Portuguese Discoveries and Expansion

Robinson Crusoe's memoirs form "the most fascinating boy's book ever written", wrote Leslie Stephen. This self-help book, within a matter of decades, had reached an audience as wide as any book ever written in English. Edited by Daniel Defoe, it had become part of the literary consciousness of European civilization. For three centuries, there has been a need for studies summarizing the related intriguing scientific issues in the fields of history, geography, cartography, astronomy, geology, botany, zoology, climatology, archaeology, anthropology, ethnology, and linguistics. If the story is true, readers are curious to follow it on maps. The world calls one of Juan Fernández Islands of Chile as Isla Robinson Crusoe, without much evidence. Rather, Cocos Island of Costa Rica seems a better candidate for scientists, based on Crusoe's observations about latitude, lunitidal records, climate, flora, fauna, topographic features, and his map of 1719. A later map of Cocos Island, from Stevenson's Treasure Island, is briefly mentioned. Crusoe's travels through China, Russia, and the Pyrenees offer unique geographic information by dozens of toponyms. Different editions of the book's three parts contain a few misprints in geographical names. His travel route is compared with that of ambassador Ides and many contemporary maps. Three centuries ago, based on the complaints and optical reasoning of a blind man, the world hastily categorized Crusoe's autobiography as a fiction, the first English novel. The stubborn fact remains that the heroes, the story, the location and details of the island, or the words of Friday are historical.

Starting from the premise that all empire building involves ideological constructs justifying the violence that accompanies such efforts, this article concentrates on elucidating the case of the Portuguese in Asia, specifically in Japan. Although well beyond the formal Portuguese thalassocracy in Asia, the Japanese islands were exposed for about a century, between 1543 and 1640, to the informal presence of Portuguese traders and missionaries. The symbiotic relationship between these two groups was based on the experience that, in Japan, the trade was difficult to conduct, for violence was always lurking beneath the surface of the trading relationship. We know of several instances when such violence actually exploded into major armed clashes, and many other times violence was narrowly averted through the mediation of the missionaries.

The article addresses the teaching of medicine at the Universidade de Coimbra in the sixteenth century, framing it within the Portuguese and European context and highlighting the contributions of the institution's key professors - Enrique de Cuellar, Tomás Veiga, Alfonso de Guevara, and João Bravo Chamisso - along with their main works. Following a historical overview, the study analyzes the reforms of Dom Manuel I and Dom João III, the role of anatomy in the renewal of medical studies, the relation with the Discoveries, the obstacles raised by the Inquisition, medical practice at hospitals, and, lastly, the decline of medical teaching. Although they did not teach at Coimbra, reference is made to the two greatest names in sixteenth-century Portuguese medicine: Amato Lusitano and Garcia da Orta.

MS-804 from the Municipal Library of Porto, Portugal, is a unique copy of the journal of the first voyage to India under Vasco da Gama’s (ca. 1460–1524) command. It describes the voyage subsequent to the departure from the Tagus River, Portugal, on 8 July 1497 until the return up the shallows of the Grande River de Buba, Guinea, on 25 April 1499. The author of the original of this account is probably Álvaro Velho (fl. 1497/1507), born in Barreiro, but the arguments are still weak, being only achieved by deduction. The copyist is also probably John Theotonius, CRSA. The great merit of this document is the fact that the author was a direct eyewitness of all events. In the last appendix, at folio 45, it has a list of 122 useful daily words and expressions in Portuguese and their translation into Malayalam, a provincial Dravidian language spoken in Kerala State, India. It is a relevant testimony of a variety of Malayalam at the end of the 15th century, despite certain transcription mistakes and the scribe’s censorship of some vulgarisms. In this new semi-diplomatic edition, I applied rigorous transcription criteria and corrected earlier editions, adding English translations and Malayalam equivalences.

The Singapore and Melaka Straits are a place where regional and long-distance maritime trading networks converge, linking Europe, the Mediterranean, eastern Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and the Indian subcontinent with key centres of trade in Thailand, Indochina, insular Southeast Asia, China, Korea and Japan. The first half of the seventeenth century brought heightened political, commercial and diplomatic activity to this region. It has long been clear to both the Portuguese and the Dutch that whoever controlled the waters off modern Singapore gained a firm grip on regional as well as long-distance intra-Asian trade. By the early 1600s Portuguese power and prestige were waning and the arrival of the Dutch East India Company constituted a major threat. Moreover, the rapid expansion and growing power of the Acehnese Empire, and rivalry between Johor and Aceh, was creating a new context for European trade in Asia.

Drawing on maps, rare printed works, and unpublished manuscripts written in Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and Latin, Peter Borschberg provides new information on the diplomatic activities of Asian powers, and shows how the Portuguese and Spanish attempted to restore their political fortunes by containing the rapid rise of Dutch Power in the region. Key documents, transcribed and translated into English for the first time, make up a series of appendices.

