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A metropole () is the homeland, central territory or the sovereign state exercising power over a colonial empire. From the 19th century, the English language term metropole was mainly used in the scope of the British Empire, Spanish Empire, French, Dutch, Portuguese, Japanese, and Ottoman Empire empires to designate those empires' home territories, as opposed to their colonial or overseas territories.
The historiography of British metropole–periphery relations has traditionally been defined in terms of their distinct separation, with a pronouncedly one-way, metropole-directed chain of command, communication, and control proceeding outward from the centre; the metropole informed the periphery, but the periphery did not directly inform the metropole. Hence, the British Empire was constituted by the formal control of territories, by direct rule of foreign lands, which were ruled by the metropole.
More recent work, starting with that of John "Jack" Gallagher and Ronald Robinson in the 1950s, has questioned the traditional definition, positing instead that the two were mutually constitutive and maintaining that, despite the apparent temporal inconsistencies inherent in their separate existences, each formed simultaneously in relation to the other. Gallagher and Robinson were Socialism, observing the rise of the economic power of the United States in the developing world at a time when the African colonies of the British Empire were being granted independence; both scholars held that British and American expansion of overseas influence were ultimately developed along similar lines.
According to the theories of Gallagher and Robinson, the usage of soft power by the British, primarily through employment of British capital and other forms of economic influence allowed for the establishment of favorable economic relationships and free trade for goods which were manufactured in Britain. In doing this, Britain was able to gain the benefits of Empire without spending money on costly military affairs. In this interpretation, the "informal empire" of the British was a defining part of the metropole just as much as the "formal empire".
Until the mid 19th century, the Portuguese European territory was referred to as "Portugal" or as the "Kingdom". However, these terms became inappropriate when the Portuguese overseas territories gained the status of overseas provinces in 1832, and came to be considered an integral part of the Kingdom of Portugal alongside its European provinces. The use of the term "Metrópole" emerged then as the official designation of the European part of Portugal. From then on, and until the independence of most of the remaining Portuguese overseas territories in 1975, Portugal included the Metrópole and the Overseas.
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