From Whaling to Diaspora: A Geography of Portuguese Settlement and Distribution Patterns in the United States

Abstract

In the United States large Portuguese communities exist in Massachusetts, California, and Hawaii. This study focuses on this unique distribution pattern of Portuguese population formed by the nineteenth-century migration due to whaling and the present-day distribution of Portuguese population and their communities. Portuguese immigrants, especially those from the Azorean Islands, played an important role in the development of America’s whaling industry. Portuguese immigrants served as crews of ocean whaling ships that departed from the whaling ports in southern Massachusetts. In California, Portuguese immigrants engaged exclusively in shore whaling, operated seasonally at whaling stations along the long coastline. Portuguese immigrants who arrived in Hawaii on whaling ships, settled on the islands, and engaged in farm labor in sugarcane plantations. Even after the decline of the whaling industry around the turn of the century, the basic distribution pattern of the Portuguese diaspora established in the nineteenth century did not change. While the Portuguese diaspora is observed today in their unique distribution pattern, Portuguese cultural elements are recognized in the exhibits of the whaling museum, immigration museums, ethnic festivals, religious facilities, ethnic restaurants, ethnic foods, ethnic murals, and ethnic organizations.