Changing geography through translation, quotation and periodicals: the Viscount of Santarém and the Question of Casamance (1836–1843)

Abstract

The present article aims to explore a historical episode in which an act of translation managed to change the map of Portugal’s colonial possessions in Africa. It discusses the strategies employed by the Portuguese Viscount of Santarém to help the Portuguese government reclaim its rights to territories in Guinea in the 1840s, while conceiving translation as a purposeful act (Vermeer, 1989) composed of three moments: pre-translation, translation, and post-translation (Gentzler, 2017). By shedding light on the Viscount’s actions, which can be traced through his letters (Santarém, 1919), the article will demonstrate the key role played by rewrites and their citation in scientific and political journals in Portugal’s victory over France in the “Question of the Casamance”. To be more precise, the translation action involved: the publication of an intralingual translation of a manuscript thatwas believedto prove that Portuguese explorers were the first to arrive in Guinea; the writing of a scholarly work that served as a Portuguese-language epitext to the translation; the self-translation of the epitext into the academic lingua franca; and the use of influence and money to get periodicals to quote, publish, and discuss excerpts from the three rewritings.