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'Lusitanic' (Portuguese 'Lusitânicos'), from Latin 'Lusitanicus', adjective from 'Lusitania', the Roman name within the Iberian Peninsula) is a term used to categorize persons who share the linguistic and cultural traditions of the Portuguese.
However, when the modern day country of Portugal was created in the 12th century, it inherited the term, and thus, since then, Lusitanic is also related to Portugal, its people and its culture.
In this process, the part of Spain that was also within the province of Lusitania was excluded from the term.
The term is not based specifically on race or ethnicity, but rather on a shared cultural and/or linguistic heritage. It is not commonly used outside Portugal and people of Portuguese descent, nor recognised in everyday usage within the English speaking world.
The term Anglo, however, when used to describe English speaking nations is less comparable with a strong exception to Canada which shares both English and French language cultures.
The term can be easily compared to ''Hispanic'' - as this term describes those who speak the Spanish language, have Spanish ancestry from a Spanish speaking nation or otherwise have cultural ties to Spanish speaking nations.

Contents

Lusitanic

Etymology

Relation with Hispanic

Lusitanic Americans

Historical value

Resources

External links

See also

Lusitanic

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'Related Nations'

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★ East Timor

Etymology

The term "Lusitanic" derives from the name of one tribe, the Lusitani, that lived in the Western part of the Iberian Peninsula, prior to the Roman conquest; the lands they inhabited were known as Lusitania. The Lusitani were mentioned for the first time, by Livy, as Carthaginian mercenaries who incorporated the army of Hannibal, when he fought the Romans.
After the conquest of the peninsula (25-20 BC) Augustus divided it into the southwestern Hispania Baetica and the western Provincia Lusitana that included the territories of Asturia and Gallaecia, celtic regions. In 27 BC the Emperor Augustus made a smaller division of the province: Asturia and Gallaecia were ceded to the jurisdiction of the new Provincia Tarraconensis, the former remained as Provincia Lusitania et Vettones. The Roman province of Lusitania comprised what is now central and south Portugal and parts of modern day north-central Spain.
Other definitions include Galicia, because Portuguese and Galician share close linguistic and cultural ties, Celt ties; having both derived from the ancient Portuguese-Galician and the term is cultural classification, rather than a Historic-Geographical definition. However, in the Roman times, the Gallaeci were not part of the Lusitania province.
Despite all this, the language was born in the old Gallaecia which comprise what is now Galicia and the region where Portugal was born, north Portugal.
The term is used like the ones used in other countries that were derived from the long-standing custom among many European countries to revive the Roman names of their country or the name of tribes who lived in it in Roman times, with establishing a "Roman Connection" being considered a way of gaining respectability and legitimacy. In the case of Portugal, use of the term "Lusitan" and its derivatives is attested, for example, in the first Portuguese dictionary "Dictionarium ex Lusitanico in Latinum Sermonem" published in 1569 or the épic poem Os Lusíadas published in 1572 . A rival Roman-era term available to the Portuguese was Iberia - but since it referred to the entire peninsula it could be used, and was indeed used, also by the Spanish.
Portuguese use of "Lusitania" is parallel to the use of Gallia in France, Brittania in England, Caledonia in Scotland, Hibernia in Ireland, Batavia in The Netherlands, Helvetia in Switzerland and Germania in Germany (called "Deutschland" in its own inhabitants' languague). Belgium got its actual present name from the Roman Belgica.

Relation with Hispanic

In the historical sense Hispanic is synonym of Iberic, it refers only to the ancient people of the Iberian peninsula. In Portugal the term "hispânico" can be used in two contexts: It has a historical meaning when referring to the people of the Roman Hispania; the contemporary meaning is for Spain-related culture.
There has often been debate as to whether Lusitanics are Hispanics, as historical arguments find that the region of Lusitania was a part of Hispania - and thus, "Lusitanics" are a subset of "Hispanic." The same way Spanish speaking South America was not a part of Hispania and the same argument can be applied: if Spanish Latin American people should be called Hispanic. Lusitania and the Lusitanians were known long before their conquest by the Roman Empire (Livy 218 b.c.) and incorporated in the Roman province of Hispania thus can not be considered a subset of "Hispanic." The contemporary meaning of "Hispanic" is much broader than the historical meaning: in the United States the term "Hispanic" was first adopted by the administration of Richard Nixon and today is one of the several terms of ethnicity employed to categorize any person, of any racial background, of any country and of any religion who has at least one ancestor from the people of Spain or Spanish-speaking Latin America, whether or not the person has Spanish ancestry, Lusitanics are not "Hispanic" for any ethnic categorization purposes.

