The Portuguese obviously are not mulattos in the 50-50 black-white sense of the word. However, the Portuguese are among the most racially mixed people in Europe. Scientists believe much of their Negroid ancestry was introduced through the slave trade within the past 600 years. I'll leave it up to the reader to decide whether or not the Portuguese qualify as mulattos under the second meaning of "mulatto", "a person of mixed white and black ancestry". But, certainly, if any European nationality deserve to be called "mulattos", it is the Portuguese.
Guenther remarked that Portugal "shows a particularly well-marked Negro strain." DNA testing confirms the longstanding belief -- captured here by Madison Grant (1933) -- that the Portuguese have more black ancestry than any other European nation.
During the great years of Portuguese exploration and colonization in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, it has been estimated that a million Portuguese, mainly young men, went to the tropics, and for the most part never came back. Negroes were imported to take their places and to do the work of the country. Intermarriage of these Negroes with the old population left Portugal with a larger amount of Negro blood than any other European country, and greatly impaired its ability to contribute to the progress of civilization. Thus Portugal, which, when dominated by the Nordics, had set an extraordinary example of progress in many ways, now contributes relatively little to such progress . . .
Depending on region, the Portuguese have 5-10% sub-Saharan maternal lineages (L haplogroups). M1 is East African in origin, so the Central Portuguese have about 11% Negroid maternal ancestry. (Pereira et al. 2000)
In addition to Negroid maternal ancestry, Carvalho-Silva et al. (2001) found sub-Saharan Y-chromosome haplogroup 8 in Portugal at a frequency of 1.1% (n=93).
Other studies have failed to detect sub-Saharan Y-chromosomes in Portugal. However, I think it may be significant that the study cited above did detect HG8 in a sample of Portuguese. Apart from Rosser et al. (2000), which found HG8 in Sardinian and French samples, and another study which found sub-Saharan haplotypes in Corsica, I believe this is the only time I've seen a sub-Saharan Y-chromosome detected in a European population (Update: Greece is now on the list of European countries in which sub-Saharan male ancestry has been detected).
In any event, the Negroid paternal contribution in the Portuguese is much smaller than the Negroid maternal contribution, which is to be expected if the Negroid strain was introduced into Portugal as a result of the Atlantic slave trade.
The Negroid genetic contribution in Portugal could be something like 3-6% of total genes. Though an extraordinarily high level of sub-Saharan ancestry by European standards, this ancestry is minimal enough that it seems unlikely that it markedly affects the phenotypes of most Portuguese. But, through recombination, it's not inconceivable that some Portuguese exhibit Negroid traits due to slave admixture.
Also, the fact that levels of Negroid ancestry in Portugal apparently vary by region tells us that the distribution of Negroid genes is not uniform. If there is also genetic structure by sub-region and social class (as seems likely), there is a reasonable likelihood that some groups of Portuguese are greatly above the national average in their levels of black genes, and those groups might show external signs of their Negroid ancestry. Update: This prediction of mine seems to have been vindicated by a recent report that "sub-Saharan input" is "above 20%" in certain rural areas of Portugal, "where black African physical features occasionally mildly manifest themselves in the natives". I don't have a full citation for this report, which was apparently transcribed from a print journal and posted to the web by someone intent on minimizing the importance of the sub-Saharan component in the Portuguese, but no one disagrees that these native Portuguese with manifestly sub-Saharan features exist.
Update: According to the latest paper on the subject (Gonzalez et al. 2003), some of Portugal's Negroid admixture may date to the Neolithic. Guenther (see below) was probably correct to ascribe the Negroid element in Portugal to both ancient and recent sources.
There is no doubt that some Portuguese do in fact show Negroid traits. European travellers in previous centuries remarked on this fact, and even some modern Portuguese will acknowledge the presence of Negroid traits in Portugal. In particular, I know of a Portuguese individual who has noted that some of the inhabitants of the central Portuguese town of Nazare are "negro looking". After examining photos of Nazare residents (see below), I have to concur. Note: these photos date from ca. 1970 and earlier, and Nazare is a fishing village 150 km north of Lisbon, ruling out the possibility that these individuals are recent immigrants. These Portuguese show clear Negroid strains. (Note, as mentioned above, there are apparently Portuguese with even stronger Negroid strains in the "rural areas around the towns of Alcácer do Sal and Alter do Chão".)
