Resumo de Medieval Goa: A socio-economic history

Teotonio R. de Souza, Goa Medieval: A Cidade e o Interior no Século XVII, Lisboa, Ed. Estampa, 1994, pp. 296. The book is the result of a doctoral dissertation presented to the University of Pune (India) in 1977 and it was oiriginally entitled: Goa in the 17th century - A socio-economic History . The English version of the thesis was published as Medieval Goa , New Delhi, Concept Publishing Company, 1979. The Portuguese version includes some original old kanada versions of the documents used by the author in the text. Divided into two parts, the author analyses the Goan rural and city economies and the respective societies. The choice of the 17th century is deliberate. The Portuguese conquered Goa in 1510 and in the course of that century implemented drastically their religious and conversion policies which altered dramatically the social configuration of the local society, through the implementation of the Council of Trent and by the establishment of the tribunal of Inquisition. As a result the so-called Old Conquests, or the three provinces of Salcete, Tiswadi and Bardez wehre throughly Christianized, reducing the Hindu population to an insignificant minority. However, on the economic-comercial front the Portuguese fortunes were plumetting. The Dutch and the English East India companies had arrived into the Indian Ocean at the start of the 17th century, and they began reducing substantially the Portuguese commercial network. The Portuguese naval supremacy was being curtailed, giving the native rulers some comfort and courage to challenge the Portuguese established in their territories and neighbourhood. Goa was the capital of the Portuguese eastern empire and it had grown as a megacity with nearly 250,000 people in the mid 16th century. The thriving maritime commerce kept the Portuguese settlers little interested in the local agrarian economy. However, from the beginning of the 17th century, with the declining commercial fortunes, they begin encroaching upon the hinterland. That is when there are severe conflicts developing between the native society and the Portuguese settlers. This book is all about this conflict and how it evolved. The book is considered as a pioneering study of colonial Goa from the native perspective. It has explored archives from Goa, Portugal and Rome with an exemplar thoroughness and scholarly rigour. In its Part One, the study provides a good picture of the village communities of Goa with their centuries long system of property rights and cultivation system. It was a system that prevailed all over India, but the Muslim take over of India destroyed them as a result of the imposition of the jagirdari system. The surviving vestiges disappeared after the British rule brought in their zamindari system. In Goa the Portuguese protected the villages communities officially, but the private interests, both the white religious and lay groups,could not be stopped from encroaching. Curiously and interestingly these two white groups acted as mutual rivals, and that saved the native owners from further encroachment. The State interest in preserving this institution was motivated bythe Portuguese administration's unending need of milching them to meet their ever growing defence needs and other expenses of the colonial budget. The Part Two, the author has described the urban topography as its changed over time and its demographic composition. We see the transplant of the municipal organization of Lisbon, so much so that it had become proverbial to say: Who saw Goa does not need to see Lisboa! Goa had also become a giant slave mart, described by various foreign travellers, such as the Dutchman Linschotten and the Frenchman Pyrard de Laval, among many others. The slave economy was also greatly responsible for the failure of the Portuguese to invest in other forms of modernization of their economy. At the end of the book we see 27 contemporary archival documents translated. They give us a goodglimpse of the value of the documentation tapped and very well explored by the author.

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