Introduction
The memory of the Portuguese maritime epic occupies a central place in national identity, evoking pride, exceptionalism, and a vision of Portugal as a historical actor of global relevance. However, in recent decades, this narrative has become increasingly contested, particularly in light of postcolonial critiques, the global rise of decolonial movements, and shifting public discourses. In Portugal, these tensions are particularly visible in political debates, cultural commemorations, and educational discourses – constituting what may be understood as a ‘culture war’ over historical memory.
This article investigates how political elites – here conceptualised as ‘gatekeepers’ – engage with, reproduce, or challenge dominant historical narratives concerning the maritime past. By analysing political discourse among Portuguese members of parliament (MPs) and other influential actors, the study sheds light on the politicisation of collective memory, revealing patterns of polarisation, ideological division, and rhetorical strategies in the struggle over national identity.
The contribution of this article lies in its dual focus: first, in empirically capturing the contemporary reconfiguration of Portugal’s maritime legacy through elite discourse; and second, in theoretically framing this phenomenon within broader debates on memory politics and ideological conflict. While scholarly attention has focussed extensively on memory in postcolonial societies, Portugal remains underexplored in this literature, particularly regarding elite-level discourse. This study thus addresses a gap by situating Portugal within the global phenomenon of ‘memory wars’ (Radonić Reference Radonić2021), contributing to the fields of collective memory and political discourse analysis.
Theoretical background: Memory, history, and contestation
The relationship between memory and history is complex and multifaceted. Although they often intersect, they operate on distinct registers. While history aims for analytical reconstruction grounded in evidence, memory reflects subjective and often politicised recollections shaped by present-day concerns. As Halbwachs (Reference Halbwachs1950) argues, memory is not a mere repository of facts but a socially constructed process, influenced by group dynamics and cultural frameworks.
Pierre Nora’s (Reference Nora1989) seminal notion of lieux de mémoire – sites of memory – offers a framework for understanding how physical spaces, symbols, and narratives are mobilised to sustain collective identity in the face of modernity’s disruption of traditional memory structures. Importantly, these ‘sites’ include not only geographic locales but also figures, events, institutions, and rituals imbued with symbolic power.
Building on this distinction, Assmann (Reference Assmann, Tilmans, van Vree and Winter2010) differentiates between communicative memory – short-term, interpersonal, and fluid – and cultural memory, which is institutionalised and transmitted over generations through rituals, education, and media.
This theoretical grounding underscores that collective memory is not neutral. It is an arena of power, shaped by dominant ideologies and political interests. As Ricoeur (Reference Ricoeur2000) notes, the process of remembering is inseparable from the process of forgetting, and the ethics of memory requires attentiveness to inclusion, exclusion, and distortion.
Jacques Le Goff (Reference Goff1988) and Michel-Rolph Trouillot (Reference Trouillot1995) have further emphasised that history and memory are not opposites, but competing narratives subject to contestation. These contests are central to understanding how modern nation-states construct legitimacy and identity, particularly when confronting the legacies of violence, empire, or slavery. As Triaud (Reference Triaud, Chrétien and Triaud1999) puts it, the past is often ‘composé’, assembled to serve the needs of the present.
Building on this, the concept of ‘memory wars’ (Radonić, Reference Radonić2021) provides an analytical lens to examine how political actors weaponise history in disputes over curriculum, public space, and national belonging. In Portugal, the maritime epic has functioned as a hegemonic historical narrative, but one that is now under increasing scrutiny from counter-hegemonic voices, including decolonial activists and progressive politicians.
Case selection, data, and methodology
This study focusses on how political elites – conceptualised as gatekeepers (Zaller Reference Zaller1992) – shape public discourse on the Portuguese maritime past, particularly through their engagement with contested historical narratives. Portugal’s maritime history, a significant lieu de mémoire, makes it a compelling case for studying ‘culture wars’ over historical narratives.
Portugal is here approached as a ‘particular’ case (Seawright and Gerring Reference Seawright and Gerring2008), representative of broader post-imperial memory disputes in southern Europe, while also exhibiting specificities related to its late decolonisation process and the persistent influence of Lusotropicalist ideology.
The study adopts a qualitative and interpretive orientation, drawing on anthropological approaches to the political field that emphasise the meanings that actors assign to their practices and narratives (Kuschnir Reference Kuschnir, Kuschnir and Duarte2007). This perspective privileges an understanding of how political agents interpret, perform, and contest memory discourses, rather than seeking universal laws or representative generalisations. Such an approach allows for a thick description of symbolic structures and ideological repertoires, especially within elite discourse, which often operates through implicit framings, affective investments, and culturally embedded references. The analysis is thus situated within a broader framework of memory studies and political anthropology, which treat discourse not merely as reflection but as constitutive of social and political reality (Olick and Levy Reference Olick and Levy1997; Ricoeur Reference Ricoeur2000; Assmann Reference Assmann, Tilmans, van Vree and Winter2010).
To maintain confidentiality, the names of interviewed MPs and other gatekeepers are not disclosed.
The data were collected through 22 semistructured qualitative interviews conducted between 2022 and 2024 with current and former MPs, party officials, and politically active commentators across the ideological spectrum. The participants were selected using a combination of purposive and snowball sampling, ensuring the inclusion of major parliamentary parties and diverse generational, ideological, and experiential profiles.
The interview protocol included open-ended questions focusing on interpretations of the maritime past, views on Lusotropicalism, reactions to recent decolonial movements, and opinions on how colonial history should be addressed in public discourse and education.
All interviews were anonymised and transcribed verbatim. The material was analysed through qualitative content analysis (Bardin Reference Bardin2011), allowing for the emergence of thematic categories. These categories were then cross-analysed with the ideological positioning of the interviewees to identify patterns of consensus, polarisation, and ambiguity.
Given the sensitive nature of the topic and the institutional positions of the participants, the interview transcripts will not be made publicly available. Access to the field was predicated on strict confidentiality and trust, particularly in light of the politically charged and often polarising nature of the subject matter. While this limits replicability in a narrow sense, the study compensates through a detailed explanation of sampling strategies, interview protocols, and analytical procedures. This decision adheres to ethical standards in qualitative research, particularly those involving elite and high-risk informants (Kvale Reference Kvale2007; Silverman Reference Silverman2011).
