The Portuguese-Speaking Diaspora
The Portuguese-Speaking Diaspora
Seven Centuries of Literature and the Arts
Long before the concept of “globalization,” the Portuguese constructed a vast empire that extended into Africa, India, Brazil, and mid-Atlantic territories, as well as parts of China, Southeast Asia, and Japan. Using this empire as its starting point and spanning seven centuries and four continents, The Portuguese-Speaking Diaspora examines literary and artistic works about the ensuing diaspora, or the dispersion of people within the Portuguese-speaking world, resulting from colonization, the slave trade, adventure seeking, religious conversion, political exile, forced labor, war, economic migration, and tourism.
Based on a broad array of written and visual materials, including historiography, letters, memoirs, plays, poetry, fiction, cartographic imagery, paintings, photographs, and films, The Portuguese-Speaking Diaspora is the first detailed analysis of the different and sometimes conflicting cultural productions of the imperial diaspora in its heyday and an important context for understanding the more complex and broader-based culture of population travel and displacement from the former colonies to present-day “homelands.” The topics that Darlene J. Sadlier discusses include exploration and settlement by the Portuguese in different parts of the empire; the Black Atlantic slave trade; nineteenth-century travel and Orientalist imaginings; the colonial wars; and the return of populations to Portugal following African independence. A wide-ranging study of the art and literature of these and other diasporic movements, this book is a major contribution to the growing field of Lusophone studies.
Highly recommended for courses on diversity, history and cultural studies, undergraduate and graduate students and researchers.
An extensive survey of diasporic literature and art of the Portuguese Empire...The book is an important source to study the culture of Portuguese territories
in the East...a pleasant reading experience for all those who are interested in understanding the Portuguese diaspora.
Sadlier's work offers a wide-ranging survey of diasporic literature and art of the Portuguese Empire. It creatively uses an impressive diversity of sources and media to reveal perspectives reaching beyond the standard Portuguese literary canon. Moreover, the global scope of the work is ambitious...The Portuguese-Speaking Diaspora consistently explores themes of estrangement, disillusion, and longing in colonialism.
This is a pioneering work and the first in English to undertake a comprehensive treatment of the Portuguese-speaking diaspora with an interdisciplinary approach centered in arts and literature. This is a much-needed and valuable undertaking, one of vast scope.
Introduction
Chapter One. The Imperial Diaspora
Chapter Two. The Lusophone African Diaspora
Chapter Three. Oriental Imaginings and Travel at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
Chapter Four. Into the Wilderness: The Race for Africa and the Promise of Brazil
Chapter Five. The Casa dos Estudantes do Império and Mensagem
Chapter Six. A Lusotropicalist Tourist and Soldiers, East Indians, and Cape Verdeans on the Move
Chapter Seven. War in Africa and the Global Economy: Leaving Home and Returning
Epilogue: The Portuguese-Speaking Diaspora and “Lusofonia”
Notes
Bibliography
Index
