Portuguese Studies Review, Vol. 10, No. 2
(Released January 2003. Subscription Year 2002)

Andreu Martínez Alòs-Moner
European University Institute, Florence, Italy
"The Birth of a Mission: The Jesuit Patriarchate in Ethiopia"
Pp. 1-14

Abstract: This paper looks at the birth of the Catholic Patriarchate of Ethiopia, a "joint-venture" between the Portuguese crown, the Holy See and the Jesuit order, founded in the second half of the 16th century. It begins by focusing on the first years of the Jesuit order at the Portuguese court. This is followed by an inquiry into the reasons and occasions for the Portuguese Crown's decision to change its policy towards the Ethiopian monarchy and send religious missionaries instead of the traditional diplomatic visits. The author contends that the engagement of the Jesuit fathers in tasks that before had belonged merely to diplomats was linked to the contemporary crisis endured by the Estado da India. The Jesuits, with their optimism and ambitious goals, offered the Crown the prospect of overcoming its chronic shortage of means and people. The global dominion that the Lusitan rulers sought could be attained with the help of a religious order that proposed to do something similar, a global conversion and reform; a project at the very center of which was placed the mission to the "Prester John".

Ivana Elbl
Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada
"Prestige Considerations and the Changing Interest of the Portuguese Crown in Sub-Saharan Atlantic Africa, 1444-1580"
Pp. 15-36

Abstract: The article explores the role of prestige-seeking in the ups and downs of Portuguese interest in sub-Saharan Africa and in the value the Portuguese Crown put on cultivating diplomatic relations with the various African state in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. After decades of stressing and pursuing relations with Africa, Portugal downgraded and came to neglect the African diplomatic scene from the late 1510s onward. Interest then increased again, temporarily, in last quarter of the sixteenth century. What had declined was not so much the economic importance of sub-Saharan Africa, but its prestige and propaganda value. The economic and strategic significance of Portuguese involvement in Africa remained, but prestige had suffered. The discrepancy between the material utility and the perceptions of the Portuguese expansion in Africa raises a number of questions about the array and nature of forces behind the overseas expansion, and about the role of prestige as socio-political motivator. The dynamics of the Portuguese valuation of contacts with Africa demonstrate that in the era of the overseas expansion prestige was an important power-generating instrument and its acquisition was a vital objective in itself.

Francis A. Dutra
University of California, Santa Barbara
"New Light on Catherine of Bragança's Medical Practitioners: The Two António Ferreiras"
Pp. 37-51

Abstract: One of the serious problems facing scholars of early modern Portugal is the lack of accurate biographical dictionaries. Too often, two or more people with the same name are melded into one. This study looks at the two medical practitioners by the name of António Ferreira who accompanied Catherine of Bragança to England. One was a physician and later chief surgeon for the kingdom of Portugal (for most of the history of early modern Portugal the chief surgeon was always a physician). The other was an important surgeon and the author of a famous compendium on surgery. Both men were born in Lisbon, studied at the University of Coimbra, served in Lisbon's Hospital Real de Todos os Santos, were familiares of the Lisbon Inquisition, and were knights in the Order of Christ. In addition, both António Ferreiras were medical practitioners attached to Portugal's Royal Household and both testified at King Afonso VI's marriage annulment proceedings. This study separates the lives of these two men and discusses their role and the role of others in the medical care of Catherine of Bragança after she became Queen of England.

Gerhard Seibert
Centro de Estudos Africanos e Asiáticos (CEAA), Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical (IICT), Lisbon
"The February 1953 Massacre in São Tomé: Crack in the Salazarist Image of Multiracial Harmony and Impetus for Nationalist Demands for Independence"
Pp. 53-80

Abstract: In February 1953, on the orders of Governor Carlos Gorgulho the colonial police, supported by white colonists and African contract workers, unleashed a wave of violence against the native Creoles in São Tomé. The background of the bloody events was the shortage of labor on the plantations and fears of the islanders to become forced to work on the estates. The Creoles had always refused manual field work on the estates, since they considered it slave labor. From the onset, Gorgulho's policies aimed at resolving the labor problem in the archipelago. The massacre was his revenge on the Creoles, who, despite all his efforts, had continuously resisted labor on the estates. It also revealed the existing racial tensions between white colonists, imported contract workers, and the Creoles. The article analyses the causes of the massacre, reconstructs the events and discusses its current perception in both São Tomé and Portugal.

