Title: Medieval Goa: A socio-economic history
Author: Teotonio R. de Souza
Author: Teotonio R. de Souza
First edition: Concept Publishing Co., New Delhi, 1979.
Portuguese edition: Goa Medieval - A cidade e o interior no século XVII, Lisboa, Editorial Estampa, 1994.
Second Edition: Panaji, Goa 1556, 2009..
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Review of the first edition by Charles R.Boxer :
Some potential readers may feel that this relatively slim volume was lucky to get the author a PhD from the University of Poona, when its modest bulk is compared with the massive tomes which published dissertations are apt to become in Europe and the USA. Others, and they include this reviewer, may feel that this book is about the right size to have earned the author a PhD, since it breaks new ground in an interesting, convincing and well-documented way. Books of 500-1,000 pages are apt to leave the exhausted reader feeling that the author has emptied the whole of his notes and card-indexes into his work, and that he has nothing more to say. Medieval Goa, on the other hand, raises as many questions as it answers. While whetting the reader’s appetite, it does not satiate it.
The author’s choice of the seventeenth century for his study was determined by two factors. As all researchers in the Goa Historical Archives know, this is the earliest period for which the unpublished documentation is abundant. Secondly, only a detailed study of the seventeenth-century developments can lead to a fair assessment of the socio-economic changes initiated by the imposition and consolidation of Portuguese colonial rule in 1510-80. Portuguese jurisdiction for some 250 years was limited to the three talukas or provinces of Bardez, Tisvadi and Salcete., later designated as the ‘Old Conquests’ in order to distinguish them from the ‘New Conquests’, acquired in the second half of the eighteenth-century.
Teotonio de Souza’s careful analytical survey of seventeenth-century Goa is divided into two parts. The first deals with the “Rural Economy and Corporate Life”, and the second with “Urban Economy and Municipal Organization”. In them the author discerningly probes such vital problems as: what was the prevailing pattern of agrarian and social relations in the rural and urban sectors of the Goan economy? How did the growth of money economy influence the agrarian economy? What was the impact of Christianization upon Goan society and its economy? What was the degree of town development, and what was the extent of its interaction with the surrounding villages under its political control? What were the class interests in the urban and rural economies? Were there any definite ideological principles guiding the colonial policies of the Portuguese administration in Goa?
The author frankly admits that he has not been able to find clearly formulated answers to all the problems posed. But he has been able to make major contribution to all of them, through a critical reading and evaluation of the relevant documentation. For example, the history of the Goan village communities has attracted attention of previous investigators; but Teotonio de Souza has been able to correct, supplement and improve on their work in many respects. The book is rounded off by a “Bibliographical Essay”, which includes a survey of the available material in the Historical Archive and in private collections at Goa, and by appendixes containing pertinent extracts from the archives at Goa and in Europe. Of special interest to this reviewer are two lengthy petitions of the General Assemblies of Salcete Village Communities to the Crown, 1642, 1643 (pp. 241-48), which are highly critical of the Jesuits and invoke the help of the Inquisition against the Society, and the functions of village watchmen and tax-collectors as described in original documents (in private hands) of 1671-74 (pp.249-54). These documents are reproduced in English translation, as are all the others, save two in an indigenous script (pp. 232-240) which are provided with English summaries. Medieval Goa is well printed and produced, although page references for the maps and diagram listed on p. 16 have been inadvertently omitted (they should be : pp. 26, 52, 172).
An “Overview and Preview” (pp. 184-87) contains a piece of avowedly special pleading by the author, in which he demonstrates against the tendency of some non-Christian Goans to identity the indigenous Christian community as the sole collaborators and supporters of the Old Colonial regime prior to the liberal reforms of the nineteenth century. This myth had already been demolished by the late Dr. Panduronga Pissurlencar, a Hindu archivist and historian, who demonstrated conclusively from the abundant archival records, both Portuguese and Indian, that the elites of the Hindu community of Goa, although often oppressed by their Portuguese overlords, almost invariable served them with zeal and efficiency. One may, indeed go further, and argue, that the ramshackle Estado da India (“State of India”) would never have been economically viable for any length of time without the Saraswat Brahmins and the Gujarati Vanias, as Professor M.N. Pearson has shown elsewhere.
Where so much has been given, especially in the fields of land-tenure and village-life, it may seem churlish , to ask for more. This reviewer would have welcomed a few pages on the charitable institution of the Santa Casa de Misericórdia (“Holy House of Mercy”) which rates a bare mention on p. 145, and on the Crown Tobacco Monopoly , for which there is abundant documentation at Goa. But these are quibbles. Teotonio de Souza has done what he set out to do. He has also demonstrated the wealth of socio-economic material in the Historical Archive at Goa, to whose Director, Dr. V.T. Gune, and helpful staff, he pays a tribute which will be endorsed by all of us who have worked there. It only remains for the author and his graduate students to follow the paths which he has so eruditely opened.
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- C.R. Boxer, Indica, Bombay, March 1980, Vol. 17, No.1, pp. 87-89
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About the author:
Teotónio R. de Souza, founder-director of the Xavier Centre of Historical Research (Goa) during 1979-1994, is Professor and Head of the Department of History at the Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias in Lisbon since 1996. He is fellow of the Portuguese Academy of History (since 1983) and Geographical Society of Lisbon (since 2000). Author of Medieval Goa, editor of Journal Campus Social and several other books, has also published over a hundred research papers listed at http://tinyurl.com/5ke3zo
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