The product of more than two decades of research in European libraries, archives, The Singapore and Melaka Straits will be of great interest to readers in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, where little is known about this pivotal pre-colonial period. It is also an invaluable resource for historians and other students of early modern Europe and of the European presence in Asia.
"""

The conquests of Afonso de Albuquerque from 1507 to 1513 were the starting point of a century-long period of theoretical hegemony of the Portuguese monarchy on the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. The Red Sea, however, remained a failed conquest of the Lusitanians. Neither the construction of a fort on Socotra island in 1507 nor the regular patrolling of the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb up to about 1550 could grant them sound control of the area. This paper will survey the main stages of Portuguese involvement in the Red Sea. Drawing on secondary literature and on original, mostly Portuguese, sources, it will propose a periodization of the geopolitical history of these contested waters in the early stage of the European expansion. Besides military leaders, mercenaries, and spies that served Portuguese interests, the involvement of religious agents, mostly Jesuit missionaries, will also be taken into consideration. The paper will also assess the impact of the Portuguese involvement in the area.

Abstract: Bezoars were introduced into Western medicine by Arabian doctors during the twelfth
century. They were used as antidotes to arsenic, the poison used most commonly in European
courts. The use of bezoars was widespread during the sixteenth century, and their value was ten
times more than their weight in gold. These were rare and expensive items and many kings
owned one or more specimens, some of which were mounted as pieces of jewelry. Sixteenth
and seventeenth century physicians wrote extensively about them, describing their properties
and use. ‘Oriental bezoars’ (mostly from Asian porcupines) were introduced at this time.
Difficulty in obtaining bezoars led to the production of numerous dangerous counterfeits containing
highly toxic substances including cinnabar, quicksilver and antimony. Possibly for these
reasons, their use declined at the end of the seventeenth century and from 1800 onwards, they
were no longer used. In strict mineralogical terms, bezoars are not actually stones. However, the
Flemish mineralogist and physician, Anselm Boetius de Boodt (1550–1632) included them in
his work Gemmarum et Lapidum Historia (History of Gems and Stones, 1609) and their study is
an important chapter in the history of toxicology.

Bezoar stones, magic, science and art, in Duffin, C.J., Moody, R.T. J. & Gardner-Thorpe, C. (eds) A History of Geology and Medicine, Geological Society London, Special Publication NO. 375, 103-207, 2013

Envoys of A Human God offers a comprehensive study of the religious mission led by the Society of Jesus in Christian Ethiopia. The mission to Ethiopia was one of the most challenging undertakings carried out by the Catholic Church in early modern times. The book examines the period of early Portuguese contacts with the Ethiopian monarchy, the mission’s main developments and its aftermath, with the expulsion of the Jesuit missionaries. The study profits from both an intense reading of the historical record and the fruits of recent archaeological research. Long-held historiographical assumptions are challenged and the importance of cultural and socio-political factors in the attraction and ultimate estrangement between European Catholics and Ethiopian Christians is highlighted. The book will profit all interested in the European expansion, Jesuit missions, cross-cultural exchanges on the eve of globalisation as well as Ethiopian history.

RAMINELLI, Ronald. Império da fé: ensaio sobre os portugueses no congo, Brasil e Japão in: Fragoso, J. et alii. O Antigo regime nos trópicos: a dinâmica imperial portuguesa, séculos XVI-XVIII. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2001, pp. 225-247.

Esta análise comparada da penetração portuguesa no Congo, Brasil e Japão tornou possível especular sobre as estratégias de conversão dos missionários. Onde havia sociedade fortemente hirarquizada, os missionários recorreram às chefias, cristianizando-as antes de atuar nos setores subalternos. Aí as estruturas sociais auxiliavam na propagação da fé. Entre os tupinambás, com chefias instáveis, o alvo do proselitismo cristão era a comunidade, a base da pirâmide social.

Rejecting the conventional presumption that violent indigenous resistance to colonization had become all but ineffectual by the late colonial period in Portuguese America, this article uncovers ample archival evidence of successful raiding and other military maneuvers by Brazil's eastern Indians, especially the Botocudo and the Puri. By carefully examining the comportment of both colonizers and colonized, it elucidates how each employed various forms of violence to achieve and communicate incompatible objectives. In particular, the peculiarities of the encroaching slave-holding Luso-Afro-Brazilian society presented Indians with diverse opportunities to impede expansion. They did so by understanding their adversary's culture and translating that understanding into acts orchestrated to achieve the greatest possible effect. As such, armed conflict did not represent the cessation of cultural interaction on this colonial frontier; rather, it was an essential means by which that interaction occurred. Over time, mutual bloodshed and brutality evolved to constitute a shared language and praxis, at once symbolic and concrete.

