Looking out from Goa, 1648: Perspectives on a crisis of the Estado da Índia

Abstract

In 1648, the Portuguese Estado da Índia found itself at a crossroads. After nearly five decades of attacks by a variety of adversaries—the Dutch East India Company, the Safavids, the Mughals, the Tokugawa shoguns, and the rulers of Kandy, among others—and in the context of the ‘Restoration’ of the Braganza dynasty in Portugal in 1640 and the separation of Portugal from Spain, a brief respite was offered. This article looks at how the situation was diagnosed by various contemporary authors, both outsiders and consummate insiders, such as the viceroy Dom Filipe de Mascarenhas. It suggests that the heavy constraints placed on the state by external forces as well as by forces of internal dissension compelled it to reinvent itself, a process that eventually began in the 1660s. However, this reinvention was not about simply imitating its great rival, the Dutch East India Company.

French Encounters Of François De La Boullaye-Le Gouz In India: Hindu Mythological Illustrations and Narratives

“…Subsequently, they burnt the relic and spurned the Hindu king's offer (Gouz, 1653). The intolerance of Portuguese against other religion was noted by Gouz (Subrahmanyam, 2021b) by referring to a quote that 'all these persecutions that the Portuguese carry out on the Indou, Parsis and Muslims, may be thought to be the reason for which they abandon their lands, and prefer to reside in the lands of Schah Geann [Shahjahan], or the Adel Schah ['Adil Shah], where they can freely exercise their religion, temples, sacrifices, bathing [ceremonies] et cetera' (Gouz, 1653). But the overall implication seems to be the showing Gouz's rationality to prefer European religion over Indian.…”

“…During the seventeenth century, numerous French travellers made voyages to India and wrote fascinating travelogues and memoirs about the Oriental world. This led to the construction of an image of India as an 'Others' (Beasley, 2018;Marsh, 2015;Sapra, 2011;Subrahmanyam, 2017;Subrahmanyam, 2021a;Subrahmanyam, 2021b;Teltscher, 1995) (the uncivilized counterpart of Europe) based on Edward Said's theory of Orientalism that has been challenged by critics later for oversimplification and being partisan (Halliday, 1993;Roddan, 2016;Said, 1978). For example, Faith E. Beasley's recent analysis highlights the role of French 'salon culture' (worldly/ learned gathering) in the evolution of western thought that dismantles the notion of European superiority where India did not serve as an inferior 'other'; and also challenged prevailing images derived from nineteenth-century 'orientalism' imbued with colonialism (Beasley, 2018, p. 22).…”