Francisco Bethencourt (born 1955 in Lisbon) [1] is a Portuguese historian and academic. He is currently the Charles Boxer professor at King's College London. [2]
Bethencourt graduated from the Lisbon University, obtained a Master of Arts from the New University of Lisbon. He completed his PhD in the European University Institute, Florence, Italy. [3]
He taught at Universidade Nova de Lisboa and Brown University.[ citation needed ] Bethencourt’s research centres on the history of racism, Portuguese and European expansion from the 15th to the 19th centuries, missions and religious history in the Catholic world, and identities and cultural exchange in Iberia. [4] Bethencourt's Racisms: From the Crusades to the Twentieth Century (2013) was described as the first worldwide history of racism. It was described by Ekow Eshun in The Independent as "an unlovely history. But a necessary one". [5]
In 2003, Bethencourt was honoured for his achievements as historian with the Portuguese Order of Prince Henry. [2]