Vasco Da Gama and the Linking of Europe and Asia

512 Pages·2001·114.036 MB·English

by  Anthony Disney (editor), Emily Booth (editor)

V
asco da Gama
and and
the Linking of Europe Asia
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yasco
da Gama
and the Linking of Europe and Asia
edited by
Anthony Disney
and
Emily Booth
OXFORD
VNIVEJlSITY PllESS
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Contents
Introduction 1
Professor Denys Lombard: A Tribute 8
I. Plenary Lectures
I . The Indian Ocean in World History 11
Felipe Fernandez-Armesto
2. Travelling with the Fifteenth-century Discoverers:
Their Daily Life 30
A.H.H. de Oliveira Marques
3. The Unity of Opposites: Abraham Za'.cut,
V asco da Gama and the Chronicler Gaspar Correia 48
Maurice Kriegel and Sanjay Subrahmanyam
4. Ships, Seafaring and the Iconography of Voyages
in the Age of V asco da Gama 72
John Villiers
II. Trade and Economic Relations
5. Soldiers, Diamonds and Jesuits: Flemings and
Dutchmen in Portuguese India (1505-90) 84
John Everam
6. Christians and Muslims in the Surat Sea:
Ships, Merchandise and Goods Captured in a
Naval Battle in 1630 105
Artur Teodoro de Matos and Paulo Lopes Matos
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• Va sco Ja Gam11 and tht Lin/ting ofE uropt and Asia
Vl
7.
The East African Coast in 1498:
A Synchronic Study 116
M.N. Pearson
8. The Portuguese in the Far East, 1540-1640 131
Om Prakash
9. Camphor in East and Southeast Asian Trade,
of
c. 1500: A Synthesis Portuguese and Asian Sources 142
Roderich Ptalt
10. Five Centuries, Five Modalities: European
Interaction with Southeast Asia, 1497-1997 167
Anthony Rtid
III. Religious and Cultural Interactions
11. Some Observations on Portuguese Renegades in
Asia in the Sixteenth Century 178
Dtjanirah Silva Couto
.
12. The Encounter of Languages: Reflections on the
Language of the Other in Roteiro da Primeira
Viagem de Va sco da Gama 202
Elena Losada Soler
13. Converts, Proteges and Assimilated Natives:
anc:l·the
The Advantages of Christianization
Beliefs of Goan Christians (Eighteenth Century) 220
Maria de Jesus dos Mdrtires Lopes
14. The Jesuits and Japan 233
Derek Massare/la.
15. Goa-Macao-Beijing: The Jesuits and
Portugal>s China Connection 248
Paul Rule
16. For God, King and Mammon: The Portuguese
outside of Empire, 1480-1580 261
A.JR Russell-Wood
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••
Conunts
Vil
17. Islands and Beaches: Indigenous Relations with
the Portuguese in Sri Lanka after V asco da Gama 280
Chandra R de Silva
IV. Sources, Texts and Representations
18. From the West to the East: The Return of
the Printed Word 295
J oao J osl Alves Dias
19. Portuguese as seen by the Historians of the
Qing Court 307
Carney T. Fisher
20. South Sulawesi Chronicles and Their
Possible Models 322
Campbell C Macknight
21. When Poetry and History Meet: The First Voyage
ofVasco da Gama in Literary Texts 333
Maria Alzira Seixo
22. Myth and Power: Vasco da Gama as
Bourgeois Appropriation in the Opera of
340
the Nineteenth Century
Isabel Sokr Quintana
23. Was There a Vasco da Gama Epoch?
Recent Historiography 350
John E. Wills, Jr.
V. Empire, Politics and Diplomacy
24. The Suppression of the Society of Jesus in
the Portuguese Assistancy in Asia:
The Fate of Survivors, 1760-77 361
Dauril Aldm
25. Divesting a Myth: Seventeenth Century
Dutch-Portuguese Rivalry in the Far East 387
Leonard Blussl
26. Continuity and Change: The Portuguese
Presence in British Bombay, c. 1660-1860 403
Mariam Dossa/
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Vlll
27. Portuguese Timar on the Eve of the Pacific War 419
Robert Lee
28. V asco da Gama and the Later Portuguese
Colonial Presence in India 437
de
Ttotonio R Souza
29. Spiritual Peoples at Odds: Portugal, India
and the Goa Question, 1947-61 452
Douglas L. Wheeler
. .
30. Faction, Administrative Conuol and the Failure
of the Portuguese India Company, 1628-33 471
Lo"aine Whitt
31 . Few Thanks to the King: The Building of
484
Portuguese India
George Winius
Contributors 496
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Introduction
The thirty-one contributions that make up this volume were originally
presented as lectures or papers at the Vasco da Gama Quincentenary
Conference held in Melbourne and Fremantle, Australia, in June 1997.
The purpose of the conference was to re-examine-in the light of recent
scholarship, and from both Asian and European perspectives-the voyage
ofVasco da Gama to Calicut in 1497-8, its role in linking Portugal and
the world of the Indian Ocean, and the complex and multi-faceted
