Ângela Barreto Xavier

Quest for Permanence in the Tropics: Portuguese Bioprospecting in Asia (16th-18th Centuries)

The history of agricultural, botanical, pharmacological, and medical exchanges is one of the most fascinating chapters in early modern natural history. Until recently, however, historiography has been dominated by the British experience from the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, with Kew Gardens at the center of the “green imperialism.” In this article we address the hard-won knowledge acquired by those who participated in early modern Portuguese imperial bioprospecting in Asia. The Portuguese were the first to transplant important economic plants from one continent to another, on their imposing colonial chessboard. In spite of this, the history of Portuguese bioprospecting is still fragmentary, especially with respect to India and the Indian Ocean. We argue not only that the Portuguese—imperial officials, missionaries, and the people connected with them, all living and working under the banner of the Portuguese empire—were interested in gathering knowledge but also that the results of their endeavors were relevant for the development of natural history in the early modern period and that they were important actors within the larger community of naturalists.

O lustre do seu sangue: bramanismo e tópicas de distinção no contexto português

This article is aimed at analyzing how the Brahmanic speeches that filled the Indian space (in which ritual purity and endogamy were recurring topoi) were perceived, experienced and appropriated by the agents serving the Portuguese crown. Among other aspects, it interests me to understand to which extent such speeches found an equivalence (or established a dialogue) with the lineage-related speeches that nourished the blood purity rules in an increasingly expanded and frequent way in the Iberian metropolitan context and in their respective imperial territories.

The Casa da Índia and the Emergence of a Science of Administration in the Portuguese Empire

The role played by archives in the making of a Portuguese science of imperial administration is scarcely known. Systematic research is still lacking on what literature suggests was a critical dimension in the management of the empire. By focusing on the Casa da India’s activities of production, record-keeping and retrieving of information and knowledge, this study intends to contribute to a better understanding of the links between empire and Portuguese early-modern archival experiences. For more than a century, the Casa da India was the institution responsible for the circulation and storage of commodities, information and people within the Portuguese empire, as well as the payment of duties and taxes. What challenges did territorial expansion entail for the Portuguese monarchy, and, in particular, for its archival organization and practices? How did the Casa da India register these imperial dynamics? Did its archive materialize the Empire at home? Finally, was its archive relevant to the emergence of a Portuguese science of imperial administration?

Book Review: Alexander Henn, Hindu-Catholic Engagements in Goa: Religion, Colonialism and Modernity

Alexander Henn, Hindu–Catholic Engagements in Goa: Religion, Colonialism and Modernity, Orient Blackswan, Hyderabad, 2015, 228 pp.,

Conversos and Novamente Convertidos : Law, Religion, and Identity in the Portuguese Kingdom and Empire

14.65.

Entrevista a Sanjay Subrahmanyam

In this essay, I intend to demonstrate that the foundations of the attitudes of the Portuguese crown and its agents in relation to the native populations living in the imperial territories were mainly inspired by the relations in Portugal with Jews, and later, Conversos. Besides the strong influence of classical inspiration and a rereading of medieval travelers on the construction of the imperial territories, the ways of thinking about, identifying, and governing internal others served as a reference guide to interpret and model the social situations that emerged in the Portuguese imperial territories. Indeed, the establishment of analogies between the populations of the kingdom and imperial populations had a great practical impact, and molded a good part of the political solutions that were delineated initially as extra territorium, particularly those in the territory of Goa.

As redes clientelares

Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Professor e Director do Center for India and South Asia na Universidade da California, Los Angeles (UCLA) desde 2004, fez os seus estudos em Nova Deli, na University of Delhi e na Delhi School of Economics, onde leccionou ate 1995. Nessa altura integrou a Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, de Paris, como Directeur d’ Etudes, e tornou-se, em 2002, Professor na Universidade de Oxford. E tambem Joint Managing Editor da Indian Economic and Social History Review (No...