A native of Bruges (now part of Belgium), Jacques de Coutre was a gem trader who spent nearly a decade in Southeast Asia in the early 17th century. In addition to a substantial autobiography written in Spanish and preserved in the National Library of Spain in Madrid, he wrote a series of memorials to the united crown of Spain and Portugal that contain recommendations designed to reverse the decline in the fortunes of the Iberian powers in Southeast Asia, particularly against the backdrop of early Dutch political and commercial penetration into the region. Translated into English for the first time, these materials provide a valuable first-hand account of the bigger issues confronting the early colonial powers in Southeast Asia, and deep insights into the societies De Coutre encountered in the territory that today makes up Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines.

The Pinkster King and the King of Kongo presents the history of the nation's forgotten Dutch slave community and free Dutch-speaking African Americans from seventeenth-century New Amsterdam to nineteenth-century New York and New Jersey. It also develops a provocative new interpretation of one of America's most intriguing black folkloric traditions, Pinkster. Jeroen Dewulf rejects the usual interpretation of this celebration of a " slave king " as a form of carnival. Instead, he shows that it is a ritual rooted in mutual-aid and slave brotherhood traditions. By placing these traditions in an Atlantic context, Dewulf identifies striking parallels to royal election rituals in slave communities elsewhere in the Americas, and he traces these rituals to the ancient Kingdom of Kongo and the impact of Portuguese culture in West-Central Africa. Dewulf's focus on the social capital of slaves follows the mutual aid to seventeenth-century Manhattan. He suggests a much stronger impact of Manhattan's first slave community on the development of African American identity in New York and New Jersey than hitherto assumed. While the earliest works on slave culture in a North American context concentrated on an assumed process of assimilation according to European standards, later studies pointed out the need to look for indigenous African continuities. The Pinkster King and the King of Kongo suggests the necessity for an increased focus on the substantial contact that many Africans had with Europe-an—primarily Portuguese—cultures before they were shipped as slaves to the Americas.

No contexto da Expansão portuguesa no Atlântico, a baleação teve um papel importante apesar de ser mencionada pontualmente na historiografia da especialidade. Tal como outros recursos naturais, a baleia, e seus produtos derivados, esteve sujeita às dinâmicas do monopólio régio e não só beneficiou a Coroa Portuguesa e empresários, como potenciou o domínio territorial no Brasil. Técnicas baleeiras bascas foram transferidas da Europa para o Atlântico Sul no início do século XVII e prevaleceram durante três séculos até se tornarem obsoletas face às inovações tecnológicas de outras potências europeias e à redução dos stocks de baleias. Os impactos desta atividade fizeram sentir-se principalmente no aspeto económico, mas também a nível social, cultural e científico. Palavras-chave: Expansão portuguesa; Baleeira; Transferência de conhecimentos e técnicas.

Exercitando um escopo de análise histórico e eclético, a presente dissertação versará sobre o funcionamento de um sistema administrativo misto, arquitetado no formato de nodos interconectados, ou apenas “rede”, em prol da manutenção de um espaço jurisdicional ultramarino. Nessa empreitada, seremos guiados por duas traves-mestras: a primeira é o interesse nos fenômenos advindos dos contatos intersociais, a segunda é a análise perscrutada da documentação inserida nas Fontes para a história de Angola do século XVII, organizadas por Beatrix Heintze. Problematizando algumas das situações coetâneas pelas quais passavam a expansão portuguesa na África Centro-Ocidental, bem como nos debruçando sobre algumas das indagações levantadas por uma historiografia recente, defenderemos que havia uma série de movimentos ambivalentes e ambíguos no que tangia ao governo do domínio ultramarino da Angola portuguesa. Sucintamente, chamaremos atenção para a importância dos procedimentos e resoluções político-administrativas adotados naquele domínio, analisando as maneiras de arregimentação e condução de uma máquina de guerra portuguesa, destacando a importância da participação política de atores e sujeitos centro-africanos nos rumos políticos das chamadas “conquistas” e abordando as relações institucionais e econômicas entre Luanda e os entrepostos portugueses instalados no interior. Por excelência, as hierarquias internas e os contatos sociais e políticos luso-africanos foram gestados em um ambiente conflituoso, entrecortado por tensões sociais, atritos institucionais e embates políticos. Em ultima instância, concluiremos que ocorriam justaposições e aglutinações entre as formas de dominação e intermediação que faziam parte do funcionamento político e institucional da Angola portuguesa, contanto que duas precondições fossem atendidas: o engrandecimento da exploração economia através do tráfico transatlântico e a penetração institucional e política do continente.