Stewart Lloyd-Jones
Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa (ISCTE), Lisbon
"The Slow Death of the First Republic"
Pp. 81-100

Abstract: This article argues that Salazar's rise to power was an almost inevitable consequence of the heterogeneous motives behind the 28 May 1926 military coup. In fact, there was not one, but several coups as the various factions wrestled for control of the state. This paper examines the role of these factions, and explores their contributions to the chronic instability that was a mark of the Military Dictatorship, and which prevented the emergence of a cohesive coalition of pro-democratic forces within it that could make common cause with democratic opposition forces. These divisions were both exploited and encouraged by Salazar as he proceeded to construct his own mythical persona as the only person capable of restoring order and calm to a society that had become tired of political and economic instability.

Steven Kyle
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
"Portugal and the Curse of Riches: Macro Distortions and Underdevelopment in Colonial Times"
Pp. 101-125

Abstract: This paper asks how, in economic terms, was being colonized by Portugal "different" for African countries than was being colonized by France or Britain? The answer to this question is examined in terms of Portugal's own lack of economic development. Most important is the fact that Portugal experienced a massive influx of foreign exchange (gold and revenue from the spice trade) during a period when other Northern European countries were undergoing the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution and the consequent transformations in their economies that this engendered. Portugal never underwent these changes until the twentieth century, due at least in part to what is commonly called "Dutch Disease" in the economics literature, a name for a pattern of problems afflicting resource rich countries which distorts their development and retards the growth of productive sectors of the economy. Portuguese colonies were consequently involved in this syndrome in much the same manner that outlying provinces of modern-day resource exporting countries are. The lack of development of Portugal itself can be seen as a powerful motivation for the pattern of settlement and exploitation of Portuguese Africa in the twentieth century, in that the large "exports" of unskilled labor and virtually complete marginalization of African populations from even menial labor in many instances was both more extreme than in other parts of Africa and a result of the inability of Portugal's own undeveloped economy to provide sufficient productive opportunities by itself.

Marion Kaplan
Tricoulet, Bazian, Montesquiou, France
"Pernambuco"
Pp. 127-41

Abstract: Not at all an academic appraisal, this general article arises from a visit to Brazil in May 2002. It is a journalist's perspective, based on personal encounters, impressions and immediately available facts. From the arrival of the Portuguese in Brazil in 1500, a great leap is taken to show some of what is happening today in Recife and the state of Pernambuco. The article elaborates on the vital role of the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (UFPE), examines the impact of the hydroelectric power company, CHESF, and explores the interplay of economic growth and tourist promotion. The conclusions are positive, among them the benefits in an irrigated sertão, the potential of extended education, the energy and technological entrepreneurship of many pernambucanos, the transformation of a bold frontier spirit to contemporary values.


Book Reviews: Da Costa e Silva, Alberto. A Manilha e o libambo. A Africa e a escravidão de 1500 a 1700. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Nova Fronteira, 2002 (John Thornton); Giles, Winona. Portuguese Women in Toronto. Gender, Immigration, and Nationalism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002 (Darlene Abreu-Ferreira); Page, Martin. The First Global Village. How Portugal Changed the World. Lisbon: Editorial Notícias, 2002 (Nagendra Rao); Blackmore, Josiah. Manifest Perdition. Shipwreck Narrative and the Disruption of Empire. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002 (Nagendra Rao); Janin-Thivos Tailland, Michèle. Inquisition et société au Portugal. Le cas du tribunal d'Evora. Paris: Centre Culturel Calouste Gulbenkian, 2001 (Javier Villa-Flores), Afolabi, Niyi. The Golden Cage: Regeneration in Lusophone African Literature and Culture. Trentu: Africa World Press, 2001 (Don Burness); De Brito, Pedro. British Wine Merchants in Porto Prior to the Methuen Treaty. Porto: Associação Luso-Britânica do Porto, 2000 (Darlene Abreu-Ferreira)..

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