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Relatorio from Portugal: The Archives and Libraries of Portugal and Their Significance for the Study of Brazilian History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

Ann Pescatello*
Affiliation:
Washington University
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In the Last Decade Scholars Have Undertaken a Reappraisal of Brazil's colonial experience conjunctly with Portugal's pioneering endeavors in imperial expansion and persistent occupation. Sequentially these dual facets have encouraged an appreciation of research materials in Portugal for the study of Brazilian history. Portugal's vast archives, excellent museums, and numerous libraries are abundant in historical manuscripts and printed works as are the various town halls, monasteries, private homes, and Misericordias, most of which remain insufficiently utilized by foreign scholars. Increased fellowship funds and more cosmopolitan academic attitudes have facilitated accessibility to geographically widespread collections, the benefits of which are immeasurable.

Type
Topical Review
Copyright
Copyright © 1970 by the University of Texas Press

References

Notes

1. Gwendolin B. Cobb, in her article, “Bancroft Library Microfilm: Portugal and her Empire,” HAHR, XXXIV (February 1954), 114-125, had discussed the “growing interest in things Luso-Brazilian” which, for a long time, had been ignored by all but Portuguese scholars.

2. See Fernando da Silva Correia, Origens e formação das misericordias (Lisboa, 1944).

3. See Harold Livermore, A History of Portugal (Oxford, 1940), and Livermore (ed.), Portugal and Brazil (Oxford, 1953), for descriptions of the earthquake destruction. According to the writings of numerous Europeans of the time, the quake served not only to destroy Lisbon, but also to encourage cynical assessment of man's values and abilities.

4. Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, Lisboa, cited hereinafter as AHU. The predecessor, the Arquivo Histórico Colonial, will be cited hereinafter as AHC.

5. The Belem district is one of the most famous and interesting areas in Portugal. It was from this quarter along the Tagus that much of Portuguese maritime history was made. Both the Tower and the Monastery are symbols of the Age of Discoverers and are built in distinctive Manuelin style.

6. In a personal communiqué from Dr. Iría, whom I would like to thank for the courtesies he extended to me at the AHU.

7. The Conselho Ultramarino and the Arquivo da Marinha are cited hereinafter as Conselho and AM respectively.

8. The series included: A Exploração do Atlantico; O Imperio do Oriente; O Imperio de Martocos; O Imperio Africano; Providencias Governaturas (which combined general legislation with special interest for the history of Portuguese overseas expansion).

9. The Biblioteca Nacional, Lisboa, cited hereinafter as BNL.

10. Pages 6-15 contain descriptions of microfilm funds of the AHU; see also pp. 58-59, 81-93.

11. The first, and abortive, attempt to create a Conselho occurred during the Spanish “captivity” when the administrative agency, the Conselho da India, was created in 1604, and patterned after the Consejo de Indias. Within eight years the Conselho da India was moribund. The imposing Conselho Ultramarino was finally resurrected on July 14, 1643, by decree of João IV, in order to invest responsibilities for the overseas provinces, which hitherto had been divided among many tribunals and sections preoccupied with other matters, into a single body. The administrative reforms of 1736 placed it under the newly-created Secretaria de Estado dos Negócios da a Dominios Ultramarinos, later remodeled into the Secretaria da Marinha e Ultramar by the Constitution of 1822. In 1910 the department became the Ministério da Marinha e Colónias and the following year was designated, simply, the Ministério das Colónias. (Its manuscripts at one time had been housed in the bnl.) The Arquivo de Conselho Ultramarino and the Arquivo do Ministério das Colónias are cited hereinafter as acu and amc, respectively.

12. The Arquivo de Marinha e Ultramar and the Arquivo Nacional Torre do Tombo, cited hereinafter as AMU and ANTT, respectively.

13. Note also that the AHU is today a departmental archive which acquires current files of the Ministério das Colónias and its subordinate bodies after a 10-year lapse.

14. There is some overlapping between caixas because of attachment of documents and copies of documents, of an earlier date, to later correspondence. To change the documents and classify them in rigid chronological order would have taken them out of context.

15. Edited by E. de Castro e Almeida in Vols. 31, 32, 34, 36-37, 39, 46, 50 and 71 of the Annaes da Biblioteca Nacional do Rio de Janeiro (Rio, 1913-1916).