Considering an eclectic and historical scope of analysis, this dissertation will argue about the execution of a mixed administrative system, based on institutional nodes interconnected in a form of network system, operated on the behalf of an overseas jurisdictional space. Our efforts will be engaged with two mainstreams: the first is our interest in the phenomena related with some inter-social contacts, the second is the analytical research of the Fontes para a história de Angola do século XVII’s documentation,  organized by Beatrix Heintze. Casting some questions related to the different situations concerned with the Portuguese Expansion in the West Central Africa, as well as reflecting some inquiries posed by the recent historiography, here we stand for a settle of ambivalent and ambiguous series of movements emerged from the Portuguese Angola’s overseas domain, calling up for the importance of some political and institutional forms of proceedings. They were all managed in order to resolve some issues related with the Portuguese Angola, paying attention to the recruitment and mobilizations of the Portuguese war machine, elucidating how the local political actors interacted with the conquistas and how was carried out the institutional and economical relations between Luanda and the interior entrepôts. All the internal hierarchies and luso-african contacts was settled down in a conflictive environment, crossed through social tensions, institutional frictions and political shocks. Finally, we conclude that some forms of domination and intermediation in the Portuguese Angola were sustained by a correlation between juxtapositions and agglutinations, but only if two demands were attended: the enlargement of the economical exploitation through the transatlantic slave trade and the institutional and political penetration of the African continent.

Hex-Cell is an interconnection network that has attractive features like the embedding capability of topological structures; such as; bus, ring, tree and mesh topologies. In this paper, we present two algorithms for embedding bus and ring topologies onto Hex-Cell interconnection network. We use three metrics to evaluate our proposed algorithms: dilation, congestion, and expansion. Our evaluation results show that the congestion of our two proposed algorithms is equal to one; and the dilation is equal to 2d-1 for the first algorithm and 1 for the second.

Historians rely on Singapore’s strategic position to explain its great success as a royal trading port in the 14th century, and as a British colony after 1819. What, then, accounts for the many centuries when it seemed not to thrive, and was seen in the words of John Crawfurd as “only the occasional resort of pirates”? This seeming paradox sits uneasily at the heart of Singapore historiography, and over time historians have suggested a variety of ways to resolve it. This volume collects studies about Singapore before 1800 bringing together different efforts across the 20th century at reconstructing Singapore’s “missing years”. Some authors have found additional details by scouring ancient and early modern texts for references to Singapore, and by reading well-known classics such as the Sejarah Melayu against the grain. Others have built narratives that bridge pre- and post-1800 perspectives by positioning Singapore within long-term global history. These efforts have yielded a much richer understanding of Singapore’s changing fortunes before 1800. The articles collected in this volume represent key milestones in this effort. Many are hard to locate and two pieces are translated from Dutch to English for the first time. They are presented here with an introduction from historian Kwa Chong Guan.

The Moravian book printer Valentim Fernandes (? – 1519?), who, attracted by the news regarding the Portuguese Discoveries and new trade opportunities, arrived in Lisbon at the end of the 15th century, is an example of an early contact between the present-day Czech Republic and Portugal. Fernandes’ name is closely associated with the history of book printing in Portugal, since he was the most important Portuguese book printer of his time. Besides book printer, he was also a translator, author, and commercial agent in Lisbon. He is author of a manuscript
compiled more than 500 years ago, in the period of 1506-1510, that has been considered one of the most important documents of Portuguese travel literature in the age of discoveries.The manuscript is one of the very few contemporary sources on the early history of the island of São Tomé in the Gulf of Guinea.

This paper presents an overview of the first grammatical descriptions of the western African coast languages spoken in the ancient kingdoms of Congo and Angola, and in Mozambique, on the southeastern African coast, by Portuguese missionaries or at the service of the Portuguese Patronage. It deserves special highlight the works Gentio de Angola (Lisbon 1642, Rome 1661), Arte da Lingua de Cafre (ca. 1745 [ca. 1680]) and Arte da Lingua de Angola (Lisbon 1697), by Francesco Pacconio S.J. (1589–1641), António do Couto, S.J. (1614–1666) and António Maria da Monte Prandone, O.F.M. (1607–1687), anonymous (fl. ca. 1680) and Pedro Dias, S.J. (1621/1622–1700), respectively. I also examine the manuscript Obra nova da Lingoa geral de mina (Minas Gerais 1741) by António da Costa Peixoto (1703–1763), who, being a layman, describes a Bantu language of the Kwa family, spoken in Minas Gerais by slaves coming from the Gulf of Benin, on the western African coast.

O artigo analisa o mapa do Brasil realizado por Giacomo Gastaldi para a importante coleção de relatos de viagem intitulada Delle Navigationi et Viaggi de Giovanni Battista Ramusio (pela primeira vez editada em 1556). Fez-se um estudo do mapa comparando-o ao texto da viagem que ele ilustra e acompanha, o Discorso d’un gran capitano di mare francese atribuído a Pierre Crignon. Uma abordagem comparativa permitirá revelar as semelhanças e as diferenças entre o mapa de Gastaldi e o texto de Crignon.

