Assimilado
Sign in to saveAssimilado or assimilada (if female), literally "assimilated", was a status assigned from the 1910s to the 1960s to those African subjects of the colonial Portuguese Empire who had reached a level of "civilization", according to Portuguese legal standards, that theoretically qualified them for full rights as Portuguese citizens. Portuguese colonizers claimed the goal of their assimilation practices to be the "close union of races of different degrees of civilization that help and support each other loyally"; however, this notion of a "close union" differed from its practical application in the
~13 min read
Encyclopedic overview
16 sectionsContents
- Formation in Portuguese lawmaking
- Assimilation ideals begin
- Laws and administration
- Education and religion
- Legal loopholes
- Motivations for assimilation
- Lusotropicalism and a "civilizing mission"
- Reality
- View/treatment by Portuguese over time
- African "inferiority"
- Restrictions on obtaining ''assimilado'' status
- Restrictions once assimilated
- Cultural identity
- In the fight for independence
- See also
- References
Assimilado or assimilada (if female), literally "assimilated", was a status assigned from the 1910s to the 1960s to those African subjects of the colonial Portuguese Empire who had reached a level of "civilization", according to Portuguese legal standards, that theoretically qualified them for full rights as Portuguese citizens. Portuguese colonizers claimed the goal of their assimilation practices to be the "close union of races of different degrees of civilization that help and support each other loyally"; however, this notion of a "close union" differed from its practical application in the cultural and social spheres of the colonies of Portuguese Angola, Portuguese Mozambique and Portuguese Guinea.
== Formation in Portuguese lawmaking ==
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Assimilado” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.