Left-to-right: (1) Notice the position of the malars (cheekbones) and the overall shape of the face; flattened nose; texture of the hair (2) platyrrhine nose; frizzy hair (3) even in this blurry pic, the boy's non-Caucasoid heritage is obvious (4) prognathism; receding chin; low-rooted nose; characteristically Negroid zygomatics
Left: Portuguese man, classified by Guenther (1929) as Mediterranean with Negroid admixture. Right: Portuguese woman, classified by Guenther as Alpine with possible Negroid strain.
Above: This man, chosen by Dixon (1923) to illustrate the Portuguese type, could easily pass for a (Negroid-admixed) North African.
After 1450 yet another ethnical element was introduced into the nation, through the importation of African slaves in vast numbers. Negroid types are common throughout central and southern Portugal. No European race confronted with the problem of an immense coloured population has solved it more successfully than the Portuguese and their kinsmen in Brazil; in both countries intermarriage was freely resorted to, and the offspring of these mixed unions are superior in character and intelligence to most half-breeds. . .
The normal type evolved from this fusion of many races is dark-haired, sallow-skinned, browneyed and of low stature.
. . . in 1434 the first consignment of slaves was brought to Lisbon; and slave trading soon became one of the most profitable branches of Portuguese commerce.
In order to understand the apparently sudden collapse of Portuguese power in 1578—1580 it is necessary to examine certain facts and tendencies which from the first rendered a catastrophe inevitable. Chief among these were the extent of the empire and its organization, the financial and commercial policy of its rulers, the hostility, often wantonly provoked, of the chief Oriental states, the depopulation of Portugal and the slave trade, the expulsion of the Jews, the growth of ecclesiastical influence in secular affairs, and the decadence of the monarchy.
While the country was being drained of its best citizens, hordes of slaves were imported to fill the vacancies, especially into the southern provinces. Manual labour was Trade, thus discredited; the peasants sold their farms and emigrated or flocked to the towns; and small holdings were merged into vast estates, unscientifically cultivated by slaves and comparable with the latifundia which caused so many agrarian evils during the last two centuries of the Roman republic. The decadence of agriculture partly explains the prevalence of famine at a time when Portuguese maritime commerce was most prosperous. The Portuguese intermarried freely with their slaves, and this infusion of alien blood profoundly modified the character and physique of the nation. It may be said without exaggeration that the Portuguese of the “age of discoveries “ and the Portuguese of the 17th and later centuries were two different races.
Whether or not genes from African slaves "profoundly modified the character and physique of [Portugal]" is open to question. In pigmentation, Portugal is one of the darkest areas in Europe. Coon notes:
(1) that the Portuguese are almost uniformly brunet in pigmentation and (2) that there are no regions in Portugal in which brachycephaly is as important as in the Asturias and Galicia. In fact, Portugal contains some of the lowest cephalic index means on the continent of Europe. . .Negroid blood, introduced into Portugal through the medium of freed slaves, has largely been absorbed. The liberated negroes settled mostly in the cities, where negroes from the Portuguese colonies are still to be seen in some numbers. The liberality of the Portuguese social attitude toward persons of different race has prevented the retention, as in Arabia and the United States, of a stigmatized negroid class. On the whole, the absorption of negroes by the Portuguese has had no appreciable effect on the racial position of the country. Portugal remains, as it has been since the days of the Muge shell-fish eaters, classic Mediterranean territory.
Dark pigmentation and low cephalic indexes seem consistent with Negroid admixture. Of course, they are also consistent with descent from "Mediterraneans". I accept that the Portuguese are largely descended from "Mediterraneans" (including, as it happens, a very significant North African component), and I doubt the absorption of slave blood drastically altered the appearance of the Portuguese people. Still, subtle changes (perhaps accounting for some of the differences between the Spanish and the Portuguese) can not be ruled out. The question of exactly what phenotypic effect the absorption of black slaves had on the Portuguese people is probably unanswerable. While Coon states that "the absorption of negroes . . . has had no appreciable effect on the racial position of the country" and "Portugal remains classic Mediterranean territory", the idea of a "Mediterranean race" has been discredited, and genetics suggest that many of the, for example, North Africans Coon considered "classic Mediterraneans" no doubt would have had substantial Negroid admixture. As Coon himself acknowledges, the Mediterranean skull "often carries a slight negroid tendency". Guenther detected a strong Negroid strain in the Portuguese phenotype, though he admitted some of the admixture may be ancient in origin.
the Portuguese seem to be racially distinguished from the more homogeneous Mediterranean Spaniards by a heavier strain of that Negro blood which is recognizable, too, in Spain. Is this Negro strain to be referred only in greater part to a mixture brought about in the Portuguese African colonies; and have we to do here also with a Negro palaeolithic remnant driven into the extreme south-west? In any case the importation of black slaves into Portugal was formerly very heavy, and the Moorish dominion brought into Portugal, as it did into Spain, much 'African' blood, mainly of the Oriental, Hither Asiatic, and Negro races.