Using published and unpublished documents of Dutch, Portuguese and Malay provenance, the present study explores how news of the Twelve Years Truce in December 1609 negatively impacted politics and commerce at the court of the Kingdom of Johor. Since 1603, Johor had emerged as one of the principal allies of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the region of the Singapore and Melaka Straits, and after 1606 it had proven itself as a worthy ally in the company’s war on the Iberian powers across Southeast Asia. It will be argued that confusion resulting from the news of the truce on the ground in Asia exacerbated factionalism at the court. The Johor ruler, Ala’udin Ri’ayat Shah III, and especially his younger sibling Raja Bongsu, were incensed and evidently felt they had been left to carry on the struggle against Portuguese Melaka on their own. Unable to continue the war effort without Dutch funds, subsidies and ammunition, the pro-Portuguese faction at the Johor court brokered a peace with the Estado da Índia in October 1610. This deal led to the fall of Raja Bongsu and his pro-Dutch faction at the court. This essay provides the political and historical backdrop to the writing and revision of the Sejarah Melayu, or Malay Annals, in or around 1612.

With close to 200 speakers, the Indo-Portuguese Creole of Diu is currently spoken by a fraction of the island's population and, despite a centuries-old history, has been largely unacknowledged. In the last decade, it was the object of linguistic documentation and description, making it available to researchers in the field of Creole Studies. Before that, however, the only significant source of linguistic information was a seminal 1883 article by Hugo Schuchardt, all the more relevant by the fact that it was one of the first publications dedicated to a creole by the pioneer of Creole Studies. To write it, Schuchardt relied on data obtained through a vast network of correspondents scattered across the globe. The recent edition of Schuchardt's letter and manuscript archive, a collective effort coordinated by the Institute of Linguistics of the University of Graz, now makes it possible to reconstruct 19 th-century interest in this language and ensuing scholarly debates. Here, we explore this archive and complementary sources to: a) retrace Schuchardt's steps in search of adequate informants; b) observe Schuchardt's process of data collection and analysis; c) recover the opinions of several interlocutors about the status of Diu Creole; and d) reconstruct the impact of the article's publication.

Although it is little recognized and studied, the presence of women on board the Carreira da India was a reality. We aim to carry on the research on the topic, analysing aspects of the everyday life and the difficulties faced by women who travelled to and back from India during the 16th century. We will emphasize the first women who sailed East, the thought men had about women at the time, the searches done on ships, as well as aspects related to sexual life and weddings on board.

When in 1500 the Portuguese commander Pedro Álvares Cabral, headed for India, landed at an uncharted coast in the South-western Atlantic, he and his crew claimed the land for the Portuguese king, Manuel I, and named it after the Holy Cross consecrating all with a mass. Bid by Cabral, the ship’s scribe Pero Vaz de Caminha wrote a letter to the king announcing and describing their find and all their actions. The letter narrated the temperate weather, the abundance of trees and water, and also the possible existence of gold and silver. The soil was so rich that anything one tried to plant would most certainly flourish, he said. Caminha depicted the reddish-brown-skinned natives as innocent in their nudity, and wrote of their women showing their beautiful bodies as if they were unaware of the original sin. The resemblance to Edenic motifs and locus amoenus topoi is evident, as is the overlapping between Christian faith and the royal maritime enterprise. Decades later, the Land of Holy Cross, to the dismay of some men of letters and of the cloth, had its name changed to Brazil, partially after the brazilwood tree (‘Pau-Brasil’) which produced red dye and was the first significant Portuguese American commodity. Authors like João de Barros, in 1554, saw in the naming a refusal to pursue an evident divine election and denounced it as the victory of mercantile and sinful actions over Christian mission. As such, the alteration to the new name denied the important role that the Portuguese kingdom and its new possession ought to take in God's plan. A few years before the arrival of the Portuguese ship on the shores of future Brazil, Christopher Columbus found a land that he initially thought to be the Far East. The first and final destination of his endeavour supported by the Catholic kings of Spain, Columbus was trying to find a route to the East, as an alternative to that cut off by the fall of Constantinople, captured by the Ottomans. But when he realised that he was in an unheard of country of unknown peoples, he started to draw a prophetical plan based on pseudo-Joachimite writings in which the navigation and conquest of a New World would play a decisive part.

National identity discourse has proliferated since the nineteenth-century, and this has been reflected in the construction and analysis of portugalidade as Portugal has undergone significant historical and social transformations. This discourse has developed within Portuguese imagology and is consistently based upon the central imagery of the Discoveries. Although there have been changes intended to either support or question the ruling elite, the imperial motif has remained throughout. The end of the Estado Novo and the Portuguese empire means that former identity discourse must be reappraised in an attempt to construct a post-imperial identity. However, even as these notions have come to be deconstructed through the use of irony and parody in postmodern literature, the centrality of the imagery of the Discoveries endures. This is particularly evident in Mário de Carvalho’s 2003 novel Fantasia para dois Coronéis e uma Piscina, where he uses metafictive techniques to analyse contemporary portugalidade. His construction of various characters parodies Portuguese imagology in order to question its legitimacy, as well as portraying the importance of agency within identity discourse through his manipulation of the reader using subversion. This emphasises the necessity of the deconstruction of portugalidade in order to fully understand its contemporary relevance.

