Imperial Culture and Colonial Projects by Diogo Ramada Curto

Author:Diogo Ramada Curto [Curto, Diogo Ramada]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Historiography, Political Science, Colonialism & Post-Colonialism, Europe, Spain & Portugal
ISBN: 9781789207071
Google: 0BDMDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Published: 2020-08-01T01:06:49+00:00

The Funeral Ceremony for the King of Bissau

A short list of works written about the west coast of Africa, which includes on the one hand discourses on Guinea, Sierra Leone and the Cape Verde islands and, on the other, the Congo, Angola and Benguela, reveals the limits of Portuguese culture regarding its ability to present the west coast of Africa. The case of books published in foreign languages on the Congo and Angola, for example, is particularly significant. In 1591, Filippo Pigafetta published his Relationae del Reame di Congo in Rome, which was an extract of writings by Duarte Lopes. Samuel Purchas included in his collections information and a report of the voyages of Andrew Battell, with emphasis on the version given in Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas His Pilgrimes (1625). The Jesuit Alonso Sandoval, who lived in Cartagena, published in Seville and Madrid in 1627 and 1647 respectively his De instauranda Aethiopum salute, whose first part is dedicated to a description of the African people, particularly of Guinea and Angola. The Dutch doctor Olfert Dapper is also the author of a published history that grants much importance to Angola (Naukeridge Beschrijvinge der Afrikaensche Gewesten) (1686), with a second edition in 1676 and a French translation, Description de l’Afrique (1686),107 while in 1687 the Capuchin Cavazzi de Montecúccollo published in Bologna his Istorica descrizione de’ tre regni, congo, Matamba et Angola.108 As for works published in Portuguese, we should start with the annual reports from the Jesuit missions compiled by Father Fernão Guerreiro (1603–1611), where news of the missionary activities in Brazil and on the west coast of Africa are presented en bloc yet always at the end of each volume, so granting less importance to the Atlantic than to Asia. The Tratado de las siete enfermedades (1623), by the doctor Aleixo de Abreu, contains a brief description of Luanda regarding venereal disease and its cure. The publishing initiatives of the Jesuits with descriptions of clothing and language appear in the works of Father António Couto, namely Gentio de Angola (1642) and Gentilis Angollae Fidea Mysteriis (1651).109 Published during the restoration, the Manifesto das ostilidades que a gente que serve a Companhia Occidental de Olanda obrou contra os vassalos del Rei de Portugal nest Reyno de Angola (1651) by Luís Félix Cruz shows that the increase in publications on the wars of restoration included events such as the recovery of Luanda by Salvador Correia de Sá. Despite being incomplete, this brief list of works in Italian, English, Dutch and Latin shows that works in Portuguese on the Congo and Angola are peripheral. A case in point is the fact that the most exhaustive work on Angola written in the seventeenth century, the História geral das guerras Angolanas (1680–1682) by António de Oliveira Cadornega, remained in manuscript.110

A general review of the main works and discourses remaining in manuscript reveals opinions that are, in part, fomented or compiled by those who were in central positions in the decision-making process. During the first four

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