The decision to focus on elite discourse is grounded in the theoretical assumption that political actors play a critical role in framing public memory (Olick and Levy Reference Olick and Levy1997; Berger Reference Berger2012). This aligns with the concept of gatekeepers, who not only reflect but also shape the discursive boundaries of acceptable memory in the public sphere. While not statistically representative, the sample provides an in-depth qualitative map of ideological positions within the political class.
Future work may benefit from triangulating these findings with broader public opinion surveys or media discourse analysis, but the present study prioritises the elite level because of its agenda-setting power.
Portugal and its maritime epic as the basis of self-esteem
Despite its long and multifaceted history, Portuguese national identity is deeply anchored in the epic narrative of the Discoveries. This period, symbolising imperial ambition and national self-affirmation, has been central to the nation’s self-conception (de Carvalho Reference de Carvalho1974). Eduardo Lourenço (Reference Lourenço1978) conceptualises Portuguese national identity as a ‘hyperidentity’ – an exaggerated and self-centred consciousness that glorifies the era of the Discoveries while often overlooking its negative aspects. This self-referential identity construction resonates with Stuart Hall’s (Reference Hall and Rutherford1990) notion of cultural identity as a ‘positioning’ rather than an essence – historically contingent and always subject to rearticulation through discourse.
This ‘hyperidentity’ illustrates a selective and ideologically driven appropriation of history, embedded in what Le Goff (Reference Goff1988) and Nora (Reference Nora1989) identify as the symbolic uses of the past to serve nationalistic narratives. This was particularly instrumentalised during the Estado Novo regime, which deployed it not only for ideological cohesion but also for legitimising colonial domination.
Historically, the Portuguese monarchy tied its identity to overseas exploits, framed as economic ventures and civilisational missions. The First Republic, rather than dismantling this imperial imaginary, perpetuated it, preserving colonial holdings under the rhetoric of modernisation. However, it was under the Estado Novo (1933–1974) that the maritime epic became fully embedded as a core narrative of state ideology, with the 1930 Colonial Act enshrining overseas territories as extensions of the Portuguese nation.
Through rituals, symbols, and school curricula, the regime projected an image of Portugal as a modest, rural, Catholic nation that paradoxically exerted a grandiose and benign influence across continents, stretching from Minho to Timor (Ribeiro Reference Ribeiro2015). The glorification of the maritime epic exemplifies the instrumentalisation of collective memory as a political tool embedded in ideological frameworks. This becomes particularly evident through the lens of Lusotropicalism, an ideological framework that romanticises Portuguese colonialism as uniquely humane and integrative. This narrative offered Portugal an exceptionalist discourse, distancing it from the racial hierarchies associated with other colonial powers (Castelo Reference Castelo1999; Vale de Almeida Reference de Almeida2020).
Gilberto Freyre’s Lusotropicalist thesis, initially marginal in Portugal, was appropriated during the Estado Novo – especially after the second world war – as a means of legitimising continued colonial rule in the face of mounting international pressure for decolonisation. Freyre’s ideas about racial mixing, cultural hybridity, and Portuguese adaptability to the tropics were selectively mobilised by state intellectuals such as Adriano Moreira, particularly in the Ministry for Overseas Territories (Castelo Reference Castelo1999).
The Estado Novo thus engaged in a dual ideological strategy: externally promoting Lusotropicalism as a soft-power narrative of civilisational benevolence, and internally repressing dissent while consolidating national unity around an idealised imperial past. The national press, school textbooks, and commemorative events (e.g., centenaries of the Discoveries) played central roles in crafting the myth of the pluricontinental nation.
However, colonial documentation and testimonies from intellectuals and local leaders consistently contradicted this idyllic portrayal, pointing instead to structural racism, cultural segregation, and weak colonial integration (Castelo Reference Castelo2013).
After the colonial collapse, Lusotropicalism did not disappear – it was rearticulated in the post-imperial period, notably through symbolic initiatives such as Expo ‘98 and the National Commission for the Commemoration of the Portuguese Discoveries (CNCDP), which sought to recast Portugal’s imperial legacy as one of peaceful global interconnectedness.
The idea of ‘Portuguese-ness’ (Portugalidade), further explored by Sousa (Reference Sousa2014, Reference Sousa2015, Reference Sousa2017), continues to underpin national self-perceptions. This narrative maintains a heroic framing of the Discoveries, downplaying the associated violence and domination. Recent surveys conducted by ICS and ISCTE (2024) suggest that a majority of Portuguese citizens retain favourable views of the colonial past, demonstrating the persistence of hegemonic memory structures.
In summary, the maritime epic functions as Portugal’s most salient historical myth, structuring national self-esteem and legitimising a narrative of colonial exceptionalism. Despite postcolonial critique and increasing contestation, this narrative remains embedded in elite discourse and popular consciousness, revealing the enduring power of ideological memory in shaping national identity.
Political discourses and the contestation of the maritime epic
This section presents the findings from the qualitative corpus composed of interviews and public statements by political gatekeepers. These actors, ranging from MPs to prominent political commentators, are conceptualised here as elite producers of public discourse (Zaller Reference Zaller1992; Olick and Levy Reference Olick and Levy1997), whose narratives contribute to shaping collective memory. The material reveals a deeply polarised landscape, where the maritime epic is both defended and contested, reflecting broader ideological divides within Portuguese society. The results highlight two primary themes: the left–right polarisation over the historical narrative and the nuanced positions among mainstream political actors, characterised by differing attitudes towards revising or preserving the established narrative.
Rather than representing a settled narrative, the memory of the Discoveries remains highly contested, reflecting deep-seated ideological divisions, as well as reflecting broader struggles over identity, nationhood, and Portugal’s post-imperial trajectory.
A centre-right political pundit argues that ‘debates in Portugal concerning the past are always bizarrely delayed’, and when it comes to discussing colonial matters, he says that ‘there are still certain myths, curiously Salazarist [related to Salazar, former dictator], in our society, which we do not like to talk about.’
This observation, though not situated in a radical register, illustrates a growing awareness – across the spectrum – of the endurance of authoritarian-era mythologies within Portuguese collective memory.