The history of the Portuguese Empire in Brazil and its influence on contemporary Brazil is a story of multiple legacies. In this chapter I explore these through a study of the initial Portuguese policy of settlement of the Brazilian colony. For, eager to defend its colonial lands in Brazil from foreign powers, between 1534 and 1536 the Portuguese Crown divided the land of the colony in longitudinal tracks, or slices, going from the coast to the imaginary line set by the Treaty of Tordesillas. Brazil was thus subdivided into 15 hereditary captaincies. While the system of hereditary captaincies would formally not last beyond the mid-1500, its impact on social, economic and political affairs in Brazil has been important.

An analysis of Le Canarien, the chronicle of the French conquest of the Canaries at the beginning of the 15th
C, is carried out to observe the relationship between identity and alterity in the processes of overseas expansion. Such analysis is achieved through the archetypes used by Europeans to define human and natural realities.

EN. The Portuguese fortress of Diu was besieged by the sultanate of Gujarat between April and November 1546, eight years after the first siege by this same forces helped with an Ottoman reinforcement. The enemy artillery swept successively the walls, leaving the fort in need of repair. The reconstruction of the fortress (as the new type of trace italienne) lasted from November 1546 to April of the following year, creating a structure that finally secured the Portuguese presence in the region. This article has two aims: firstly, the analysis of the costs of the works, such as payments of the supplies and the service conducted by masons, hackers, carpenters and other workers hired by the Crown, and secondly an assessment of the means used to finance these costs. The discussion is based not only on the various chronicles relating to that period, but especially in a list of expenses in the Codex 51-VII-19 of the Biblioteca da Ajuda, containing certificates, lists of payments and, not least, the Caderno das despesas que se fizeram em obras na fortaleza de Diu, dated July 1547 and here published. A final analysis shows that the expenses were not significant in the whole of the budget of the Portuguese State of India. The paper concludes that the expenditures were not significant on the whole of the financial structure of the Portuguese "State of India"."

PT. Entre Abril e Novembro de 1546, a fortaleza portuguesa de Diu sofreu um forte cerco às mãos do sultanato do Guzerate, oito anos após ter sido cercada pela primeira vez pelas mesmas forças apoiadas por um contingente otomano. A artilharia inimiga arrasou sucessivamente as muralhas, deixando o forte num estado tal que impedia o seu simples restauro. A reconstrução desta fortaleza (conforme o novo tipo de fortificação abaluartada) estendeu-se de Novembro de 1546 a Abril do ano seguinte, criando o bastião que finalmente firmaria a presença portuguesa na região. Este artigo pretende analisar, num primeiro momento, as despesas efectuadas com as obras, como sejam os pagamentos dos mantimentos e do serviço levado a cabo por pedreiros, cabouqueiros, carpinteiros e outros trabalhadores contratados pela Coroa para esse fim, e, numa segunda fase, os meios usados para financiar estes custos. Baseamos o nosso discurso não apenas nas diversas crónicas respeitantes a esse período, mas sobretudo nos registos das despesas efectuadas conservados no Códice 51-VII-19 da Biblioteca da Ajuda, contendo certidões, listas de pagamentos e, não menos importante, o caderno das despesas que se fizeram em obras na fortaleza de Diu, datado de Julho de 1547 e aqui publicado na íntegra. Este estudo pretende demonstrar que os custos tidos em conta não pesaram na estrutura financeira do Estado da Índia.

Reseña del libro - Review of the book:  Eduardo AZNAR, Dolores CORBELLA, Antonio TEJERA (eds.), Los Viajes Africanos de Alvise Cadamosto (1455-1456), San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Instituto de Estudios Canarios, 2017, 182 pp., ISBN 978-84-697-6718-4

Soler, Isabel, Pizarro, Jerónimo, & Xavier, Rodrigo (2021). THREE OCEAN'S BORDERS. Revista Diadorim, 23(2), 14-16.

doi:
https://doi.org/10.35520/diadorim.2021.v23n2a45797

O Dossiê de Literatura reúne textos sobre as viagens portuguesas e os encontros e desencontros das aventuras transoceânicas

https://revistas.ufrj.br/index.php/diadorim/issue/view/1578

Diadorim: Revista de Estudos Linguísticos e Literários - Volume 23, número 2. Rio de Janeiro: UFRJ, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras Vernáculas, v.23, n.2, 2021. Editoras: Marcia dos Santos Machado Vieira, Danielle Kely Gomes, Eliete Figueira Batista da Silveira. Editores convidados / Dossiê de Literatura: Rodrigo Xavier (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro) Jerónimo Pizarro (Universidad de los Andes) Isabel Soler (Universitat de Barcelona)

Revista Qualis A3 Publicação impressa: ISSN 1980-2552 Publicação online: ISSN 2675-1216