Lusitanic Americans

Using the above analogy with ''Hispanic'', then, one definition of ''Lusitanic'' would be anyone of any racial background with at least one ancestor from Portugal or from the ''Lusophonic'' (Portuguese speaking) area of Latin America. Portuguese immigrants to the Americas and the inhabitants of the nation of Brazil or Brazilians living in Hispanic America or the United States would be ''Lusitanic Americans''.

Historical value

Hispania was an ancient Roman province including modern day Spain, Portugal, Andorra, and Gibraltar; the province was later divided into Hispania Ulterior and Hispania Citerior after the Punic Wars.
The term Lusitanic came from the Lusitani who were already known to have fought in the Punic wars. In 200 B.C ,during the second Punic war Lusitania was the land of the native Lusitani [1].
Only in 27 BC the Emperor Augustus made a smaller divisions of the province, creating the 'Hispania Ulterior Baetica', 'Hispania Citerior Terraconensis', 'Hispania Ulterior Lusitania', from where came the Roman Lusitania , where also lived the Celtici(Célticos) the Conii and the Turduli.
After the Barbarian invasion, the Roman names for the provinces were no longer used as new nations formed. The territory where the Galego-Portuguese identity was formed, was dominated by the Alans and Suevi, while the South of modern Portugal and remain Iberian peninsula was dominated by the Visigoth.
A secondary form of the word ''Hispania'' gained usage through the times: ''Spania''. According to Isidore of Seville, when the Visigothic egemony of the zone, they returned the idea of a peninsular unity is sought after, and the phrase ''Mother Hispania'' is first spoken. Up to that date, ''Hispania'' designated all of the peninsula's lands. In ''Historia Gothorum'', the Visigoth Suinthila appears as the first king of ''"totius Spaniae"''; the history's prologue is the well-known ''De laude Spaniae'' ("About Hispania's pride") where Hispania is dealt with as a Gothic nation.
The Muslim Moorish invasion of Hispania (''اسبانيا'', ''Isbá-nía ''), which they called Al-Andalus ('الأندلس'), gave a new development, both in its form and meaning, to the term 'Hispania'. The different chronicles and documents of the high Middle Ages designate as ''Spania'', ''España'' or ''Espanha'' only the Muslim-dominated territory. King Alfonso I of Aragon (1104-1134) says in his documents that "he reigns over Pamplona, Aragon, Sobrarbe y Ribagorza", and that when in 1126 he made an expedition to Málaga he "went to the ''España'' lands".
But by the last years of the 12th century the whole Iberian Peninsula, whether Muslim or Christian, became known as ''España'' or ''Espanha'' and the denomination "the Five Kingdoms of Spain" became used to refer to the Muslim Kingdom of Granada, and the Christian Kingdom of León and Castile, Kingdom of Navarre, Kingdom of Portugal and Crown of Aragon (including the County of Barcelona).
The process of the Reconquista (Reconquest) of Hispania from the Moors, produced the emergence of several Christian kingdoms, as the ones mentioned above. Some of these eventually merged into a single country. In fact, with the union of Castile and Aragon in 1479 (and specially with the incorporation of Navarre in 1512), the word ''Spain'' (España, in Spanish, or Espanha, in Portuguese), began being used only to refer to the new kingdom and not to the whole of the Iberian peninsula, now formed of two independent countries, Portugal and Spain.
Portugal was grouped in the Iberian Union in the 16th century, and the term Spain or Hispania started to be used to classify all the peninsula as an united entity. Sixty years later, since the Portuguese Restoration War, Portugal left the union, but ''Spain'' kept using the term Spain for itself.
The Lusophone identity, distinguished from Spain, has been formed and secured by the formation of a national state, distintic language, a Lusitanic culture and its offsprings.

Resources

★ ★ class=wikiexternal target=_blank>.html ''Hispanic Lusitania'' - Second Map of Europe - Book II, Chapter IV from Geography of Claudius Ptolemy

★ Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa (CPLP) (in Portuguese)

External links

★ Detailed map of the Pre-Roman Peoples of Iberia (around 200 BC)

★ Filología política - ''La Hispanidad'' (in Castilian)

★ Sabores da Lusofonia (in Portuguese)

★ PORTUGUESE-AMERICAN HISTORICAL & RESEARCH FOUNDATION

See also

★ Brazil

★ Portuguese American

★ Latin America

★ Latin Europe

★ Latin Union

★ Latino

★ Lusitania

★ Lusophony Games

★ Galicia

★ Geographic distribution of the Portuguese language

★ Hispania

★ Hispania Ulterior

★ Hispanic

★ Lusophobia

★ Lusophilia

★ Ibero-German

★ Lusophone