Portuguese people

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  (Redirected from Ethnic groups in Madeira)
Jump to: navigation, search
Portuguese people
Francisco de Zurbarán - Sto Antonio de Padua.jpg
Pope John XXI (crop).jpg
Alternative Henry the Navigator (St. Vincent Panels).jpg
13- Rainha D. Leonor.jpg
Retrato de Vasco da Gama.png
Pedro Alvares Cabral.jpg
Hernando de Magallanes del museo Madrid Fix.jpg
Luís de Camões por François Gérard.jpg
Joao IV.jpg
Retrato do Marques de Pombal.jpg
Rainha D. Maria I, séc. XVIII,.jpg
Antonio Salazar-1.jpg
SMF Manoel II.jpg
Manoel de Oliveira 3 juillet 2008-2.jpg
Amália Rodrigues 1969.jpg
Saramago, José (1922)-2.jpg
Duarte Pio of Bragança.jpg
Joaquim de Almeida.jpg
Mourinho in Moscow.jpg
UEFA TT 7209.jpg
Rus-Por2012 (16).jpg
Total population
42 million[1][2]
Regions with significant populations
 Portugal 11,000,000 (2011)[3]
 Brazil 100,000,000 (Portuguese ancestry)
5,000,000 (eligible for Portuguese citizenship)[4]
 United States 1,471,549 (Portuguese ancestry)
 Venezuela 1,300,000 (Portuguese ancestry) [5]
 France 1,243,419 (Portuguese ancestry) [6]
 Canada 429,850 [7]
 South Africa 300,000
 Angola 200,000[8]
  Switzerland 193,299[9][10]
 Germany 170,000
 Spain 126,651
 United Kingdom 90,134 [6]
 Luxembourg 82,363
 Guyana 50,000 (Portuguese ancestry)
 Australia 46,519 [11]
 Mozambique 40,413[12]
 Belgium 38,000
 Cape Verde(Portuguese ancestry) 22,318[12]
Rest of Europe 30,822
Asia 30,000
Rest of the Americas 24,776
Rest of Africa 8,965
Portuguese, Mirandese, Galician
Predominantly Christian-Roman Catholic
Related ethnic groups
Spanish peoples, and other Western Europeans

Portuguese people (Portuguese: os portugueses) are an ethnic group native to the country of Portugal, in the west of the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe. Their language is Portuguese, and their predominant religion is Christianity, mainly Roman Catholicism.

Historically, the Portuguese descend from the pre-Celtic, proto-Celtic and Celtic peoples who inhabited the Iberian Peninsula such as the Celtici, Lusitanians (para-Celtic) and the Gallaeci forming the core identity of the country, followed by the Italics, the Romans. Other major segments include the Suebi, the Buri and the Visigoths.[13]


Portuguese people were a key factor to the Age of Exploration, discovering several unknown lands to the Europeans in Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania.


Historical origins[edit]

Further information: Genetic history of Europe







Urban cultures eventually developed in south-eastern Iberia, such as Tartessos, influenced by the Phoenician colonization of coastal Mediterranean Iberia, which later shifted to Greek colonization. To note that there is very little or no evidence of settlements in Portugal by either Greeks or Phoenicians unlike it is sometimes stated.

Ethnographic and Linguistic Map of the Iberian Peninsula at about 200 BC.[17]

These two processes defined Iberia's, and Portugal's, cultural landscape - Continental in the northwest and Mediterranean towards the southeast, as historian José Mattoso describes it.[18] Given the origins from Paleolithic and Neolithic settlers as well as Indo-European migrations, one can say that the Portuguese ethnic origin is mainly a mixture of pre-Roman, pre-Indo-Europeans (such as, in other parts of Iberia, the Iberians, Aquitanians), and pre-Celtics or para-Celts such as the Lusitanians of Lusitania, and Celtic peoples such as Calaicians or Gallaeci of Gallaecia, the Celtici and the Cynetes of the Alentejo and the Algarve.



The ancestry of modern Portuguese has been influenced by the many people which have passed on its territory throughout history. Overall, these people include the Pre-Roman People of the Iberian Peninsula (such as the Lusitanians, Calaicians, Celtici, Cynetes and other minor local tribes as the Bracari, Coelerni, Equaesi, Grovii, Interamici, Leuni, Luanqui, Limici, Narbasi, Nemetati, Paesuri, Quaquerni, Seurbi, Tamagani, Tapoli, Turduli, Turduli Veteres, Turdulorum Oppida, Turodi and Zoelae), and in some cases Romans, Vandals, Suebi and Buri, Visigoths, Vikings, Alans and Saqaliba.