Todos estes estudos, de cada uma das suas perspetivas, confluem num ponto em comum que é possível sintetizar na pluralidade de cenários de aprendizagem desse novo paradigma espácio-temporal que pouco a pouco, no percurso dos séculos renascentistas, estava a construir a base da modernidade. Esses cenários, embora alguns muito distantes uns dos outros, embora radicalmente diferentes uns dos outros, tinham um fio marítimo de união, um rumo, uma singradura transoceânica. Da novidade dos conteúdos desse espaço trioceânico, e do seu impacto intelectual e emocional, fala a célebre frase do matemático e cosmógrafo Pedro Nunes. «Os portugueses ousaram cometer o grande mar oceano», escrevia o matemático Pedro Nunes no seu Tratado em Defençam da Carta de Marear de 1537, e culminava a frase: «descobriram novas ilhas, novas terras, novos mares, novos povos, e o que mais é: novo céu, novas estrelas».

Soler, Isabel, Pizarro, Jerónimo, & Xavier, Rodrigo (2021). FRONTEIRAS DE TRÊS OCEANOS. Revista Diadorim, 23(2), 14-16.

doi: https://doi.org/10.35520/diadorim.2021.v23n2a45791

O Dossiê de Literatura reúne textos sobre as viagens portuguesas e os encontros e desencontros das aventuras transoceânicas

https://revistas.ufrj.br/index.php/diadorim/issue/view/1578

Diadorim: Revista de Estudos Linguísticos e Literários - Volume 23, número 2. Rio de Janeiro: UFRJ, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras Vernáculas, v.23, n.2, 2021. Editoras: Marcia dos Santos Machado Vieira, Danielle Kely Gomes, Eliete Figueira Batista da Silveira. Editores convidados / Dossiê de Literatura: Rodrigo Xavier (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro) Jerónimo Pizarro (Universidad de los Andes) Isabel Soler (Universitat de Barcelona)

Revista Qualis A3 Publicação impressa: ISSN 1980-2552 Publicação online: ISSN 2675-1216

Todos estes estudos, de cada uma das suas perspetivas, confluem num ponto em comum que é possível sintetizar na pluralidade de cenários de aprendizagem desse novo paradigma espácio-temporal que pouco a pouco, no percurso dos séculos renascentistas, estava a construir a base da modernidade. Esses cenários, embora alguns muito distantes uns dos outros, embora radicalmente diferentes uns dos outros, tinham um fio marítimo de união, um rumo, uma singradura transoceânica. Da novidade dos conteúdos desse espaço trioceânico, e do seu impacto intelectual e emocional, fala a célebre frase do matemático e cosmógrafo Pedro Nunes. «Os portugueses ousaram cometer o grande mar oceano», escrevia o matemático Pedro Nunes no seu Tratado em Defençam da Carta de Marear de 1537, e culminava a frase: «descobriram novas ilhas, novas terras, novos mares, novos povos, e o que mais é: novo céu, novas estrelas».

Des nouvelles imprimées circulent, aux XVIe-XVIIe siècles, qui révèlent la conversion soudaine au christianisme – parfois véritable, souvent inventée – de puissants monarques étrangers. Comment s’écrivent ou s’inventent de telles annonces ? Différents cas de figure se présentent. Il y a les nouvelles véritables, auxquelles on ajoute des détails cosmétiques et faux, ou encore des interprétations trop enthousiastes. Il y a les nouvelles fausses, quoique inventées pour simplifier l’annonce de véritables bouleversements de l’échiquier politique – par exemple l’entrée sur scène de la dynastie des Séfévides, fantasmée sous les traits d’une conversion des shahs Ismaïl Ier (1508) ou Abbas Ier (1606). L’étrange cas de La conversion de trois grands rois permet de distinguer deux mécanismes de falsification, voire deux étapes : en 1571 d’abord, la nouvelle est l’assemblage frauduleux d’extraits de lettres missionnaires jésuites véritables ; en 1588, 1608 et 1609 ensuite, elle est « regrattée » et circule à nouveau, rafraîchie. Ainsi se mêlent inextricablement la vérité et la fiction, mieux qu’elles ne s’opposent, paradoxalement au moment même où essaiment en Europe de véritables informations sur la Perse, l’Inde et l’Indonésie. De telles nouvelles chimériques signalent de plus, alors que se développe une véritable industrie de la littérature éphémère, la désirabilité toute particulière des annonces de conversion, lesquelles priment sur d’autres nouvelles davantage vraies, mais moins séduisantes.