A young activist and municipal deputy in Lisbon from the Bloco de Esquerda (BE), a radical left party, links the national self-perception of the past with racism, saying:
There is a direct relationship between the way we perceive our colonial history and how we, the Portuguese colonisers, behaved and the way we dealt with racism in Portugal. It is essential to demystify the myth of the ‘good coloniser’, the Lusotropical idea that we are a people with an extraordinary appetite for interbreeding, that we were much more benign colonisers than the French, English and Dutch. It is false, but it is wholly ingrained in Portuguese society, and how we learn at school does not contribute to demystifying it.
The statement by the BE deputy engages with deeper structures of colonial ideology, directly challenging Lusotropicalist tropes. This critique resonates with postcolonial scholarship that exposes how colonial rule in Portugal was racially codified and ideologically justified through civilisational myths (Matos Reference Matos2006; Vale de Almeida Reference de Almeida2020).
Also, a prominent former BE MP states:
I believe that we cannot consider a period characterised by violent occupation of a territory, cultural and social genocide, subjugation of peoples, their enslavement, and the subsequent colonial domination as a golden era. We cannot view barbarity, violence, exploitation, and oppression as positive aspects of our history. It makes no sense to speak of positive elements when the occupation of a territory is inherently hostile. For instance, when we consider the context of Portuguese history, during the French invasion, we do not refer to it as a favourable period – it was an invasion marked by negative aspects, and wars were fought to free ourselves from that yoke. Similarly, we cannot view the invasion and occupation of African territories as a positive epoch in our history. It is also untrue that there was any positive miscegenation; that, too, is not a positive aspect. Portugal is not inherently more inclined to miscegenation than other European nations. Exploitation, territorial occupation, and the imposition of a foreign power over existing ones occurred.
There was social and economic segregation, where those who came from Portugal unequivocally had advantages over the populations and communities living in the occupied countries. Their culture was destroyed and replaced by another, as the occupiers’ culture was considered superior, while the cultures of the existing communities were deemed uncivilised and primitive, leading to the myth of the civilising mission. Therefore, the myths – such as the Discoveries having positive aspects as the first global wave – are fallacies. The myth of Lusotropicalism is another fallacy, another fantasy, as is the myth of the civilising mission. We cannot look at this historical period with benevolence and say, ‘It had negative aspects, but it also had positives.’ No, it was a project of colonial occupation, exploitation, genocide, and barbarity. And that is how it should be seen. Therefore, Portugal must interpret this period of its history with historical truth and acknowledge that the peoples of African countries occupied by Portugal fought tenaciously for their independence against the occupation. Moreover, the so-called ‘pacification wars’ were a fallacy – there was no pacification; what was actually happening was an attempt to deepen and extend the occupation to access raw materials and natural resources, thereby ensuring the country’s enrichment. This is what truly happened. Therefore, Portugal experienced a period of greater wealth because it had access to and controlled the resources of the countries it occupied.
This extended intervention articulates a radical rupture with hegemonic historical narratives. It positions colonialism not as a regrettable episode within a larger civilisational trajectory, but as a structure of sustained violence, exploitation, and epistemic domination. The speaker draws a sharp analogy between colonialism and foreign military occupation, dismantling the romanticised historiography of the Discoveries.
This counternarrative aligns with Gramsci’s (Reference Gramsci1971) concept of a ‘war of position’, wherein ideological contestation occurs through the struggle over interpretative frameworks and cultural legitimacy. The former MP’s framing of Lusotropicalism as ‘a fantasy’ and ‘a fallacy’ underscores an effort to discredit the epistemological foundations of Portuguese exceptionalism.
It also resonates with Trouillot’s (Reference Trouillot1995) notion of the ‘silencing of the past’, where power operates not only through what is remembered, but also through how and by whom memory is narrated. The insistence on historical ‘truth’ in this speech reflects an attempt to reclaim interpretative authority from institutionalised myths of benevolence and progress.
Rather than merely denouncing past wrongs, the intervention is performative: it seeks to produce a new public memory grounded in anticolonial ethics and the recognition of subaltern agency. This approach aligns with a body of critical literature that views historical reinterpretation as a form of symbolic reparation and political resistance (Cooper Reference Cooper1994; Mbembe Reference Mbembe2017).
This perspective emphasises the importance of contesting dominant narratives and reconstructing historical memory to serve the interests of marginalised or oppressed groups, aligning with the broader goals of social transformation and justice.
The former MP’s intervention is part of this broader struggle to challenge hegemonic memory structures, advocating for a critical reevaluation of the Portuguese colonial past that foregrounds violence, exploitation, and resistance rather than celebratory exceptionalism.
By rejecting foundational myths – such as the notion of a benevolent civilising mission or a harmonious miscegenation – this discourse contributes to the construction of a counter-hegemonic narrative aligned with the experiences of colonised peoples. Classic literature on the topic aligns with these ideas (eg Cooper Reference Cooper1994).
However, the theoretical tools used to frame such counter-hegemonic discourse – particularly Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony – are not exclusive to progressive politics. Paradoxically, these same Gramscian ideas have been reappropriated by the radical right, who reinterpret cultural hegemony as a terrain dominated not by conservative elites, but by progressive forces.
Intellectuals of the new right, such as William S. Lind and Pat Buchanan, have developed an ‘inverse Gramscianism’ to critique what they perceive as a leftist domination of academia, media, and cultural institutions (eg Buchanan Reference Buchanan2002; Lind and Weyrich Reference Lind and Weyrich2009). According to them, the radical left has already won the cultural war, securing control over symbolic power through educational and intellectual hegemony. In collaboration with Paul M. Weyrich, Lind proposes a counterstrategy in which conservatives must reclaim these institutions to restore conservative cultural primacy – a view that has deeply influenced contemporary far-right narratives (Lind and Weyrich Reference Lind and Weyrich2009).
This ideological repositioning sets the stage for the emergence of contemporary right-wing discourses that defend the colonial past not merely as history, but as cultural heritage under threat.
