During the 19th and early 20th century, Portuguese ethnography focused on rural folk culture and on the ethnic nature of the Portuguese people as formulated by men like Teófilo Braga, Consiglieri Pedroso, and Adolfo Coelho. This meant that such research followed a nationalist and historicist framework. In addition, a Romantic view of the folk had been promulgated by Almeida Garrett, the first author to inventorize Portuguese folk literature (1840), and Alexandre Herculano (Crenças populares portuguesas ou Superstições portuguesas, “Portuguese folk beliefs or Portuguese superstitions”, 1889).

This development had begun after the Conferências do Casino of 1871 (a public lecture series initiated by progressive intellectuals) had triggered a modernizing reform in Portuguese intellectual life. Folk culture was researched through the oral literature gathered in cancioneiro and romanceiro anthologies, and through folk traditions (cyclical celebrations, rites of passage, beliefs, superstitions, etc.). The resulting image of folk culture hovered between philological and mythological modes of interpretation, and the “folk” themselves were seen as the repository of ancient or even primordial traditions, mainly textually transmitted. Adolfo Coelho and José Leite de Vasconcelos founded dedicated periodicals such as the Revista de etnologia e glotologia, Anuário para o estudo das tradições populares Portuguesas, and Lusitana.

The British Ultimatum of 1890, which forced Portugal to relinquish the colonial territories situated between Mozambique and Angola (i.e. most of present-day Zimbabwe and Zambia, and a large part of Malawi), triggered political and social crises which culminated in 1910 in the end of the Portuguese monarchy and the proclamation of the republic. In this period, “national decadence” became a dominant preoccupation in the nation’s ethnography, and folk culture acquired a non-textual, non-historicist interest, including practices like technology, material culture, folk art, and aspects of economic and social life. António Augusto de Rocha Peixoto (1866–1909) pioneered this thematic scope-widening; he founded the periodical Portugália in 1899 (with the subtitle Materiaes para o estudo do povo portuguez, “Materials for the study of the Portuguese people”). Other researchers, often with a more local focus, include José da Silva Picão (1859–1922) and Tude de Sousa (1874–1951), regular contributors to Portugália, as well as António Tomás Pires (1850–1913; for the Elvas region), Cândido Landolt (1863–1921; Barcelos and Póvoa do Varzim), Pedro Fernandes Tomás (1853–1927; Figueira da Foz), and Manuel Vieira Natividade (1860–1918; Alcobaça). More regionalist periodicals include José da Silva Vieira’s Revista do Minho: Para o estudo das tradições populares (“Minho journal: For the study of folk traditions”, 1885–94), A tradição (“The tradition”), A ilustração transmontana (“The Transmontana illustration”), A tradição de Serpa (“The Serpa tradition”).

This process of localist and regionalist diversification continued in the decades of the First Republic (1910s and 1920s); the study of folk art became dominant in these years. New journals include Lusa, Terra nossa (“Our land”) and Alma nova (“New soul”). The Sociedade Portuguesa de Antropologia e Etnologia (SAE, “Portuguese Society of Anthropology and Ethnology”) was founded in Porto in 1918; among the founding members was the young António Mendes Correia (1888–1960), who was later to become an internationally authoritative ethnographer and anthropologist.