This issue brings together an exceptional collection of studies on the environmental impact of the Portuguese Empire under the coordination of our esteemed colleague, Francisco Bethencourt (King’s College London). It does so at a moment when environmental history has become indispensable to understanding global pasts and presents, and when the ecological consequences of imperialism are receiving renewed scrutiny across disciplines. We are delighted to introduce a volume that both consolidates and advances these discussions, offering a wide-ranging, comparative and deeply researched set of contributions spanning Brazil, Africa, South Asia and Portugal itself.
Before presenting the contents of this issue, we wish to record an important note pertaining to our editorial practice. Two members of our editorial team, João Paulo Salvado and José Pedro Monteiro, appear as authors in this volume. In accordance with our conflict-of-interest protocol, they were excluded from all editorial decisions concerning this issue and had no interaction with reviewers, except for responding to peer-review reports.
The issue opens with Francisco Bethencourt’s introduction to the special theme, situating the development of environmental studies within imperial history and outlining the conceptual and methodological foundations that underpin the volume’s contributions. Bethencourt highlights how environmental analysis has reshaped the field, enabling historians to trace the entangled dynamics of ecology, empire and knowledge production.
Part I, devoted to Brazil, begins with Diogo de Carvalho Cabral, Ana Lunara Morais, Jorun Poettering, Cristiane Barreto and Tiago Luís Gil’s examination of the environmental geographies of Portuguese America. Their article argues convincingly that imperial place-making unfolded across multiple spatial scales, from global biogeographical imaginaries to local transformations of forests and water systems.
Agroecological change is the focus of Joana Sousa, Ricardo Ventura and Miguel Carmo’s study of rice in colonial Brazil. By tracing the circulation and classification of rice varieties, they reveal how colonial policies simplified and ultimately diminished agrodiversity, privileging export-oriented “Carolina rice” while marginalising longstanding local varieties.
José Augusto Pádua then reframes the intellectual history of sustainability, demonstrating that concerns over ecological governance were already articulated during the Luso-Brazilian Enlightenment. Without imposing anachronisms, Pádua shows how eighteenth-century thinkers engaged critically with environmental management in ways that resonate with contemporary debates.
Closing this section, Décio de Alencar Guzmán’s article on Amazonian Indigenous societies provides a stark account of how colonial labour regimes, resource extraction and institutional disruption reshaped the region’s ecosystems and cultural worlds. It highlights the profound ruptures, unintended consequences and enduring transformations produced by imperial intervention.
Part II, focusing on Africa, opens with Susana Münch Miranda and João Paulo Salvado’s quantitative reconstruction of ivory extraction and trade in the Portuguese South Atlantic during the long eighteenth century. Their findings illuminate both the limits of the Portuguese monopoly system and the economic significance of ivory in imperial networks.
The environmental agency of the colonised emerges vividly in Marta Macedo’s study of maroon ecologies in nineteenth-century São Tomé. Through the histories of fugitive groups and the Angolares community, Macedo examines how alternative modes of inhabiting and transforming landscapes articulated resistance and self-determination.
Colonial governance and development take centre stage in Bernardo Pinto Cruz’s analysis of the Cunene Development Scheme in late-colonial Angola. The article explores how coercive countersubversion structures shaped the project’s environmental and social outcomes, revealing a complex interplay between authoritarian violence and unintended ecological restraint.
Complementing this political analysis, José Pedro Monteiro investigates the relationship between Portuguese late colonialism and emerging international indigenous law. Though not explicitly centred on environmental questions, these interactions, he argues, shared logics—protection, transformation, discrimination—that echo later environmental governance frameworks.
Part III, on South Asia, features José Miguel Ferreira’s detailed reconstruction of nineteenth-century forestry in Goa. Ferreira demonstrates that the pioneering Forest Administration established there in 1851 anticipated many better-known colonial forestry systems, offering an important case study of environmental regulation, territorial demarcation and contestation in Portuguese India.
Part IV, dedicated to Portugal, returns to early modern environmental impacts at the imperial core. Koldo Trapaga-Monchet reassesses long-held assumptions about the deforestation caused by Madeira’s sugar industry and Lisbon’s shipbuilding sector. By analysing legislative practices and petitioning, he challenges narratives of relentless destruction and reveals more complex interactions between policy, economic interest and ecological change.
Finally, Amélia Polónia examines the environmental consequences of naval logistics in Portuguese seaports and overseas contexts. Her article shows how maritime expansion generated substantial infrastructural and ecological transformations, from harbour works to forest resource exploitation, shaping coastlines and hinterlands across multiple continents.
The issue concludes with an extensive set of book reviews, offering critical insights into recent scholarship on corporatism in Brazil and Portugal, resistance in the Iberian worlds, Indo-Persian imperial entanglements, mestizo identities, and the intertwined histories of capitalism, warfare and the slave trade. These reviews, by Daniel Oliveira e Cunha, Jorge Flores, Gijs Kruijtzer, Camille Le Brettevillois and Filipa Ribeiro da Silva, provide an indispensable guide to the latest contributions in the field.
As environmental history continues to expand, its approaches challenge us to reconsider long-standing narratives of empire, development and global change. The contributions in this special issue demonstrate the vitality and diversity of current research on the Portuguese Empire, while also pointing towards future directions for the field. We hope that readers will find in these pages both a rich set of case studies and a stimulating invitation to further inquiry.
The Editorial Team