interactions between East and West that developed in the years which
followed.
The conference was attended by scholars from a range of disciplines
and orientations from Australia, Portugal, India, Belgium, France,
Germany, Japan, Macao, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore,
Spain, Sri Lanka, the United Kingdom, and the United States. As might
be expected from such a diverse gathering, the wealth of interests and
views represented was very considerable, and cannot be fully encompassed
in this introduction to the revised papers. However, some of the main
concerns and conclusions will be suggested, followed by a brief descrip
tion of the individual papers, in the order in which they appear in this
volume.
Interest at the conference in seafaring and navigational aspects of the
Portuguese intrusion was considerable, and is manifested in several
contributions. How was it that the Portuguese came to enter the Indian
Ocean by sea at the close of the fifteenth century? Why did the break
through not occur in the reverse direction, especially given that the
Indian Ocean had a much longer and richer tradition of maritime trade
and long-distance voyaging, than the Atlantic? Readers will find these
basic questions addressed by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, who emphasizes
the fundamental difference between operating within a monsoonal
environment as compared with one dominated by trade winds. Antonio
de Oliveira· Marques's down-to-earth description of life aboard
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2 Va sco da Gama and the Lin/ting ofE urope and Asia
Portuguese ships in the fifteenth century likewise helps explain how it
was done-and invites comparison with earlier work on the carreira da
India by scholars such as Charles Boxer, or on Indian voyaging by Jan
Qaisar. John Villiers, after an evocative description of the voyage itself
of V asco da Gama, gives a sobering overview of deep ocean navigation
in pre-modern times. He recounts its many and persistent uncertainties,
stressing that the technology of navigation, despite significant advances,
was still far from ensuring a favourable outcome. The complexities and
contradictions inherent in Early Modern voyaging arc strikingly brought
out in comparing the approaches adopted here by Villiers and Oliveira
Marques. Both describe the discomforts and perils of life at sea, and the
widespread sense among seamen that their fate-resided in the hands of
God. Yet, where Villiers highlights the fantastical awa that sometimes
surrounded voyaging, drawing parallels between the spiritual preparations
for Gama's expedition with 'a knight. ..b cfore setting out on crusade',
Oliveira Marques stresses the curiosity. and spirit of inquiry which led
voyagers, even in Prince Henry's day, eagerly to observe and describe
the new, in the manner of the Ewopean Renaissance.
One of the more general issues explicitly or implicitly present in many
of these papers concerns the nature, and also the significance, ·o f
Portuguese i,nfluence on the l:1dian Ocean region. In this regard, we
think it is fair to say that the '¥eight of opinion here is heavily against
the view, that has in some quarters been gaining some credence in recent
years, that the Portuguese can be dismissed as having had only a very
minor and insignificant impact. On the contrary, there is much to suggest
that Portuguese influence on maritime Asia was important, though
frequently in raqier more subtle ways than is often supposed. This is
brought out, for example, in John Wills' s paper. Wills uses modernization
theory to argue that the Estado da India represented a form of state
formation that was new to the Indian Ocean region. The Estado da
India was an interventionist, trade-promoting organization which,
moreover, introduced the 'terrible novelty' of asserting its 'right' to
control maritime trade and navigation. Its 'precocious stacism', Wills
argues, prepared the way for the later, more potent statism of the great
Ewopean trading companies. Other papers, including those of Orn
Prakash, Anthony Reid, and Mariam Dossal, also bear in various ways
on the nature and pervasiveness of long-term Portuguese influence.
How did indigenous states and communities react to, and.then go on
to manage, the Portuguese intrusion? While-it is necessary to be cautious
not to over-generalize on this complex question, a number of the contri
butions to this volume underline that in the western part of the Indian
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