This perspective is echoed in the words of a prominent figure from the Chega Party (see Marchi Reference Marchi2020, Reference Marchi, Kondor and Littler2023; Mendes Reference Mendes2021; Ferreira Dias Reference Dias2022a), a populist radical right-wing party, and current MP. He views the ‘colonial balance’ as something positive, stating:
There is slavery, there is violence, there is racism, there are negative aspects, but all of this is not disconnected from introducing things like written culture, the idea of a centralised state founded on law, lifestyles, technologies, health, constructions, the concept of a single god, and so on. Therefore, colonisation is a complex phenomenon with very positive aspects for the transformation of people. (…) And when we look at Western peoples, such as the Portuguese, when colonised by the Romans and the Arabs, we refer to this process as colonisation. In schools and textbooks, we teach only what was positive about this relationship with these colonisers – it brought roads and laws. (…) But notice the mystery – as we move from the past to the present, starting from the Discoveries, almost as if by magic, the word colonisation, which is a neutral word, even a largely positive one that allows for the antonym decolonisation, suddenly transforms into colonialism. When the Western white man is colonised, colonisation is seen as a good thing. But as we progress through time and begin to teach the transition from the white man being colonised to becoming the coloniser, the phenomenon becomes a sort of crime against humanity and transforms from colonisation into colonialism. By transforming into colonialism, we are not using a conceptual, scientific, academic, or neutral term valid for all times and spaces; we are simply manipulating memory. When we say that what Europeans did in Africa was colonialism, what are we doing? We are erasing the positive relationship of the Portuguese with the peoples they colonised and overemphasising the negative aspect. (…) This contributes to one of the greatest civilisational problems we face, which is this depressive functional distortion of memory.
This statement exemplifies the conservative attempt to reframe colonialism as a misunderstood episode of civilisational development, downplaying structural violence while elevating technological and institutional ‘gifts’. Here, the past is not only rehabilitated – it is also strategically reframed as a victim of historiographical distortion, in line with a broader effort to recast European colonialism as a positive force.
This logic reflects what Norris and Inglehart (Reference Norris and Inglehart2019) describe as a ‘cultural backlash’: a reactionary response to perceived progressive dominance in education, media, and culture. The speaker’s narrative reframes historical critique as ideological manipulation, presenting conservative memory as neutral and restorative, while portraying critical memory as divisive and destructive.
Furthermore, the rhetorical move from colonisation to colonialism as a ‘semantic shift’ reveals a strategic appropriation of academic terminology to construct a victimhood narrative around Western identity. This mirrors discourses observed in other post-imperial contexts where conservative actors seek to re-legitimise imperial legacies (Zúquete Reference Zúquete2018; Mondon and Winter Reference Mondon and Winter2020).
Within the framework of culture wars and struggles for cultural hegemony, education plays a crucial role. The MP from Chega argues that ‘in the transition from the 19th to the 20th century, the priest was replaced by the teacher’. In his view, there is an unparalleled level of mental control in societies today, exercised through a top-down logic involving schools and the United Nations, which undermines common sense. He further clarifies this by stating the existence of
a clearly structured institutional dominance originating from universities that take control not just of a society or a civilisation but of the world. This has never happened before. Now, we would only be living in a true democracy if these institutions that regulate social thought were, of two possibilities, either politically neutral – which would require us to be angels, which we are not – or politically plural. They are neither. We know that the power of universities today extends to mass media, primary and secondary education, and cultural, artistic, and intellectual fields. There is a clearly defined control. Therefore, these institutions are neither politically neutral nor politically plural. I do not doubt this, especially after the defeat of Nazism, from the mid-20th century onwards, although this became more consolidated later; there was a left-wing takeover of universities. This is the negation of democracy, what I call a left-wing mental dictatorship.
This discourse reframes education not as a site of democratic formation but as a battleground for ideological control, dominated – according to the speaker – by progressive elites. In this context, the polarisation emerges between a view of education as a space for inclusivity and social justice, and a conservative or ultraconservative critique that frames it as a leftist project of cultural domination – often articulated through the lens of an ‘inverted Gramscianism’.
As Sturken (Reference Sturken1997) contends, public memory – particularly when mediated through education and media – is not merely a reflection of the past, but a cultural practice shaped by present anxieties, political struggles, and the desire to control how nations narrate trauma and identity.
The invocation of a ‘mental dictatorship’ echoes the language of conspiracy and ressentiment typical of far-right discourses in Europe and the USA (Nagle Reference Nagle2017; Mudde Reference Mudde2019). A central theme here is the belief in an orchestrated ideological takeover of education, which intersects with widespread conservative resistance to topics such as sexual education and gender equality.
A central issue in this debate is sexual education in schools, a topic that has significantly engaged the scientific literature. Conservative groups frequently argue that school-based sexual education programmes violate family and religious values. They perceive these programmes as an attempt to impose a progressive agenda that disregards cultural and religious traditions. In many cases, this perspective is fuelled by the belief that sexual education is part of a Marxist agenda aimed at subverting traditional morals by imposing a ‘gender ideology’ (Bialystok, Wright, Berzins et al. Reference Bialystok, Wright, Berzins, Guy and Osborne2020; Torres, Pérez and Moragas Reference Torres, Pérez and Moragas2020; Venegas Reference Venegas2022).
This idea of a ‘gender ideology’ as ideological colonisation has become central to the global right’s culture war discourse (Corrêa, Paternotte and Kuhar Reference Corrêa, Paternotte and Kuhar2021). This interpretation has mobilised conservative thinkers, both moderate and radical, such as Shapiro (Reference Shapiro2004), Scruton (Reference Scruton2015), and Murray (Reference Murray2017, Reference Murray2020). Braunstein (Reference Braunstein2023) describes an elitist and academic ‘woke’ religion, suggesting that the new commodities are progressive ideas, tracing their origins to the postmodernist ‘French school’, which is also discussed, albeit in a more liberal and detailed manner, by Pluckrose and Lindsay (Reference Pluckrose and Lindsay2023). Haidt and Lukianoff (Reference Haidt and Lukianoff2018) raise concerns about how certain practices in American universities, such as the excessive protection of students from challenging ideas, contribute to an environment of ‘emotional safety’ that limits academic debate. Villasenor (Reference Villasenor2017) highlights a significant division in student attitudes regarding what should be permissible to discuss or teach, indicating a complexity in how different political views are tolerated in universities.
Overall, these critiques coalesce into a broader conservative narrative in which higher education is no longer a space of pluralism, but a site of ideological indoctrination. This view underpins a politics of reaction that seeks to ‘reclaim’ universities for the right – echoing Lind and Weyrich’s counter-Gramscian strategy.