Printed news reports circulated, in the 16th and 17th century, which revealed the sudden conversion to Christianity – some were real, but several were invented – of powerful monarchs from abroad. How were such announcements written or invented? Different scenarios existed. There was genuine news, to which were added cosmetic and false details, or sometimes overly enthusiastic interpretations. There was false news, although invented, arguably, to simplify the reporting of real upheavals on the scene of world affairs – such as the entrance on the historical stage of the Safavid dynasty, fantasized in the media as the conversion of Ismail I (in 1508) or Abbas I (in 1606). The strange case of La conversion de trois grands rois [The Conversion of Three Great Kings] helps in distinguishing two falsification mechanisms, or in this case two steps: in 1571, it was the fraudulent mixing of excerpts from genuine Jesuit letters; in 1588, 1608 and 1609, the same news report circulated anew, with all of its dates replaced by current ones. Truth and fiction thus intertwined better than they clashed, and paradoxically at the very time when genuine and current information about Persia, India and Indonesia was starting to circulate in Europe. The existence of such chimerical news also indicates that, as the industry of news reporting was developing, the particular desirability of reports on high-level conversions helped them prevail over other news more genuine, yet less appealing.

O presente artigo procura analisar um dos mais famosos códices da Biblioteca Geral da Universidade de Coimbra: as “Tábuas dos Roteiros da Índia” de D. João de Castro. Não obstante a fama destes desenhos, nenhum estudo se debruçou sobre o códice em si, procurando avaliar a sua estrutura interna, o seu suporte e compreender a sua proveniência. Assim, este artigo pretende colmatar esta lacuna examinando cuidadosamente os fólios deste manuscrito quinhentista e apontando novas hipóteses quanto à sua origem e percurso.
--
This article analyses one of the most famous codices of the General Library of the University of Coimbra: the ‘Charts of the Rutters of India’ of D. João de Castro. Despite the fame of these drawings, there is still a lack of information about the codex itself, its internal structure, material condition and provenance. Therefore, this article aims to provide a thorough evaluation of the folios of this 16th century manuscript, proposing new hypothesis about its origin, dating and whereabouts.

The study discusses the key phase of the Portuguese‑Dutch conflict for a monopoly on commerce with Asia, which dates back to 1621–1669. Portugal, at that time, formed a personnel union with Spain – an Iberian union, whose resources were drained by the costly struggle on the European scene, where the Thirty Years War raged. As the Twelve Year’s Truce (1609–1621) expired, the United East Indian Company (VOC) took the initiative to get rid the Portuguese empire in Asia, called Estado da Índia, of maritime dominance. At the same time, it exploited the Portuguese inability to carry out fundamental structural reforms, as well as the Portuguese‑Spanish suspicions and rivalries, which prevented mutual effective cooperation. First, in 1621–1635, it asserted its complete superiority in Insulindia and the Far East, and, subsequently, between 1635 and 1669, it shattered the Portuguese power in the western Indian Ocean. The result was the collapse of Estado da Índia and the establishment of a Dutch monopoly for commerce in spices. Finally, the author seeks an overall assessment of the Portuguese-Dutch conflict and its effects on the Estado da Índia.

The arrival of Vasco da Gama’s armada to India in 1498 opened the Asian markets to European forces and accelerated the development of artillery in this region of the world. Equipped with superior technology, the Portuguese imposed their presence, combining trade and warfare. Most studies on the Military Revolution assess Portuguese forces in Asia to have been superior, usually focusing on naval warfare and the efficient use of broadside gunnery, which ignores or devalues land-based warfare.
This chapter therefore aims to reassess and debate the existence of a Portuguese superiority regarding land warfare in the Estado da Índia (the name formally given to the Portuguese Empire in Asia). This assessment is conducted in the context of the European force’s having to resist several military land operations, starting as far back as their settlement in the region, because the use of gunpowder was not limited exclusively to the Portuguese and guns were used similarly by both sides. This chapter therefore broadly evaluates the impact of Portuguese warfare in Asia. It argues that both Portuguese and local landlords adapted to new ways of waging war and that the Europeans experienced a partial loss of superiority after the first decades of the sixteenth century. To reach this conclusion, first the idea of Portuguese military superiority is challenged, and then a number of battles and sieges are analysed by using both Portuguese and Asian sources, emphasizing the context of India.

geoPolítIca amerIcana a escala global. el estrecho de magallanes y su condIcIón de "PasaJe-mundo" en el sIglo xVI 1 resumen El artículo analiza las tipificaciones que se le dieron al estrecho de Magallanes dentro del proceso de configuración político-territorial de América durante el siglo XVI, y de las dinámicas globales que fueron a la par de este proceso. El texto se divide en tres partes. En la primera se hace una lectura teórica sobre las problemáticas historiográficas y las temporalidades en las que se inscribe el descubrimiento del Estrecho, que permiten que sea definido en el estudio como un pasaje-mundo. En la segunda se examinan los hechos, actores y las territorialidades que lo consolidaron como una referencia geopolítica entre 1520-1560. Y, por último, en la tercera se estudian las variaciones que tuvo su importancia estratégica durante 1560-1580, variaciones que develan las formas sobre cómo fue concebido para delinear, sincronizar y especular sobre una serie de problemáticas continentales que afectaban al mismo tiempo espacios locales y globales.