Either way, little doubt can exist that the Portuguese did mix with their slaves, and on a larger scale than elsewhere in Europe.
The researchers themselves explain L lineages in Portugal as follows:
We hypothesise that the recent Black African slave trade could have been the mediator of most of the L sequence inputs . . . many sub-Saharan individuals entered the region during the slave trade period, from its very beginning (middle 15th century) until its total ban in the late 19th century. . . it seems . . . likely that most of the L lineages found nowadays in Portugal have been carried by African slaves, since the country was actively involved in the Transatlantic slave trade. Nine out of 17 L sequences found in this study showed matches with widespread African sequences, and with regard to the 8 remaining sequences the absence of matches can be due to the present bias in the description of sub-Saharan mtDNA variability. Broad areas corresponding to Ivory Coast, Angola and Mozambique, which represented very important sources of African slaves, remain uncharacterised.There were more African slaves in Portugal than in any other European country: in 1550, Lisbon boasted 10000 resident slaves in population of 100000, and Portugal as a whole probably had over 40000 (Thomas, 1998). In the mid-sixteenth century the birth of slaves' children was stimulated in Portugal for internal traffic purposes. Inter-breeding between autochthonous individuals and African slaves certainly occurred and the predominant mating must have been between slave African females and autochthonous males, due to social pressures and also for legal reasons: offspring of slave females would be slaves, whereas oåspring of slave males would not. Therefore, breeding between slave African males and white females, besides being socially repressed, would not bring any economic profit. If the pattern of genetic admixture was markedly sex influenced, the signature of this recent African influence would be expected to be very different in the maternally inherited gene pool and in the paternally inherited one. In a recent study based on Y chromosome biallelic markers (Pereira et al. 2000) we have reported the absence of typical sub-Saharan haplogroups in the Y chromosome Portuguese pool. This finding, and the detection of L sequences at 7.1% in the mitochondrial pool, both seem to support the above-mentioned pattern of admixture with African slaves. (Pereira et al. 2000)
This explanation is consistent with the distribution of L lineages within Portugal -- highest in central Portugal and southern Portugal (where large numbers of the slaves were imported), and lowest in Northern Portugal.
Starting in the fifth century, Germanic tribes assumed control of the Iberian peninsula. It was the descendants of these tribes who (with some help from the Franks and other Germanic peoples of Europe) would reconquer Iberia from the muslims.
Traditionally, the reconquest of Iberia from the Moslems began with Pelayo "the Goth" and the battle (e. 721) near Cangas de Onis, below the Peñas de Europa in Asturias. . . .
Alfonso II asked for and received aid from Charlemagne in 795. The aid of the Franks made possible Alfonso's advance into Middle Portugal, which reached at least as far as Lisbon. (Source)
Later, it was people of the same Germanic stock who would launch the age of exploration. That the Germanic element was preserved among the more important classes can be seen in the description of Portugal's greatest poet, Luís Vaz de Camões (1524-1580), author of "Os Lusíadas":
He was of the old blue blood of the Peninsula, the Gothic blood, the same that gave birth to Cervantes. He was blond, and bright-haired, with blue eyes, large and lively, the face oval and ruddy -- and in manhood the beard short and rounded, with long untrimmed mustachios -- the forehead high, the nose aquiline; in figure agile and robust; in action 'quick to draw and slow to sheathe,' and when he was young, he writes that he had seen the heels of many, but none had seen his heels. Born about the year 1524, of a noble and well-connected family, educated at Coimbra, a university famous for the classics, and launched in life about the court at Lisbon, he was no sooner his own master than he fell into troubles. (Woodberry 1920, 203-4)
In addition to being Nordic himself, Camões subscribed to a Germanic ideal of beauty in the opposite sex.
And who can boast he never felt the fires,
The trembling throbbing of the young desires,
When he beheld the breathing roses glow,
And the soft heavings of the living snow;
The waving ringlets of the golden hair,
And all the rapt'rous graces of the fair?(Excerpt from Portuguese epic poem "Os Lusíadas")
Keeping in mind the above, it becomes somewhat irrelevant to racial readings of history whether all Portugal's Negroid blood was introduced as a result of the Atlantic slave trade, or if, as seems likely, Negroid genes had also previously entered Portugal during the Neolithic. Some would suggest that Portugal sank to the sorry state we find it in today as a result of the Germanic-descended elite being absorbed into the Negroid-mixed Mediterranean masses.