A former MP and current political pundit from the Social Democratic Party (PSD), a centre-right party, acknowledges that the university ‘has often not been experienced as it should have been, due to hegemonies of sex, religion, etc., but these do not undermine the idea of the university, which is now under threat.’ The social democrat aligns with the notion of a new culture within universities, stating that:
The university is not an ideological conveyor belt, and I reiterate that, even when the moral purpose is good, the university is about dissent, contestation, and the commitment of individuals who are different towards knowledge that is undetermined mainly in the future. It is not about predetermined roles of oppressors and victims, where any difference is inadmissible, and we seek total conformity and attitudes of expiation and repentance through collective imputation. (…) Now, wanting to turn the university into the battleground for this kind of emancipation is to destroy the university.
This critique reflects a concern with the erosion of pluralism and the transformation of the university into a moralising institution. Although distinct from the rhetoric of victimhood adopted by the radical right, the statement nonetheless echoes broader conservative anxieties about ideological conformity in higher education. Such concerns have been explored in the literature on populist right-wing mobilisation and the politics of ressentiment (Bale Reference Bale2003; Mudde Reference Mudde2019; Mondon and Winter Reference Mondon and Winter2020).
However, we must return specifically to the dispute over memory. A former Christian Democrat (CDS party) MP and current political pundit argues that ‘not reflecting on the past and attempting to reinterpret it continuously is unscientific because history is precisely about doing that.’ He adds, ‘History would cease to be a science if we were to fixate on the idea that the events of a certain century were these, and the interpretation we must give to those events is this. No, there must always be reinterpretation.’ With this in mind, he expresses concern over the use of memory and history for political purposes, stating that ‘what I find absurd and dangerous is when the past is used to create ideology or politics in the present. It is one thing to look back to the past to understand it better and obviously draw lessons from it. Dressing the past into the present is another to create divisions.’
This appeal to a neutral and continuous rereading of history stands in tension with the speaker’s worry about its instrumentalisation. The ambiguity reveals a broader discomfort among moderate conservatives with memory politics that challenge national cohesion.
The fear of division, often projected onto progressive or decolonial memory projects, fuels a defensive stance that views critical reinterpretation as a threat to national unity. In this framing, counter-hegemonic narratives are perceived not as epistemological correctives, but as political tools of fragmentation.
In their view, such narratives go beyond critical analysis to engage in the construction of a new worldview grounded in an epistemology of the Global South (Sousa Santos Reference Santos1995). This signals a deeper unease with the decentring of Eurocentric historiography.
The notion that the past is a site of memory and of contestation over that memory is articulated by a prominent historical figure from the BE, who argues that:
The past is always being transformed because it is an object of dispute for the legitimisation of the present, and therefore, the frameworks through which we interpret the past are always different, although there are strong continuities in the Portuguese structure. Portugal was an empire until the end of the 20th century, so it is absolutely natural that this debate continues and navigates through very different streams.
This intervention reflects a post-structuralist understanding of memory as a field of struggle, where meaning is contingent, negotiated, and politically situated. It aligns with what Triaud (Reference Triaud, Chrétien and Triaud1999) calls the ‘passé composé’ – the idea that memory is not a passive inheritance, but an active construction shaped by present interests.
Another prominent figure from the same party asserts:
There is no reason why this past should not be revisited and subjected to, I wouldn’t say a rereading, but a more comprehensive reading than was possible during the Estado Novo, and indeed during the early years of Portuguese democracy, due to circumstantial reasons.
Here, we encounter the issue of historical memory as a partial reading of events. The interplay between historical representations and political discourse in Portugal, particularly concerning Lusotropicalism and its influence on national identity, reveals a complex interweaving of memory, history, and identity that shapes the internal perception and external image of the country.
Miguel Cardina (Reference Cardina2016), analysing the official speeches of former president Aníbal Cavaco Silva between 2006 and 2014, concludes that these representations have persisted into the democratic and post-imperial period, contributing to the broader debate on social memory and its political uses. Cardina identifies five main themes in Cavaco Silva’s speeches related to the colonial issue: (i) colonisation as a ‘meeting of cultures’; (ii) the exceptionalism of the Portuguese presence in the world; (iii) language, culture, and heritage as legacies of this presence; (iv) the definition of Portugal as a European nation; and (v) the silence on the colonial war. These themes suggest a recycling of Lusotropicalist ideas. The article concludes that, despite the change in Portugal’s political regime, certain colonial imaginaries persist, now reconfigured within the context of post-dictatorial ‘Lusophony’. This notion of ‘generic Lusotropicalism’ (Cardina Reference Cardina2016) illustrates the resilience of imperial grammars in post-colonial Portuguese political discourse.
The same BE figure highlights this issue, noting the existence of a ‘past of social and cultural relations, evidently marked by colonial domination, with everything that it entails, which has remained in a state of quietude’ – a calm that ‘deliberately and purposefully conceals and leaves in the shadows precisely those types of domination relations’, hence it is ‘healthy that this past is revisited’ with the aim of ‘uncovering what has long been hidden and left in the shadows’.
This intervention underscores the strategic silencing that sustains dominant narratives, echoing Trouillot’s (Reference Trouillot1995) claim that power lies not just in the telling of history, but in the capacity to silence alternative accounts.
Regarding the continuity of discourse, which ultimately imposes the need to debate the persistence of a Lusotropicalist grammar, an influential MP from the SocialistFootnote 1 Party (PS) and political commentator reflects that this is a debate that was never undertaken because of the ‘prudence of the new institutions of the regime’. In his view, the discussion has lagged behind other countries because Portugal’s decolonisation process was delayed, and ‘given the ongoing interaction with many people who actively participated in its execution in the final phase, this obviously invited more stress and social tension than other circumstances’. He notes that ‘the last 13 years of Portuguese colonialism are 13 years associated with a colonial war, and not paradoxically, but almost inevitably, those who were agents of this war and conflict were also responsible for the establishment of democracy’.
While the socialist presents a voluntarist approach, openly advocating for revisiting historical memory and contesting narratives, a well-known former social-democratic MP expresses a more cautious and antivoluntarist stance. This polarity – voluntarist versus antivoluntarist – structures the ideological terrain of memory politics in Portugal: while left-wing actors tend to emphasise the need for reparation and narrative justice, centrist and right-wing voices caution against politicising the past.
According to the social democrat, the debate over the past is ‘a debate that makes sense to conduct with dignity, with common sense, especially with common sense, because often when this debate becomes too activist, it tends to reopen wounds that no longer exist and that no longer make sense.’
