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Through a series of case studies, this book chronicles the rise and the decline of Catholic Orientalism which was produced in and disseminated by global networks of the early modern Portuguese empire in South Asia. From Portuguese officials to Goan Brahman clerics and literati, from botanists and physicians of Jewish origin to Italian Jesuits and their Tamil catechists, they were all engaged in creating an ever more cosmopolitan world of early modern South Asia. They did that by way of collecting information and knowledge, and by reflecting on their own mixed identities, on the world of South Asia and their place in it.
List of contents
- Note on Transliteration and Spelling of Non-English Words
- List of Abbreviations
- List of Illustrations
- Prologue
- Part I: Imperial Itineraries
- 1: Making India Classic, Exotic, and Oriental
- 2: : Empire and the Village
- 3: Natural History: Physicians, Merchants and Missionaries
- Part II: Catholic Meridian
- 4: Religion and Civility in 'Brahmanism': Jesuit Experiments (c. 16th-17th)
- 5: Franciscan Orientalism
- 6: Portuguese Linguistic Empire: Translation and Conversion
- Part III: Contested Knowledge
- 7: Orientalists from Within: Indian Genealogists, Philologists, and Historians
- 8: Archives and the End of Catholic Orientalism
- Epilogue: Catholic Orientalism as Tragedy
- Bibliography
- Index
- About the Authors
About the author
Angela Barreto Xavier, Research Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon.
Ines G. %Zupanov, Senior Research Fellow (directrice de recherche), Centre d'Etude de l'Inde et de l'Asie du Sud, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/Ecoles des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris.
Summary
This book explores the process of knowledge production in and about South Asia during the late medieval and early modern periods. Disseminated through the global networks of the early modern Portuguese empire (16th-18th centuries), this process was inextricably connected to the expansion of Catholicism and was geared to perpetuate political ambitions and cultural imaginary of the early modern Catholic protagonists and their communities in South Asia and beyond.
As an integral part of the Portuguese imperial 'information order' established in Asia, Catholic Orientalism was responsible for creating an epistemic tool box, in which several significant concepts were first tested and developed: such as "caste", "Brahmanism", "paganism", "the torrid zone", "oriental despotism", and many others. However, from the mid-18th century, the British empire changed the map of knowledge about South Asia and in the process Catholic Orientalism was both assimilated and discarded as tainted by unreasonable Catholicism and too close to equally unreasonable "native" Indian point of view.
Through a series of case studies, this book chronicles the rise and the decline of the Catholic knowledge of South Asia which had not been, at any point, only and simply "Portuguese". Multiple sources, polyglot archives and actors moving ever more swiftly through space and time, with divided loyalties, often disregarding "national" divisions and wearing many different hats are at the heart of the narrative which starts at the turn of the 16th century and ends by the end of the 18th.
Additional text
Containing a treasure trove of information, much of it from obscure and hard to access sources, this book is likely to prove an invaluable work of reference for many years to come.
