Indigenous colonial archives: micro-histories and comparisons

Indigenous colonial archives: micro-histories and comparisons

This project will examine indigenous practices of production, preservation, and circulation of paper records and written documentation in the Portuguese colonial empire. Imperial historians and students of colonialism have recently emphasized the links between power and knowledge, foregrounding archives as a distinctive feature of European colonial rule. Indigenous knowledge, in contrast, is approached conventionally as an oral tradition that was transformed into written form through the agency of European colonizers alone. This project both departs from and expands innovatively on both these notions, by exploring indigenous knowledge as also an archival formation. It is a central hypothesis of this study that the shared histories of European - and particularly Portuguese - colonialism and indigenous societies need to be understood in relation to a proliferation of vernacular archival cultures, literacy, and writing practices, so far little explored. It asks how and why indigenous cultures of writing, literate mediation, and document curating come into being in the context of colonial interactions; how they look like in relation to both indigenous cultural repertories and forms of governmentality and to histories of colonization, trade, conquest, evangelization, and state administration; and it considers the ways through which the colonizers themselves could relate to these varied archival cultures over time. The research will translate these issues into a set of comparative micro-historical studies on the social life of indigenous colonial documents and their related uses amongst distinct communities. Spanning over five centuries, from the 1500s to the 1960s-70s, the long Portuguese presence in Angola, Goa, and East Timor provides an appropriate context in which to investigate comparatively the historical significance of indigenous archival cultures in colonial encounters. Preceded by an original survey of indigenous records in Portuguese institutions, the project will explore a selection of revelatory biographies of indigenous archives held in, produced and/or put into circulation by village communities in rural South Asia (Goa), by indigenous kindgoms (reinos) in island Southeast Asia (Timor), and by African chieftaincies (sobados) in central Africa (Angola & Mozambique). Such study will thus offer an unprecedented historical anthropological reading of Lusophone colonialism and of its cultural legacies, from the perspective of distinct forms of archiving and producing documentation in indigenous societies. Through international scientific publications, conferences, a curated database, postgraduate training and teaching, it will provide scholars, archivists, curators, and heritage stakeholders with new ways to reassess the colonial and post-colonial significance of indigenous documental heritage, and it will pave the way for an original form of decolonizing the archival legacies of Portuguese imperialism and of colonialism more broadly.

 

Estatuto: 
Proponent entity
Financed: 
Yes
Entidades: 
Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia
Keywords: 

Archives, writing, colonialism, portuguese empire

This project will examine indigenous practices of production, preservation, and circulation of paper records and written documentation in the Portuguese colonial empire. Imperial historians and students of colonialism have recently emphasized the links between power and knowledge, foregrounding archives as a distinctive feature of European colonial rule. Indigenous knowledge, in contrast, is approached conventionally as an oral tradition that was transformed into written form through the agency of European colonizers alone. This project both departs from and expands innovatively on both these notions, by exploring indigenous knowledge as also an archival formation. It is a central hypothesis of this study that the shared histories of European - and particularly Portuguese - colonialism and indigenous societies need to be understood in relation to a proliferation of vernacular archival cultures, literacy, and writing practices, so far little explored. It asks how and why indigenous cultures of writing, literate mediation, and document curating come into being in the context of colonial interactions; how they look like in relation to both indigenous cultural repertories and forms of governmentality and to histories of colonization, trade, conquest, evangelization, and state administration; and it considers the ways through which the colonizers themselves could relate to these varied archival cultures over time. The research will translate these issues into a set of comparative micro-historical studies on the social life of indigenous colonial documents and their related uses amongst distinct communities. Spanning over five centuries, from the 1500s to the 1960s-70s, the long Portuguese presence in Angola, Goa, and East Timor provides an appropriate context in which to investigate comparatively the historical significance of indigenous archival cultures in colonial encounters. Preceded by an original survey of indigenous records in Portuguese institutions, the project will explore a selection of revelatory biographies of indigenous archives held in, produced and/or put into circulation by village communities in rural South Asia (Goa), by indigenous kindgoms (reinos) in island Southeast Asia (Timor), and by African chieftaincies (sobados) in central Africa (Angola & Mozambique). Such study will thus offer an unprecedented historical anthropological reading of Lusophone colonialism and of its cultural legacies, from the perspective of distinct forms of archiving and producing documentation in indigenous societies. Through international scientific publications, conferences, a curated database, postgraduate training and teaching, it will provide scholars, archivists, curators, and heritage stakeholders with new ways to reassess the colonial and post-colonial significance of indigenous documental heritage, and it will pave the way for an original form of decolonizing the archival legacies of Portuguese imperialism and of colonialism more broadly.

 

Observações: 
INDICO is funded by national funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., under "PTDC/HAR-HIS/28577/2017" project.
Parceria: 
Unintegrated
Catarina Madeira Santos

INDICO

Coordenador ICS 
Referência externa 
PTDC/HAR-HIS/28577/2017
Start Date: 
01/10/2018
End Date: 
30/09/2022
Duração: 
48 meses
Closed