The idea that such ‘wounds no longer exist’ is itself symptomatic of a particular narrative of closure that disregards Afro-descendant memory and diasporic identities. The social democrat also touches on the dual nature of the issue, stating:
I would say that the Portuguese Discoveries were one of the most important milestones in Portugal’s history. It is obvious that during this process some abuses were committed, and we should acknowledge them as such and perhaps apologise for them, but we do not need to be constantly apologising and humiliating ourselves, or at least feeling ashamed.
He further adds:
The Discoveries, despite everything, marked the beginning of globalisation. Therefore, peoples who were previously unaware of each other, who did not collaborate and lived in isolation, were brought into contact. I do not doubt that the people who were ‘discovered’ gained a great deal from this, as they gained access to things they would never have had otherwise. If we brought back spices, we also took medical knowledge, which is positive – this is the proper foundation of globalisation. It is another matter, however, to fail to acknowledge the problems, and I believe that burying one’s head in the sand is always detrimental.
In these specific cases, we must acknowledge the problems, but we do not need to engage in historical revisionism. We must understand the precise moment these events occurred, according to different rules and within the context of a distinct cultural and intellectual formation.
This framing reproduces a narrative of ‘net benefit’, common in neo-imperial discourses, while avoiding full accountability. The idea that European maritime expansion initiated globalisation is debated among historians. While many agree that it facilitated an unprecedented exchanges of goods, cultures, and ideas (Elliott Reference Elliott2006), this view is criticised as Eurocentric, overlooking earlier global interactions such as the Indian Ocean trade network (Subrahmanyam Reference Subrahmanyam1997) and the 13th-century Mongol Empire’s role in linking East and West (Weatherford Reference Weatherford2005). Frank (Reference Frank1998) argues that Asia, not Europe, was central to the global economy until the 18th century.
The notion that ‘discovered’ peoples benefited from new technologies and medical knowledge is partially proper, as seen in the adoption of crops such as potatoes and maize. However, these gains often came with enormous costs, including devastating diseases and the imposition of colonial power (Crosby Jr. Reference Crosby2003; Beckert Reference Beckert2014).
This tendency to relativise colonial violence is challenged not only by the radical left, but also by moderate voices advocating for more inclusive and polyphonic memory. A former prominent communist leader argues that this is:
a debate that should be conducted without public pressure, but through the involvement of political elites and academic, cultural, and other intellectual elites. This approach would allow the discussion to be properly framed rather than being conducted hastily, with slogans thrown back and forth. There is a lot of ground to cover here, and it requires a bilateral perspective that considers both sides of the issue.
A former socialist MP and presidential candidate advocates for the integration of diverse voices in the process of revisiting historical memory, while openly criticising the perpetuation of nationalist identity narratives. The inclusion of historically silenced voices – particularly from Afro-descendant communities – is a central concern in critical historiography and memory studies.
As Trouillot (Reference Trouillot1995) argues, power defines not only what is remembered, but who gets to remember. This counter-hegemonic voluntarist stance is strongly contested by a prominent figure from Chega, who views the debate over the colonial past as:
an attack on national memory is a deliberate attack framed within an evident perspective rooted in the well-known neo-Marxist theses of permanent rupture. We moved from the fundamental rupture between the proletariat and capitalism, which failed in initial Marxism, to an attempt to create divisions wherever possible to atomise and destroy society. Essentially, this is within the critical theory framework, where the goal is deconstruction. This is a dangerous obsession that, unfortunately, has spread. So, fundamentally, it is a critical theory applied to national history, aimed at devaluing, condemning, and, in a sense, ‘criminalising’ – in quotes – our entire history, particularly concerning so-called colonisation. The party opposes this criminalisation and condemnation.
This position encapsulates the cultural backlash narrative: the belief that national identity and memory are under siege by an ideological project of rupture. Nativist positions (eg Zúquete Reference Zúquete2018) align with the notion that identity and memory are under attack, leading to a mobilisation against the contestation and challenge posed by progressive sectors. The quoted remarks also reflect a reductive misrepresentation of critical theory, which, contrary to the speaker’s claims, aims not to ‘deconstruct’ or ‘criminalise’ national history, but to critically examine and address systemic injustices embedded in historical narratives (Horkheimer Reference Horkheimer1972; Habermas Reference Habermas1984). By framing this scholarly critique as a dangerous neo-Marxist ‘obsession’, the speaker dismisses necessary historical reassessment, thereby perpetuating an uncritical and exclusionary national memory (Butler Reference Butler2021).
However, scholars such as Roger Scruton (Reference Scruton2015), Helen Pluckrose, and James Lindsay (Reference Pluckrose and Lindsay2020) argue that critical theory, particularly in its modern forms, indeed fosters a corrosive scepticism towards Western traditions and national histories, which they see as contributing to social fragmentation. This perspective contends that critical theory’s focus on deconstruction and identity politics undermines social cohesion by relentlessly challenging established narratives and values. Similarly, Daniel Bell (Reference Bell1976) argues that the intellectual movements associated with critical theory lead to cultural contradictions that erode the social fabric. Thus, the culture war over memory is not only about history, but also about the legitimacy of the frameworks through which society interprets itself.
This constellation of positions reveals that the politics of memory in Portugal remains deeply entangled with national identity, ideological orientation, and generational fault lines. While colonial history is increasingly contested, the boundaries of what can be said, remembered, or forgotten continue to structure political discourse and institutional narratives.
The next section explores one of the most contentious dimensions of this debate: the representation of slavery and its role in contemporary historical revisionism.
The slavery theme and historical revisionism
Portuguese involvement in the transatlantic slave trade was a significant chapter in global history, marking the start of European engagement in the large-scale enslavement of African peoples. Portugal was the first European power to establish a substantial presence in Africa, beginning with expeditions along the West African coast in the 15th century. By the mid-16th century, Portugal had emerged as a major player in the transatlantic slave trade, transporting enslaved Africans primarily to Brazil – its largest colony – as well as to other parts of the Americas. Scholars such as Heywood and Thornton (Reference Heywood and Thornton2007) have argued that Portugal set a precedent for other European powers, creating the infrastructure and networks that facilitated the extensive exploitation of African labour. The scale of this enterprise was immense; it is estimated that the Portuguese were responsible for transporting approximately 4.5 million Africans, representing about 40% of all those taken to the Americas during the transatlantic slave trade (Klein Reference Klein2010).
