The purpose of this article is to discuss the emergency of the "racial issue" in Charles Boxer's perception of the Portuguese Empire. The book Race relations in the Portuguese Colonial Empire, 1415-1825 (1963) opened this new perspective in the work of the British historian. This new insight was set up in disagreement with the ideas of Gilberto Freyre and other scholars connected to Salazar's regime, such as Armando Cortesão. The article intends to investigate and point the controversies among these scholars - taking into account the great issues of the time, such as the African decolonization - , which have contributed to bring the notion of "race" into the center of the 1960's political debate, therefore reverberating in (and changing) the comprehension of the Portuguese Empire in the Modern Age.
Charles Boxer; race and racism in Portuguese Empire; historiography