Religion and Empire in Portuguese India : Conversion, Resistance, and the Making of Goa

How did the colonization of Goa in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries take place? How was it related to projects for the conversion of Goan colonial subjects to Catholicism? In Religion and Empire in Portuguese India , Ângela Barreto Xavier examines these questions through a reading of the relevant secular and missionary archives and texts. She shows how the twin drives of conversion and colonization in Portuguese India resulted in a variety of outcomes, ranging from negotiation to passive resistance to moments of extreme violence. Focusing on the rural hinterlands rather than the city of Goa itself, Barreto Xavier shows how Goan actors were able to seize hold of complex cultural resources in order to further their own projects and narrate their own myths and histories. In the process, she argues, Portuguese Goa emerged as a space with a specific identity that was a result of these contestations and interactions. The book de-essentializes the categories of colonizer and colonized, making visible instead their inner-group diversity of interests, their different modes of identification, and the specificity of local dynamics in their interactions and exchanges--in other words, the several threads that wove the fabric of colonial life. Contents 6 Preface 8 Glossary 12 Abbreviations 18 Maps 20 Introduction 26 1 Reform in the Kingdom, Reform in the Empire 42 The “Crisis of the Asian Empire” and the Political Culture of the Sixteenth Century 45 Other Images on Old Themes: Refractions from a Confessional Focus 53 2 Designing Conversion 72 “Apparatus and Disposition to Reform and Create a New World”9 75 Incentives for Conversion and the Legal-Political Framework 105 Dissenting Voices, Mismatched Interests 118 3 New Temples and New Priests: The Establishment of Religious Orders in Goan Villages 128 The Political, Institutional, and Economic Status of the Religious Orders 134 Methods of Implantation: A Case in the Village of Sirula 160 4 Tools of Christianisation: Shaping Memory, Understanding, and Will 178 “This will cost the Fathers much work and sweat, So that they may reap the fruit over much time” 182 “Such images cannot be said to be Gods”: Miracles and Cures as Instruments of Christianisation 206 5 Initial Moves: Discontent, Resistance, Acquiescence 224 The Social and Religious Landscape of the Island of Chorão 228 Dreams and Threats: Facing the Jesuit Presence 243 Reconstituting the Village Order: Crosses, Churches, and Rituals 257 6 The Martyrs of Cuncolim and Other Episodes of Resistance 269 The Village of Cuncolim Before 1583 273 Setting the Stage for Martyrdom 280 Periphery and Resistance 293 7 The Defence of the “Genuine Nobility”: Conflicts of Memory, Identity, and Power 303 Institutional Routines, Social Alignments, Discursive (Re)inventions 306 Brahman Nobility or Chardo Nobility? 330 Conclusion 353 Bibliography 364 Index 424 "Examines the colonisation of Goa in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the durability of Portuguese rule"-- Provided by publisher Examines the colonization of Goa in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the durability of Portuguese rule