The legacy of Portuguese slavery has sparked considerable academic debate, particularly concerning its lasting impact on contemporary Portuguese and Lusophone African societies. Researchers such as Ferreira (Reference Ferreira2012) have highlighted the deep social and economic inequalities that persist as a direct outcome of colonialism and the slave system. In Portugal, the historical amnesia surrounding slavery has been critically examined by scholars such as Almeida (Reference Almeida and Jerónimo2015), who contends that public memory often celebrates the Portuguese maritime era while downplaying or ignoring the atrocities of the slave trade. This selective memory is further complicated by the enduring influence of Lusotropicalism – a concept that portrays Portuguese colonialism as more benevolent than that of other European powers – thereby obscuring the violent realities of slavery (Castelo Reference Castelo1999). Recent scholarship, including works by Vale de Almeida (Reference de Almeida2020), calls for a critical reassessment of Portugal’s colonial history, particularly its role in the slave trade, to develop a more inclusive and accurate historical narrative that acknowledges the experiences of the enslaved and their descendants. Sharpe (Reference Sharpe2016) conceptualises the ‘wake’ as the lingering presence of slavery in the lives of Black subjects, framing post-slavery societies as shaped by ongoing structures of loss, violence, and erasure. This perspective sharpens the ethical stakes of how Portugal addresses its involvement in the transatlantic slave trade.
This reflects a wider demand for ‘decolonial memory work’ (Mbembe Reference Mbembe2017; El-Tayeb Reference El-Tayeb2011), aimed at challenging national myths and promoting epistemic justice.
Portugal’s role in slavery and its effect on national self-esteem (Vala Reference Vala2021) is crucial to this debate. Gatekeepers aligned with antiracist activism and the radical left often view Portuguese overseas history exclusively through the lens of colonialism and slavery, attributing agency solely to Portugal in a counter-hegemonic narrative that seeks to establish alternative memories for political purposes. On the other hand, right-wing radical or conservative gatekeepers tend to approach slavery as a regular part of the historical process – not commendable, but economically ‘normalised’ in historical terms. This polarisation reflects not only ideological cleavages but also competing historiographical paradigms: one grounded in critical theory, the other in a positivist or nationalist framework.
However, these interpretations are contested by historiography. To address this issue, historian José da Silva Horta, director of the Centre for History at the University of Lisbon, highlights a problem in the public debate, beginning with ‘the concept of colonisation’ itself. He notes a ‘kind of overlap of things that, historically, have separate spaces and times’, particularly in the association between slavery and colonisation. While it is obvious to link colonisation and slavery in the Brazilian context, Horta argues that this connection is less straightforward in Africa: ‘It’s much more complicated because we can’t say there are colonial processes whenever there are processes of enslavement or, more precisely, the trafficking of enslaved people, as it heavily depends on the spatial contexts we are discussing’. He distinguishes between West Africa, where colonial processes began only in the late 19th century, and Central Africa, where the colony of Luanda, for example, dates back to the late 16th century.
As historiography shows, and as Horta’s words reflect, the Portuguese colonial presence in Africa is diverse and cannot be viewed one-dimensionally. This applies to the denial of Portugal’s role in the transatlantic slave trade and its impact on local social and cultural dynamics, as well as to counter-hegemonic narratives that oversimplify events into a linear narrative of oppression. This diversity is evident in the establishment of trading posts and penetration into the interior.
The view that Portuguese intervention merely ‘transformed local massacres into the slave trade’ essentialises European and African actors. Historians point out that, while internal conflicts existed, European demand for slaves intensified wars and kidnappings for enslavement (Miller Reference Miller1988; Lovejoy Reference Lovejoy2000), though African agency in the process was significant (Thornton Reference Thornton1998). Horta notes that ‘enslavement is perhaps a widespread phenomenon in both space and time. The issue is not whether there was an invention of slavery [by the Portuguese]. There was an invention of something that did not exist before, which was large-scale trafficking, in the case of the Atlantic, a traffic of significant proportions.’
It becomes clear that (i) an industrial process of slave production created a new reality from a long-standing phenomenon; (ii) the phenomenon was predominantly coastal, with interior penetration exacerbated, highlighting the importance of African agency; and (iii) this African agency was driven by demand, within a market logic. As Horta clarifies, ‘Of course there was agency, there was African contribution to the process, obviously. We are talking about trade. Trade always has partners, doesn’t it?… I think there are fewer illusions today that there was no African participation in the trade.’
This interpretation contests nationalist denialism and overly deterministic blame narratives, instead advocating for a more relational and nuanced historiographical perspective. It is evident that there is a significant dispute over memory, polarising the political spectrum and forming a culture war. At its core is the issue of historical memory and how it is translated into the present. The key issue is understanding that the relationship between memory and history involves interpenetrations and rearrangements, producing political and social effects in terms of ideological narratives about Portugal’s overseas past, including but not limited to colonialism. What is at stake is not merely an academic debate, but the symbolic grammar through which national identity is constructed. The clash between hegemonic and counter-hegemonic narratives represents the central tension in the culture war over history and memory.
The data collection reveals an ongoing debate spurred by an international context in which public discourse on colonial issues, national memory, and counter-hegemony has gained momentum. This counter-hegemonic concern is poetically expressed in Butler and Spivak’s (Reference Butler and Chakravorty Spivak2007) phrase that titles their work Who Sings the Nation-State? It focuses on how societies construct and consolidate their historical memory, resulting in a contemporary process of reflecting on and constructing ‘alternative memories.’ These ‘alternative memories’ aim to democratise the archive (Foucault Reference Foucault1972), disturbing the fixity of authorised historical discourse.
In sum, debates over Portugal’s involvement in the slave trade have become central to the broader struggle over national memory. Rather than being confined to the past, these disputes shape contemporary understandings of identity, justice, and belonging. As such, they form a key axis of historical revisionism – an arena where the politics of memory and competing narratives are most visibly at stake.
The historical revisionism
Historical revisionism and the contestation of the official narrative have become central axes of tension, forming a culture war over memory. A prominent figure from the Portuguese right, associated with the CDS, describes this as a ‘debate out of its time’ and argues that ‘it makes little or no sense to engage in retrospective judgments about situations that have ended or changed.’