Settlers also came from Burgundy and Flanders, settling in mainland Portugal and later in the archipelagos of Azores and Madeira (Descobrimentos).








Pre-Roman groups[edit]





Main article: Lusitanian War



General traits[edit]

Modern Portuguese are an Iberian ethnic group and their ancestry is very similar to other Atlantic, Western and Southern European peoples, particularly Spain and to a lesser degree France and certain regions of Italy, with whom they share ancestry and have cultural proximities to. It is largely consistent with the geographical position of the western part of the Iberian peninsula, located on the extreme southwest of continental Europe, as there are clear connections with Southern, Western and North-western Europe, as well as parts of the Western Mediterranean. Dark to medium brown hair and brown and hazel eyes predominate in a majority of Portuguese people. However, light brown and blond hair and blue and green eyes are also found frequently. Chestnut and auburn-colored hair types occur generally. Legitimate black hair - non espresso brown - can be found, but it is not very common. Light, true red hair (meaning red shades that are non-auburn) is seen on occasion.

Well designed pigmentation field studies by Tamagnini (1916, 1936), Correa (1919) and others recorded national average fair hair ("blondism") frequencies of between 15 and 21%.[20] True red hair (ginger) amounts to approximately 3%. However, there are higher percentages of individuals with auburn and dark red-brown shades. Light eyes run between 19% and 30% [21] according to recently published pigmentation maps of Europe (see P. Frost, 2006). A recent study by Candille et al. (2012) comparing pigmentation levels between the Portuguese and three other ethnically indigenous European national groups — the Irish, the Polish and the Italians — concluded that, in parts of the body not exposed to the sun, the Irish were in the lightest end of the spectrum, followed by the Portuguese, Poles and Italians, with the latter being darkest. In terms of hair color, the Portuguese averaged lighter hair than Italians and darker than Irish and Poles. The Portuguese exhibited significantly lower frequencies in lighter eye shades in comparison to the Irish and Polish, and marginally less, compared to Italians.[22]


Demographics of Portugal[edit]

Portuguese men playing Fado


Native minority languages in Portugal[edit]

A small minority of about 15,000 speak the Mirandese language, close to Leonese[citation needed] in the municipalities of Miranda do Douro, Vimioso and Mogadouro. All of the speakers are bilingual with Portuguese.


Ethnic minorities in Portugal[edit]

People from the former colonies (namely Brazil, Africa - Afro-Portuguese, and parts of India) have been migrating to Portugal for centuries.[24] Africans slaves were so numerous in Portugal that by 1505 10% of Lisbon was made up of sub-Saharan Africans and 15% of the labor force in rural areas was African.[25] It has been estimated that between 1400 and 1640, about 350 to 400,000 black African slaves were introduced in Portugal and Spain and assimilated in the local genepool.[26] More recently, a great number of Slavs, especially Ukrainians (now the third biggest ethnic minority[27]), Moldovans, Romanians and Russians, keep migrating to Portugal. There is also a Chinese minority.

In addition, there is a small minority Gypsies (Ciganos) of about 40,000 people,[28] Muslims about 34,000 people[29] and an even smaller minority of Jews of about 5,000 people (some Ashkenazi, and the majority Sephardi, such as the Belmonte Jews).

Portuguese diaspora[edit]

Portuguese Nationals abroad (2010)[12]
Country Population
 France 644,206
 Brazil 329,000
  Switzerland 172,933
 United States 166,199
 Spain 146,035
 Canada 130,607
 China (incl. Macau) 129,735
 Luxembourg 88,200
 Angola 94,767
 Germany 92,472
 United Kingdom 90,000
 South Africa 80,476
 Venezuela 74,067
 Australia 50,157
 Belgium 43,509
 Mozambique 20,413

In the whole world there are easily more than one hundred million people with recognizable Portuguese ancestors, due to the colonial expansion and worldwide immigration of Portuguese from the 16th century onwards to India, the Americas, Macau (see Macanese people), East-Timor, Malaysia, Indonesia and Africa. Between 1886 and 1966, Portugal lost to emigration more than any West European country except Ireland.[30] From the middle of the 19th century to the late 1950s, nearly two million Portuguese left Europe to live mainly in Brazil and with significant numbers to the United States.[31] About 40 million Brazilians have relatively recent Portuguese background, due to massive immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.[citation needed] About 1.2 million Brazilian citizens are native Portuguese.[32] Significant verified Portuguese minorities exist in:[33] (see table)

Portuguese Sephardic Jews (mostly descendants) are also in Israel, the Netherlands, the United States, France, Venezuela, Brazil[34] and Turkey. In Brazil many of the colonists were also originally Sephardic Jews, who, converted, were known as New Christians.


