In this article we discuss the politics of the essay of three major twentieth-century Portuguese-speaking intellectuals: Gilberto Freyre, Jorge Dias and António Sérgio. Our topic of discussion is Lusotropicalism. Through an examination of the essayist production of these thinkers (1920s-1960s), we revisit this social theoretical account of racial miscegenation, social assimilation and cultural hybridity originally developed by Freyre by reference to Brazil and later extended to the case of the Portuguese colonial empire. In particular, the article shows how the essay performs a crucial role in the origins, process of development and the implications of this social theory. By eliciting a reflective interplay between form and content, the essay trumps both the journal article and the monograph in providing these three key intellectuals with the outlet with which to think through a social theory that briefly doubled as an ideology of state.