Under pressure from me, RM did add the information on Negroid mtDNA in Portugal to his page. However, RM continues to insist that southern Europeans have no more non-white admixture than northern Europeans.
. . . in the Portugal study, there was debate about the origin of one of the markers (L3), which, if it turns out to be Caucasoid- rather than Negroid-specific, would reduce the total amount of black admixture in the Portuguese to 1.65%.The "doubt" was expressed about "some" of the L3* lineages that "might" have non-African origin:
It is true that there may be some L3* lineages in Europe that aren't of recent African origin. However, a later paper should clear up any "doubt" that Portugal has sub-Saharan L3 lineages.With respect to the L sequences, it is widely accepted that they have a sub-Saharan origin, excepting some L3* lineages that, as analysis of Figure 4 suggests, might indeed have a non-African origin. . . However, it seems more likely that most of the L lineages found nowadays in Portugal have been carried by African slaves . . .
Nine out of 17 L sequences found in this study showed matches with widespread African sequences, and with regard to the 8 remaining sequences the absence of matches can be due to the present bias in the description of sub-Saharan mtDNA variability. Broad areas corresponding to Ivory Coast, Angola and Mozambique, which represented very important sources of African slaves, remain uncharacterised. (Pereira et al. 2000)
It rather seems likely that the southern African mtDNA pool received a package of L2/L3 mtDNAs (of limited diversity) through Bantu migrations. In particular, L3e1 must have been prominent in this `southern Bantu package',although also L3e2 and L3e3 participated to some extent. The relatively high frequency of L3e in the Brazilian mtDNA pool may then be explained by the fact that the majority of the slaves that arrived in Brazil came from Bantu groups, mainly from Angola. The sporadic occurrences of L3e (and other sub-Saharan haplogroups; Pereira et al. 2000) in Portugal is then not surprising in view of early slave trade and back migration from the colonies. (Bandelt et al. 2001)L3 is also found in Mozambique, another former Portuguese colony in sub-Saharan Africa:
Here, we present hypervariable region I (HVRI) and II (HVRII) data for Mozambique, a south-east African population which was a Portuguese colony between 1752 and 1975. . .
All well-characterised African L3 clusters are present in Mozambique, as well as one less well characterized group . . .
As possible remnants of the Bantu expansion through east towards south Africa, we detected all the haplogroups that have been implicated in this expansion, that is L3b, L3e1a and a subset of L1a sequences. A tentative dating of some L2a sequences, the most frequent haplogroup in the Mozambique sample, by postulating two founder types, as suggested by their low diversity and star-like phylogenies, displayed an age range overlapping the Bantu expansion, although an earlier arrival of these types cannot be excluded. Recent gene flow from Atlantic Africa seems the most probable explanation for the detection of one L1b and one L3e4 sequence in Mozambique. (Pereira et al. 2001)
Bandelt et al. Phylogeography of the human mitochondrial haplogroup L3e: a snapshot of African prehistory and Atlantic slave trade. Ann Hum Genet 2001 Nov;65(Pt 6):549-63
Carvalho-Silva et al. The phylogeography of Brazilian Y-chromosome lineages. Table 1. Am J Hum Genet 2001 Jan;68(1):281-6
Dixon, R.B. The Racial History of Man. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1923.
Gonzalez et al. Mitochondrial DNA affinities at the Atlantic fringe of Europe. Am J Phys Anthropol 2003 Apr;120(4):391-404.
Grant, Madison. The conquest of a continent; or, The expansion of races in America. New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1933.
Günther, H. F. K. Rassenkunde Europas. Munich: J. F. Lehmanns Verlag, 1929.
Pereira et al. Diversity of mtDNA lineages in Portugal: not a genetic edge of European variation. Ann Hum Genet 2000 Nov;64(Pt 6):491-506
Pereira et al. Prehistoric and historic traces in the mtDNA of Mozambique: insights into the Bantu expansions and the slave trade. Ann Hum Genet 2001 Sep;65(Pt 5):439-58
Rosser et al. Y-Chromosomal Diversity in Europe Is Clinal and Influenced Primarily by Geography, Rather than by Language. Table 1. Am J Hum Genet 2000 67:1526-1543.
Woodberry, G. E. The Torch, and Other Lectures and Addresses. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Howe, 1920.
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The Black Man's Gift to Portugal
Portugal in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica