Portuguese Arrival Research Articles

Tara bandu: On the hybridization of a sign

Tara bandu is a traditional ceremony in Timor-Leste that enshrines a customary law with official recognition since independence, which generally applies to the spatial scale of the smallest administrative division of the territory (suco) and several years of timespan, rooting in tradition (lisan), concerning natural resources management and also relations among people. There is evidence related to the concepts of adat (tradition in Indonesia) and pemali (taboo) in Southeast Asia and Austranesia, suggesting that precursors of tara bandu should exist before the Portuguese arrival in the early XVI century. Yet, there was a subsequent diachronic process of hybridization of static iconic devices and other traditional Timorese practices with the vocalized Portuguese colonial bandos, evolving to a choreographic complex ritual with several semiotic dimensions: the sacrificial animist performance addressed to the ancestor’s spirits and a supernatural environment (lulik), dances and others including Catholic rites, then focusing on written documents endorsing commitments. Contemporaneously, tara bandu is a salient event anchoring communities in defining participatory land use plans including agreements on property boundaries, rules of engagement and also interdictions and sanctions. Tara bandu is mentioned nowadays as an example and case-study of bottom-up strategies for environmental peacebuilding processes.

Safavid and Portuguese Christian Influence on Saint Stepanos Monastery in Julfa, Iran

The Monastery of Saint Stepanos, in Julfa, is located in northwesternIran, in the province of East Azerbaijan. Whilst the exactdate of construction is unknown, the building displays exceptionalarchitecture. It is believed that the monastery was built between thetenth and seventeenth centuries, and this doubt emphasises the needto investigate the nature of structure and decoration. The Monasteryis situated in a deep canyon beside the Araxes river, on the Iranianside of the border between Iran and the Nakhichevan AutonomousRepublic in Azerbaijan. It was originally built in the ninth century,and was rebuilt during the Safavid era after being damaged by warsand earthquakes. Considering that scholars and travel writers, such asthe French Traveller Taurine, consider the construction of this buildingto be from the Safavid period, probing the structural and decorativesimilarities of this building with Safavid period architecture can bea way of dating this outstanding historical monument. During theSafavid period, the Portuguese arrival on the island of Hormuz inthe Persian Gulf (1515–1622 AD) prepared the ground for the arrivaland activity of European Christians, who spread Christianity and itsculture. One of the earliest consequences of this was the constructionof the Monastery and other Christian architecture. The basic objectivesof the article are to study the influence of Portuguese Christianarchitecture on the construction of Saint Stepanos Monastery, and toinvestigate the influence of Safavid structural design on its architecture.The main questions, are what influence has the architecture of SaintStepanos Monastery had on Christian architecture in Portugal,and what influence did the architecture the Monastery have on thearchitecture of the Safavid period?This research for this article is descriptive and analytical based onhistorical information, available documents and existing images. Anexamination of the architectural similarities between Saint Stepanos
 Monastery in Julfa and Christian architecture in Portugal is essentialfor a more accurate understanding of the Monastery.

Does the Pagan King Reply? Malayalam Documents on the Portuguese Arrival in India

AbstractThis article is a response to Sebastian Prange's essay in Itinerario 41, no. 1 (2017): 151–173 wherein he presented a ‘virtually unknown manuscript’ on the Portuguese arrival in India as an Indian voice, unheard in the existing historiography. Prange had consulted the English translation of a Malayalam text by John Wye, that the former had assumed to be lost. However its original palm-leaf manuscript (ōla) is kept at the British Library. This ōla, entitled Kēraḷa Varttamānam, brings to light some remarkable omissions and a few discrepancies in Wye's translation. Closely reading different manuscripts in Malayalam, Arabic, and English I argue that this ōla is in fact a translation of a sixteenth-century Arabic text, Tuḥfat al-mujāhidīn, well known among scholars of its place and period. Taking it a step ahead, I argue that the very existence of this text points towards the cross-cultural and cross-linguistic interactions between the Arabic and Malayalam spheres of premodern Malabar. The ōla demonstrates one of the first instances of Malayalam literature's engagement with a secular and historical theme as the arrival of the Portuguese. In addition, Malayalam works such as Kēraḷōlpatti and Kēraḷa-paḻama are clear voices from Malabar on the Portuguese arrival and consequent episodes.

The Pagan King Replies: An Indian Perspective on the Portuguese Arrival in India

This article recommends a virtually unknown manuscript on the early Portuguese presence in India to wider scholarly attention. Dubbed here the Wye manuscript, this text purports to be an English translation of a sixteenth-century Malayalam history that was produced at the court of the ruler of Calicut. The South Indian kingdom of Calicut was central to Portugal’s project of monopolizing the region’s all-important pepper trade; the Wye manuscript therefore holds the promise of adding an Indian perspective to a history that has been written largely on the basis of European sources. This article examines the external and internal evidence for the author’s claim of having translated the text from an original palm-leaf manuscript held by members of Calicut’s royal family. An analysis of its content shows significant overlap with an Arabic history of the sixteenth century; a comparison of their similarities and differences suggests a number of insights into the processes of composition and revision of both the Malayalam and Arabic texts. Last, and most important, the Wye manuscript is transcribed in full in the hope of stimulating further discussion and study.

The Persian–Portuguese Encounter in Hormuz: Orientalism Reconsidered

In 2015, the quincentennial commemoration of the Portuguese arrival on the island of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf (1515–1622) revealed the underlying presupposition among Iranians that the Portuguese presence on the island was the harbinger of a long-term pattern of western imperialism. This analysis questions the accuracy of this narrative by advancing a new interpretative framework that does not reduce the holding of Hormuz to simply another dark episode of European colonial history. Circumscribed and limited in aim and reach, Lusitanian activities on Hormuz cannot be brought under the generic rubric of “orientalism,” which is embedded in European colonial tradition, and which, by extension, buttresses Iranian nationalist sentiment about the Persian–Portuguese entanglement. This research demonstrates that Portuguese objectives diverged from the eighteenth and nineteenth century rationalist scientific traditions of the British, French and Germans professing a civilizing mission as a rationale for colonial policies. Whereas the Portuguese operated from a worldview that combined profit, dynastic pride and religious rhetoric, the Portuguese mission to Hormuz was not guided by a grand discourse of civilizing the “other.” While there was a complex interplay of commercial interests and brutal methods on this strategic entrepôt, Portuguese ambitions in Hormuz were confined and elusive, and at best a matter of tribute-taking. The present paper charters some of these complex interactions.

The development eraser: fantastical schemes, aspirational distractions and high modern mega-events in the Oecusse enclave, Timor-Leste

The array of challenges to durably improving rural peoples' lives in remote regions is so daunting that it can be tempting to erase what is there, and to seek a blank slate. This tension is being played out in the OecusseAmbeno enclave of Timor-Leste, a region long familiar with geographic and political isolation. Residents now encounter a new iteration of their unique status: rapid declaration of their region as a special economic zone (ZEESM), with a new regional governance structure and an appointed leadership. The advent of this new zone is meant to catapult Oecusse from its current state of chronic infrastructure and basic development challenges to a booming economic center and a fount of national income in short order. Early emphasis is placed on rapid, major coastal infrastructure construction deemed necessary for the November 2015 commemoration of the 500th anniversary of Portuguese arrival, with the hallmarks associated with high modernism and mega-event preparation worldwide: spatial re-ordering and regulation; a strong orientation to external inputs, resources, and services; and centralized control of rapid infrastructure change. This article investigates the ideological underpinnings of these plans, and explores the irony of how the proposals and their governance arrangement are a disjuncture with Oecusse as a historically important place. It concludes with observations on this project's place in the national development context, and the likely costs and impacts of development for the Oecusse population. Risks include further political and economic marginalization of the mountain-dwelling and rural population, local residents' loss of productive agricultural land and access to water, reduced protection through administrative exclusion from national political structures, and the opportunity costs of misdevelopment's aspirational distractions.Key words: Special Economic Zone; high modernism; mega-event; Timor-Leste; Oecusse Ambeno; economic development

Early Atlantic Navigation: Pre-Portuguese Presence in the Azores Islands

We present here evidence of pre-Portuguese presence in the Azores Islands, Portugal, found near the site of Grota do Medo (Posto Santo), discovered by Rodrigues (2013) in Terceira Island, Azores. This evidence was dated by Accelerator Mass Spectrometry, and indicates the presence of human activity in Terceira Island before or during the XIth century. The evidence consisted in a man-made rock basin, which was found in a site that contains also striking similarities with many other aspects from ancient cultures, including other man-made rock basins, arrangements of large stones which resemble megalithic constructions, and inscriptions in stones which resemble ancient petroglyphs. Although the dating of this evidence is highly suggestive of the presence of human activity in the Azores Islands long before the arrival of the Portuguese navigators of the XVth century, there is no clear evidence which enables us to identify which specific culture may have existed in the Azores before the Portuguese arrival.

A implantação do modelo formal de ensino em Angola (Séculos XV-XX)

This paper addresses the many moments that provided the implantation of the formal education model in Angola. Through literature research and archives, we try to trace the key moments that characterized this such long process. For this purpose, we had to trace back, from the date of the Portuguese arrival in that territory until the end of its governance at the last quarter of the twentieth century. We try to analyze the different policies and educational reforms during this period, namely, the missionaries experience, the Jesuits role, Pombal reform and the various amendments made since the establishment of the Portuguese Republic in 1910, the period of the military dictatorship, and later the Estado Novo education policy.

Coastal Gujarat on the Eve of Portuguese Arrival

History helps in understanding as well as in formulating policies. India being a peninsular country, various maritime dimensions have played a very important role in moulding its history. The paper attempts to study the Gujarat coast on the eve of the Portuguese arrival in the region as a colonial power in the 16th century. The paper roughly studies coastal Gujarat in the 15th century and the first few decades of the 16th century, by tracing the indigenous market systems, trade routes and commodity transport network, and studies the factors that paved the way for Portuguese dominance in the region.

Tracing the Genealogy of Elementary Education Policy in India Till Independence

This article attempts to trace the genealogy of elementary education policy in India under the colonial rule of the Portuguese, Dutch, French, and the British till its independence in 1947. It records the development of school education historically and the policy changes with regard to elementary education under various periods of colonial rule. The political economy of elementary education was traced historically from the time of Portuguese arrival in India in the 1400s. The policy changes and the public expenditure on education during the British colonial period have laid a strong foundation for the modern educational development of free India after its independence. The contemporary school educational structure in India has its strong roots in the colonial education structure and management. Despite elementary education being considered as an important area to focus and develop during the colonial period, it has never received the needed resources to strengthen itself. This paper will lay the larger structural map of political economy of school education till the time of independence to understand the contemporary school education in a more nuanced manner.

Recreating Caminha: The Earnest Adaptation of Brazil's Letter of Discovery in Humberto Mauro's Descobrimento do Brasil (1937)