This critique, particularly directed at discussions around slavery, seems aimed at progressive movements when he remarks:
It makes no sense to argue with people who act as if they are trying to end slavery now that it’s over, like some belated liberators of slaves. They seek to make a retrospective judgment, which is, in fact, quite biased.
Another prominent political commentator and CDS figure reiterates the importance of continuously reinterpreting history, arguing that ‘not reflecting on the past and trying to reinterpret it constantly is an unscientific position, because that is precisely what history is about. History would cease to be a science if we fixed facts to a single interpretation. There must always be reinterpretation.’ He further expresses concern about the political use of history and memory, stating:
What I find absurd and dangerous is when the past is used to create ideology or politics in the present. It’s one thing to revisit the past to understand it better and draw lessons; it’s another to drag the past into the present to create divisions.
This position is grounded in a view of history as a closed domain of empirical facts, threatened by politicised re-readings. It reflects a broader scepticism towards memory politics as potentially disruptive of national cohesion.
In contrast, a former Socialist minister views this as a meaningful global debate. He addresses the issue of anachronism, asserting: ‘We are not judging contemporaries by the standards of the past. We must study and understand the past, but at the same time, draw appropriate lessons for the present.’
This position aligns with a critical hermeneutics of history, which accepts the interpretative nature of historical understanding but insists on its ethical and political relevance. These political perspectives reflect deeper tensions within Portuguese society regarding the interpretation of its colonial past.
To critically analyse these tensions, it is necessary to mobilise key theoretical contributions from the historiography of memory, particularly on the risks and uses of anachronism.
The academic debate surrounding anachronism is critical in this context. In the Portuguese case, these issues are especially acute in the reassessment of colonialism and slavery, where moral and political concerns from the present shape historical reinterpretations.
Lowenthal (Reference Lowenthal1985) discusses how the past is continuously reconstructed and reinterpreted, warning against the risks of anachronistic distortions that occur when contemporary values are projected onto historical events. He underscores the relationship between historical memory and present-day concerns, suggesting that history is often reshaped to serve current needs. This issue is particularly relevant in the debates over national identity and collective memory, where there is a tendency to either glorify the past or impose retrospective moral judgments, a concept Danto (Reference Danto1965) refers to as ‘retrospective alignment’ to highlight ‘oppression’ as a key analytical lens.
This notion of ‘retrospective alignment’ illustrates the ethical dilemmas of public history, where narratives of oppression may be recuperated but also anachronistically inflated.
Evans (Reference Evans1997) further critiques postmodern approaches that question the objectivity of historical interpretation, arguing for a balanced approach that avoids the pitfalls of anachronism while recognising the inevitability of some interpretative bias. This perspective, also echoed by Appleby, Hunt and Jacob (Reference Appleby, Hunt and Jacob1994), highlights the historian’s challenge in balancing context-specific analysis with the need for relevance to contemporary discussions.
Gaddis (Reference Gaddis2002) contributes to this debate by exploring how historians can map the past without imposing present-day perspectives, emphasising the importance of understanding historical events within their own context. Similarly, Jordanova (Reference Jordanova2006) addresses the ethical and methodological challenges in writing history, noting the critical need to balance academic rigor with public relevance, where the danger of anachronism often arises.
Together, these authors delineate the central tension between historicism and presentism – the former focussed on contextual accuracy, the latter on moral engagement. This debate underlies much of the Portuguese discourse on empire and slavery.
The historiographical discourse on anachronism reveals the paradox of public history: the past must be contextualised but also made meaningful in the present.
The debate in Portugal, particularly regarding its colonial past, reflects these broader historiographical challenges, as hegemonic and counter-hegemonic narratives compete to shape the national memory.
In this arena, political actors become ‘memory entrepreneurs’ (Pollak Reference Pollak and Le Goff1989), strategically deploying historical narratives to legitimate ideological positions.
These theoretical considerations are not merely academic; they have profound implications for the way political actors frame and contest historical narratives. The debate over anachronism highlights the tension between preserving established narratives and reinterpreting the past to address contemporary issues, a tension that is vividly reflected in the ongoing culture war over Portuguese colonial memory.
In this context, historical revisionism is not simply an academic exercise, but a politically charged field where the meanings of national identity, justice, and memory are continuously renegotiated. The Portuguese case exemplifies how disputes over the past are deeply embedded in ideological struggles, polarised readings, and broader international debates on postcolonial memory. The conclusion will reflect on these tensions and their implications for democratic deliberation, historiographical rigour, and the future of collective memory.
Conclusions
The contestation of the Portuguese maritime epic, and the broader disputes over historical memory, reflect not only ideological divisions but also competing visions of national identity, historical responsibility, and symbolic legitimacy. These debates are far from merely academic: they are entangled with political representation, cultural authority, and the epistemological foundations of national self-understanding.
The antagonism between hegemonic and counter-hegemonic narratives – mapped through the discourses of political gatekeepers – underscores a persistent struggle for interpretive authority over the past.
Engagement with concepts such as Gramscian cultural hegemony and historiographical anachronism (Danto Reference Danto1965; Gramsci Reference Gramsci1971; Lowenthal Reference Lowenthal1985) reveals the ethical and methodological stakes of memory politics. While some actors seek to preserve celebratory narratives of Portugal’s imperial past, others propose a revisionist lens that foregrounds violence, exploitation, and resistance.
This culture war over memory – embedded in the discourse on education, slavery, colonialism, and national identity – mirrors broader global struggles around post-imperial legacies and decolonial epistemologies.
The contested status of the maritime epic, as a paradigmatic lieu de mémoire (Nora Reference Nora1989), exemplifies the dual function of historical symbols: fostering national pride while concealing subaltern experiences. This duality is what makes historical memory such a powerful – yet volatile – tool of ideological construction.
This study has shown that historical memory in Portugal is not a settled field but a dynamic, contested arena where political, moral, and epistemological claims intersect. Acknowledging this is essential for a more inclusive, critical, and plural engagement with the past.
Future research should explore how these dynamics unfold across other dimensions of Portuguese memory politics – such as museums, school curricula, and diasporic voices – to further map the ongoing renegotiation of national narratives.
Ultimately, the struggle over the maritime epic offers a lens into the broader conflict over who gets to define the past – and by extension, who gets to imagine the future.
Competing interests
The author states that there are no conflicts of interest.
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