The doctoral thesis aims at the ideas, the state policies and the colonizing techniques in the Portuguese metropolitan territory in the contemporaneity. Divided into three parts, the thesis aims, at first, to make a genealogy of the ideas of internal colonization that will focus on the study of agrarian reformism between the mid-nineteenth century and the first third of the twentieth century; it is intended to describe the history of the colonizing policies, through the analysis of legislative discourses and parliamentary debates on the subject, articulating them with the political and economic conjuncture where they emerge, and the study of the administrative apparatus that consubstantiate it ( in particular, the Internal Settlement Board); (Milagres, Martim Rei, Montalegre, Alvão, Boalhosa, Gafanha and Pegões). In addition, we intend to study the design and administration of seven agricultural colonies.