Coinciding with the quincentenary of the Portuguese arrival in America in 1500, three Brazilian directors bookended the turn of the millennium with reconsiderations of the nation's colonial past. Luis Alberto Pereira's Hans Staden (1999), Lúzia Murat's Brava Gente Brasileira (2000), and Guel Arraes's Caramuru: A Invenção do Brasil (2001) return to a long-standing tendency among Brazilian filmmakers to reevaluate national origins and present-day conceptions of identity by probing the symbolic potential of the colonial period.1 [End Page 408] Such retrospective efforts to spark examinations of Brazilianness were monumentally inaugurated in sound cinema in 1937 by one of the nation's most renowned directors, Humberto Mauro.2 Mauro's film revives Pero Vaz de Caminha's Carta, which in 1500 announced the arrival of the Portuguese to the land that would become Brazil. In this article I examine the director's reading and "writing" strategies in order to evaluate how he mines Caminha's narrative and inscribes his inevitably different but strikingly collusive version of the tale onto his own context. I additionally look at the means by which Mauro strives to guarantee the success of his message, how he writes the rules for the game of persuasion and manipulation that he enacts. Finally, I address some of the possible motives and contextual factors that led to Mauro's calculated recreation of Caminha. On the first of May, in the year 1500, Caminha signed the letter to the Portuguese monarch Dom Manuel announcing Cabral's "accidental" arrival at the land that would be christened Brazil. However, it is possible that the fleet did not happen upon the continent as a result of an unplanned, month-long diversion from its intended course around Africa, as Cabral's scribe Caminha claims (156-57). Some have alleged that the Portuguese intended the revised trajectory and acted in response to a concern that the Spanish would claim the entire New World.3 If this is the case, Caminha's Carta, the official voice of the "discovery," offers more than a merely innocent description of the voyage. Indeed, the scribe's writing reveals objectives beyond documenting the presumably unintentional nature of Cabral's voyage to the Americas. He describes a land that possesses in abundance good, if savage, people, and Caminha urges the king that Portugal, having discovered a population primed for conversion to Christianity, should return with missionary expeditions. Caminha's text assigns no other value to the newly discovered land, thus discouraging possible fortune seekers. Moreover, by attributing to the Portuguese strictly evangelical motives in the New World Caminha not only legitimizes their continued presence in the Americas but also succeeds in presenting his people as altruistic and devout. After scant lines relating the progress and arrival of the Portuguese, [End Page 409] Caminha immerses his readers in detailed descriptions of the natives and their initial interaction with the Europeans. The writer's focus shifts in the second half of the letter to a passionate preoccupation with evangelism. He explains that the indigenous population is predisposed to Christianity and advocates their conversion: Parece-me gente de tal inocência que, se homem os entendesse e eles a nós, seriam logo cristãos, porque eles, segundo parece, não têm, nem entendem em nenhuma crença. [...] E pois Nosso Senhor, que lhes deu bons corpos e bons rostos, como a bons homens, por aqui nos touxe, creio que não foi sem causa. Portanto Vossa Alteza, que tanto deseja acrescentar a santa fé católica, deve cuidar da sua salvação. E prazerá a Deus que com pouco trabalho seja assim. (170-71) They seem to me people of such innocence that, if one could understand them and they us, they would soon be Christians, because they do not have or understand...

TheEstado da Indiaand theEstado do Brasil. Opportunities for Research in Portuguese Overseas History

In this year marking the sexcentenary of the birth of Prince Henry, known erroneously to the English speaking world as ‘the Navigator’, and the 450th anniversary of the Portuguese arrival in Japan, it is fitting to take stock of what has been achieved and what remains concerning research on Portuguese overseas history. In November 1969 a conference was held at the Newberry Library in Chicago to ‘stimulate in the United States scholarly interest in research on Brazil's colonial past’. In November 1978 an International Seminar on Indo-Portuguese History was held in Goa occasioned by ‘an awareness of a relative stagnation in the field of Indo-Portuguese historical studies, especially in India’. This was prompted by the feeling of a dearth of new interpretations, shortage of studies in English, and neglect of political history, biography and social and economic history. Whereas the tone of the Newberry Library meeting was upbeat as to what junior scholars were achieving, and Charles Boxer pointed with pride to scholarly accomplishments since 1950, by 1984 a lecture to mark the occasion of the centennial of the American Historical Association noted grounds for concern regarding studies in the United States on colonial Brazil and this situation has deteriorated further during the decades of the 80s and early 90s. By way of contrast, in 1981 Charles Boxer noted the vitality of theEstado da Indiain its broadest geographical meaning as a subject for historical research by Portuguese and how ‘after years — I might even say centuries – of neglect by foreigners, the history of the old Estado da India has lately come into its own in the wider world’. This was seconded by M.N. Pearson who noted that ‘Goan historiography seems to be on the verge of a renaissance’.