In the United States, there are Portuguese communities in New Jersey, the New England states, and California. In the Pacific, Hawaii has a sizable Portuguese element that goes back 150 years (see Portuguese Americans and Luso Americans), Australia and New Zealand also have Portuguese communities (see Portuguese Australian, Portuguese New Zealander). Canada, particularly Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia, has developed a significant Portuguese community since 1940 (see Portuguese Canadians). Argentina (See Portuguese Argentine and Cape Verdean Argentine) and Uruguay (see Portuguese Uruguayan) had Portuguese immigration in the early 20th century. So has Chile where an estimated 50,000 descendants live, as the country's maritime industries attracted a small number of Portuguese as well. .[citation needed] Portuguese fishermen, farmers and laborers dispersed across the Caribbean, especially Bermuda (3.75%[35] to 10%[36] of the population), Guyana (4.3% of the population in 1891),[37] Trinidad,[38] St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and the island of Barbados where there is high influence from the Portuguese community.[39]

In the early twentieth century the Portuguese government encouraged white emigration to Angola and Mozambique, and by the 1970s, there were up to 1 million Portuguese settlers living in their overseas African provinces.[40] An estimated 800,000 Portuguese returned to Portugal as the country's African possessions gained independence in 1975, after the Carnation Revolution, while others moved to Brazil and south to South Africa.[41]



List of countries by population of Portuguese heritage[edit]

Country Population  % of country Criterion
Portuguese in North America
United States Portuguese American 1,477,335 0.5%


Canada Portuguese Canadian 429,850 1.3% Canada 2011 Census[46]
Portuguese in South America
Brazil Portuguese Brazilian 100,000,000 50%


Venezuela Portuguese Venezuelan 1,400,000 5% [citation needed]
Portuguese in Europe
France Portuguese French 1,161,900 1.5%


United Kingdom Portuguese British 88,161 0.8%


Netherlands Portuguese in the Netherlands 20,981 0.11%


Luxembourg Portuguese Luxembourger 82,300 16.1%

one of the largest ethnic groups as a proportion of the total national population. [52]

Portuguese in Asia
Macau Macanese people 25,000 - 46,000 2%


Sri Lanka Portuguese Burghers 5,000 0.02%


Portuguese in Oceania
Australia Portuguese Australian 56,000 0.4%


New Zealand Portuguese New Zealander 650 0.02%


Portuguese in Africa
Angola Portuguese Angolan 200,000 1%


Mozambique Portuguese Mozambicans 82,593 0.36%


South Africa Portuguese South African 80,476 0.15%


Total in Diaspora ~105,000,000
Portugal Portuguese people 11,000,000


Total Worldwide ~117,000,000

Portuguese ancestry in the Brazilian population[edit]

Source: Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics (IBGE)
Passport of an immigrant from the Braga District to Brazil

