cold War (Power, 2019).…”