Abstract
The archipelago of Cape Verde was a Portuguese colony until 1975. Often compared to Brazil and the archipelagos of Madeira and the Azores, Cape Verde was an important territory, in terms of propaganda, for the defence of the Portuguese colonial empire. This case study analyzes the writings of Captain Augusto Casimiro dos Santos, who helped to create the propagandistic construct of Cape Verde as a reflection of 15th and 16th century Portugal. Using a multiplicity of sources, some of them unpublished, the paper discusses Casimiro’s thought against his contemporaries and its influence in colonial circles during the transition from social Darwinism to Luso tropicalism.
Keywords
Cape Verde; colonialism; luso tropicalism; alterity; hybridity