In colonial times, over 700,000 Portuguese settled in Brazil, and most of them went there during the gold rush of the 18th century.[57] They managed to be the only significant European population to populate the country during colonization. The Portuguese migration was strongly marked by the predominance of men (colonial reports from the 16th and 17th centuries almost always report the absence or rarity of Portuguese women). The multiplication of descendants of Portuguese settlers happened to a large degree through miscegenation with black and amerindian women. In fact, in colonial Brazil the Portuguese men competed for the women, because among the African slaves the female component was also a small minority.[58] This explains why the Portuguese men left more descendants in Brazil than the Amerindian or African men did. The Indian and African women were "dominated" by the Portuguese men, preventing men of color to find partners with whom they could have children. Added to this, White people had a much better quality of life and therefore a lower mortality rate than the black and indigenous population. Then, even though the Portuguese migration during colonial Brazil was smaller (5 million Indians estimated at the beginning of colonization and 3 to 4 million Africans brought since then, compared to the descendants of the over 700,000 Portuguese immigrants) the "white" population (whose ancestry was predominantly Portuguese) was as large as the "non white" population in the early 19th century, just before independence from Portugal.[58] After independence from Portugal in 1822, around 1.7 million Portuguese immigrants settled in Brazil.[58] Portuguese immigration into Brazil in the 19th and 20th centuries was marked by its concentration in the states of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The immigrants opted mostly for urban centers. Portuguese women appeared with some regularity among immigrants, with percentage variation in different decades and regions of the country. However, even among the more recent influx of Portuguese immigrants at the turn of the 20th century, there were 319 men to each 100 women among them.[59] The Portuguese were different from other immigrants in Brazil, like the Germans,[60] or Italians[61] who brought many women along with them (even though the proportion of men was higher in any immigrant community). Despite the small female proportion, Portuguese men married mainly Portuguese women. Female immigrants rarely married Brazilian men. In this context, the Portuguese had a rate of endogamy which was higher than any other European immigrant community, and behind only the Japanese among all immigrants.[62]






A large community-based multicenter autosomal study from 2015, considering representative samples from three different urban communities located in the Northeast, Southeast and South Brazilian regions, estimated European ancestry to be 42.4%, 83.8% and 85.3%, respectively.[69] In all three cities, European ancestors were mainly Iberian.


See also[edit]


  3. ^ a b INE, Statistics Portugal
  5. ^ http://www.jn.pt/PaginaInicial/Mundo/Interior.aspx?content_id=3163750
  6. ^ a b http://www.observatorioemigracao.secomunidades.pt/np4/2454.html
  11. ^ https://www.dss.gov.au/our-responsibilities/settlement-and-multicultural-affairs/programs-policy/a-multicultural-australia/programs-and-publications/community-information-summaries/the-portugal-born-community
  19. ^ "Relatedness among Basques, Portuguese, Spania... [Immunogenetics. 1997] - PubMed - NCBI". Ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. 2014-05-14. Retrieved 2014-08-24. 
  20. ^ http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5Xdf39yFAbk/Um6KB-JxtZI/AAAAAAAAHjA/oyrN-paNFVg/s1600/Conclus%C3%A3o+Cabelo+Claro+(Louro).png
  21. ^ https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-49caxBIEaaQ/UuEM0y8IBpI/AAAAAAAALUA/7KtvocUHf54/s470/Distribui%25C3%25A7%25C3%25A3o%2520da%2520Cores%2520do%2520Cabelo%2520e%2520Olhos.png
  22. ^ Genome-Wide Association Studies of Quantitatively Measured Skin, Hair, and Eye Pigmentation in Four European Populations, Sophie I. Candille, Devin M. Absher, Sandra Beleza, Marc Bauchet, Brian McEvoy, Nanibaa’ A. Garrison, Jun Z. Li, Richard M. Myers, Gregory S. Barsh, Hua Tang mail, Mark D. Shriver, PLUS One, October 31, 2012
  24. ^ Charis Dunn-Chan, Portugal sees integration progress, BBC
  25. ^ S. Mufwene, Salikoko. Iberian Imperialism and Language Evolution in Latin America. University of Chicago Press. p. 193. 
  26. ^ de Almeida Mendes, António (April 2008). Les réseaux de la traite ibérique dans l'Atlantique nord (1440-1640). Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales (63rd). pp. 739–768. 
  27. ^ "Portal SEF". Sef.pt. Retrieved 2014-08-24. 
  35. ^ Joshua project country profile - Bermuda, Ethnic groups
  36. ^ "Bermuda". Solarnavigator.net. Retrieved 2014-08-24. 
  42. ^ Portugal Migration, The Encyclopedia of the Nations
  47. ^ "The Ancestry of Brazilian mtDNA Lineages". Ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. 2000-06-28. Retrieved 2014-08-25. 
  49. ^ "Color and genomic ancestry in Brazilians". Ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. 2002-12-30. Retrieved 2014-08-25. 
  54. ^ (Portuguese)Sidney Arnold Pakeman, "Ceylon", Praeger, 1964
  55. ^ (Portuguese)Portugueses na Austrália
  56. ^ "Portuguese Migration Observatory (Portuguese)"
  57. ^ IBGE teen at the Wayback Machine (archived September 23, 2009)
  60. ^ Retrato Molecular- Genética
  69. ^ http://www.nature.com/articles/srep09812#t1

External links[edit]