António Mendes Correia

António Augusto Esteves Mendes Correia GOC GOSE GOI GOIP GCIP (4 April 1888 – 7 January 1960) was a Portuguese anthropologist, physician, politician and scientist. He is known for his "Australian theory" that argues about Australian natives migrating to America by sea through the Antarctic, explaining the human settlements found in Tierra del Fuego part of the Argentine Patagonia and the southernmost island closer to the continent, which also explain other settlement around South America that support a pre-clovis theory.

His theory is based on the assumption that there was a current of migration to South America from Australia and Tasmania, crossing the Auckland Islands to Antarctica (during the so-called optimus climaticum), settling in Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia. His theory was supported by physical similarities in skulls and blood groups, linguistic and cultural similarities.

Correia was dedicated to the Portuguese imperial interests of what he considered the "Portuguese race". His writings on archaeology, social hygiene, eugenics, education, and criminology served his patriotic goals. To these ends he also envisioned institutionalizing a discipline of "colonial anthropology". He began this project by addressing the question: to which race did the natives of the island of Timor belong? He was interested to categorize them in a single race.

Biography

António Mendes Correia was born in Porto, the son of António Maria Esteves Mendes Correia (1849–1937), Knight of the Military Order of Christ, and his wife Etelvina Esteves Marques.

He studied medicine, graduating in 1911. The following year he began teaching anthropology at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto, where he had obtained his degree and doctorate; in 1921 he became a full professor and later director of the Faculty. He also taught at the first Faculty of Letters.

He carried out numerous studies in the fields of anthropology, archaeology and ethnology, which earned him international recognition. In this area, he contributed to the magazine Terra Portuguesa (1916–1927). He also collaborated on the 3rd series of the medical journal Germen (1935–1938). Doctor Honoris Causa of the universities of Lyon, Montpellier and Johannesburg, he was a member and president of the Science Class of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences and the Lisbon Geographic Society, the Portuguese Academy of History, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and the Paris Anthropology Society, the Academy of Overseas Sciences among others.

He was a founding member of the Anthropology Institute of the University of Porto and of the Portuguese Society of Anthropology and Ethnology, of which he was also president. In 1946 he became director of the Escola Superior Colonial (later Higher Institute of Overseas Studies and Higher Institute of Overseas Social and Political Sciences) and was elected president of the Junta of Geographical Missions and Colonial Investigations.

He was President of Porto's Municipal Chamber from 23 May 1936 to 13 August 1942 and a member of the National Assembly from 1945 to 1956. From 1952 he was President of the Lisbon Geographic Society.

António Mendes Correia died in Lisbon at the age of 73.

Private life

He was married for the first time in Porto, at the 1st Civil Registry Office, on 7th January 1914 to Maria Antónia do Carmo (Carmen) de Boàda de Loureiro Mendes, daughter of Luís de Loureiro de Queirós do Couto Leitão, 2nd Viscount of Loureiro, and his wife María del Carmen de Boàda (died 16th November 1906), whom he divorced on 7th January 1948, without offspring.

He married a second time in Alcântara, at the 3rd Civil Registry Office, on 29 July 1948, to Maria do Carmo Bahia, with no children.

Works

• Os Criminosos Portuguêses: Estudos de Anthropologia Criminal (1914)
• "Origins of the Portuguese," American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Vol. II (1919)
• Raça e Nacionalidade (1921)
• Homo: Os Modernos Estudos sobre a Origem do Homem (1921)
• Os Povos Primitivos da Lusitânia (1924)
• “O significado genealógico do "Australopithecus" e do crâneo de Tabgha e o arco antropofilético índico”. Trabalhos da Sociedade Portuguesa de Antropologia e Etnologia. Porto, vol. 2 , fasc. 3 (1925)
• O Problema Eugénico em Portugal (1928)
• A Geografia da Prehistória (1929)
• A Nova Antropologia Criminal (1931)
• Origens da cidade do Porto (1932)
• Les inscriptions de Parada, Alvão et Lerilla (1933)
• Da Biologia à História (1934)
• O Mestiçamento nas Colônias Portuguesas (1940)
• L'Art et la morphologie humaine (1944)
• Cariocas e Paulistas (1935)
• Raízes de Portugal (1938)
• Da Raça e do Espírito (1940)
• Contribuição Portuguesa para o Estudo da Pré-história Geral (1940)
• Gérmen e Cultura (1944)
• Timor Português: Contribuïções para o seu Estudo Antropológico (1944)
• Em Face de Deus: Memórias e Confissões (1946)
• Antropologia e História (1954)

References

Calazans, João (1936). O Moderno Pensamento Lusitano: Ferreira de Castro e Mendes Corrêa. Victoria: Imprensa Official do Estado.

Cardoso, João Luís (1999). "O Professor Mendes Corrêa e a Arqueologia Portuguesa," Al-Madan, Almada, II série, No. 8, pp. 138–50.

Castro, José de (1964). Elogio do Professor Doutor António Mendes Correia. Lisboa: Academia Portuguesa da História.

Gonçalves, Júlio (1957). "Professor Mendes Correia," Boletim da Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa, No. 4/6, pp. 119–24.

Matos, Patrícia Ferraz de (2011). "A Vida e a Obra do Professor Mendes Correia (1888-1960): Articulações entre Antropologia, Nacionalismo e Colonialismo em Portugal". In: A. C. Martins, ed., Mendes Correia, 1888-1960: Entre a Ciência, a Docência e a Política. ACD Editores, pp. 9–35.

Matos, Patrícia Ferraz de (2013). "Um Olhar sobre as Relações entre Portugal e o Brasil a Partir da Obra de Mendes Correia (1888-1960): Desafios, Pontes e Interações," População e Sociedade, Vol. XXI, pp. 53–69.

Matos, Patrícia Ferraz de (2020). "Modos de Fazer da Antropologia Colonial: A Missão Científica de Mendes Correia à Guiné Portuguesa (1945-1946)". In: Vítor Oliveira Jorge, ed., Modos de Fazer/ Ways of Making, pp. 167–80.

Matos, Patrícia Ferraz de (2023). Anthropology, Nationalism and Colonialism: Mendes Correia and the Porto School of Anthropology. Berghahn Books.

Matos, Patrícia Ferraz de (2023). "To see is to know? Anthropoligical differentiations on portuguese colonial photography through the work of Mendes Correia". In: F. L. Vicente & A. D. Ramos, ed., Photography in portuguese colonial Africa, 1860-1975. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 171–92.

Monteiro, Hernâni (1959). "Professor A. A. Mendes Correia," Trabalhos da Sociedade Portuguesa de Antropologia e Etnologia, Vol. XVII , No. 1/4.

Ribeiro, Leonel (1963). "O Saudoso Arqueólogo Prof. Doutor A. A. Mendes Corrêa e as Suas Teses duma Grande Civilização Ocidental e duma Provável Origem Ocidental do Alfabeto," Lucerna: Actas do II Colóquio Portuense de Arqueologia, Vol. III, pp. 184–94.

Serpa Pinto, Rui de; Magalhães, Hugo (1942). Bibliografia do Prof. Mendes Corrêa. Porto: Instituto de Antropologia da Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade do Porto.

Teixeira, Carlos (1964). "Elogio histórico de A. A. Mendes Correia," Memórias da Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, Classe das Ciências, Vol. IX.

External links

• Correia, António Augusto Esteves Mendes
• Works by António Mendes Correia at Gallica
• Works by António Mendes Correia at National Library of Spain