Hegelian Dialectics in Benin Kingdom Historiography

R. A. Sargent's article on Benin Kingdom is challenging, perplexing, and ultimately unsatisfying. The subject is clear: changes in social formations of monarchy and society in the era before the Portuguese arrival. But the nature of the author's approach and hence the nature of his results is set forth in such a shrouded and contradictory fashion that the reader is required to devote an unreasonable effort to deciding what sort of an article it is. Is it an empirical study, in which the author mainly assembles data, but also sketches in a few interpretive outlines? Is it, at the other extreme, a theoretical piece, with just enough data to illustrate the analytical framework? Is it the development of a hypothesis, in which the author organizes data into a fully developed interpretation? Or do we have here the test of a hypothesis, developed elsewhere from theory or from other data, which is to be verified or negated with the evidence at hand? Or, finally, and this would be Sargent's most ambitious intent, do we have here the restatement of a verified historical reconstruction? Most historical writing can be set into one or another of the above five categories. Usually, of course, historians prefer to write with sufficient nuance and subtlety to avoid such explicit categorization of their efforts; their intention, it seems, is to avoid focusing explicitly on formal categories and straightforward deductive logic in hopes of preserving the reader's contact with the complex reasoning and immense number of variables which are unavoidable in real historical situations. Occasionally, however, the subliminal messages conveyed through this indirect style of historical writing fail to weave themselves together into a more profound if implicit comprehension of the situation, and instead collide with each other in the mind of the reader and create confusion, causing him to cry out for an explicit statement of the author's plan of attack. Sargent's study begins with such an authoritative tone that the reader is willing for a moment to consider the possibility that it might be an empirical study setting forth well-established facts, or even a verified historical reconstruction organizing such facts into a demonstrable past reality. But a

Darbo Jula: The Role of a Mandinka Jula Clan in the Long-Distance Trade of the Gambia River and Its Hinterland

Through the peak years of the Gambia River slave trade, a clan with the surname Darbo was one of several Mandinka jula (merchant) clans whose members participated in the carriage and exchange of slaves, cloth, iron, salt, European manufactures, and other commodities between the lower Gambia and its broad eastern hinterland. Itinerant merchants had conducted long-distance trade along a general Gambia-Niger axis for several centuries prior to Portuguese arrival on the Senegambian coast. Thereafter, the growing demand for slaves at coastal and riverine points led to an increase in the east-west flow of merchandise. Most slaves exported from the Gambia through the middle of the seventeenth century came from populations living reasonably close to the river's banks, but for the century or more after 1650 Gambian slave exports came increasingly from the river's eastern hinterland, the several hundred miles of savannas stretching between the upper reaches of the navigable Gambia and the upper Niger. From this region merchants conveyed slaves of the Tanda, Mandinka, and Bambara ethnic groups down the Gambia for what was normally ultimate exchange into the Atlantic slave trade. Well placed to conduct this longdistance trade were members of the Darbo clan of jula. Like segments of other Mandinka jula clans, extended families of Darbo jula were settled in commercial villages along the river, where over the years they had developed social and economic ties with local residents and with members of the ruling families of the appropriate Gambian Mandinka states. From these locations, and with the aid of their strong local and regional influence, Darbo jula were able to participate actively and regularly in the long-distance trade of the Gambia-Niger commercial axis. Such a study as this, of the commercial operations of a specific jula clan and the importance of the clan's social integration in its overall economic success, takes on added meaning when placed in the proper context of longdistance trading operations in the larger Western Sudan. Therefore, relevant background information on the broad Western Sudanic trading complex, the general landlord-stranger types of relationships that made possible efficient long-distance trading, and jula clans in general precedes the more particular study of the Darbo jula.

O período Sengoku e a chegada dos jesuítas no Japão

The period before the Portuguese arrival in Japan, called Sengoku period，is mainly described by its political instability，uninterrupted wars and power fragmentation. Meanwhile describing the political events of the period and the Christian mission (leaded mainly by the Jesuits), this article aims to understand the relationship between this sengoku period instability and the initial acceptance, by the Japanese, of a foreigner religion.