16. Cobb, 119-123.

17. There is also a fifty-year rule which is waived only by ministerial authority.

18. See P. A. de Azevedo and A. Baiao, O Arquivo da Torre do Tombo. Sua Historia Corpos que o compoem e organização (Lisboa, 1905), and Eric Axelson, South-East Africa, 1488-1530 (London, 1940), Appendix V, for good historical coverage of the ANTT. I also wish to thank Dr. Pereira da Costa for his answers to a number of questions and for giving generously of his time.

19. The Corpo Chronologico, cited hereinafter as Corpo C. (Gwendolin Cobb, p. 118, overestimated the “very large collection (over 300,000 documents).” The number is considerably less, but the collection is still the largest and most important for overseas research.

20. The number of pages in maços is usually 400 to 800 pages, composed mainly of unsorted and unclassified manuscripts, poorly dated. Caixas contain 1200 to 1600 pages of manuscript, with each document filed in a separate folder with a date and an identifying title.

21. It was the practice of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century archivists to index documents in this manner.

22. The entire Gavetas have been published by the CEHU. All documents in them referring to overseas have been published in full; the documents that relate only to Portugal have merely been cited. It is the plan of the CEHU to publish the entire Corpo C according to the same scheme; see pp. 25-26 above and pp. 35-36 below.

23. Azevedo and Baiao, p. 37, cite 2,253 manuscript volumes.

24. These three sections contain a miscellany of documents which actually span a broad range of grants and privileges. I mention licenses, alms, etc., because they appear frequently.

25. All errors in this index were noted and corrected by Silva Marques in Index Indicum, p. 35.

26. The military orders were very prominent in the conquest of many overseas provinces. For a discussion of them and their records, see A. Baiao, “Algumas provenças de Torre do Tombo no Seculo XVI,” Anais das Bibliotecas e Arquivos de Portugal, II (1916).

27. Desembargo do Paço was the name of the long-time supreme tribunal of the kingdom and gave its name to the collection of documents which contain its deliberations.

28. The Santo Oficio itself dates from 1536.

29. The processos de habilitações here refer to the genealogical listings of the various “candidates” in the different places where the Inquisition was established.

30. The BNL is in the process of moving to a new building near the bullring. The move was supposed to be completed by 1970. In the meantime, various collections have been closed to consultation until the transfers are finished.

31. The Filmoteca Ultramarina Portuguesa and the Centro de Estudos Historicos Ultramarinos, cited hereinafter as Filmoteca and CEHU respectively.

32. As cited in the publication sheet of the CEHU and noted by Fr. da Silva Rego in an interview with the author. I should like to thank him for giving his time, on many occasions, to discuss the Filmoteca with me.

33. The Gavetas da Torre de Tombo have been published in six volumes. The documents from Madrid, London, Simancas, and other places have been published as Documentação Ultramarina Portuguesa, Vols. I to V; while Axelson has edited Documents on the Portuguese in Moçambique and Central Africa, in five volumes, with many more to come.

34. This appears in one volume, with the Catálogo section prepared by Dr. Maria de Lourdes Pinto do Souto, and the Roteiro by Dr. Maria Augusta Veiga e Sousa.

35. Institutions and individuals are welcome to order microfilms at the cost of 1½ Escudos (5) per frame, or a microcard (which contains up to 60 pages on a 4 x 6 film card) at 20 Escudos (or 75) per microcard.

36. Biblioteca da Ajuda da Lisboa, cited hereinafter as BAL.

37. A few catalogues on the various collections in Ajuda are being prepared by CEHU.

38. Much of this collection is housed in the ANTT.

39. The Arquiro Histórico do Ministério das Finanças, Lisboa, cited hereinafter as the AHMF.

40. To microfilm documents here one must obtain special permission from the Chefe Pessoa do Patrimonio, Direcção-Geral de Fazenda Publica, Ministério das Finanças.

41. The full names of both companies are: Companhia Geral do Commercio e Navegação de Pernambuco e Paraíba and the Companhia Geral do Commercio e Navegação da Pará e Maranhão.

42. Some of these archives are shunted from place to place, their possessions disarrayed, and their hours a matter of conjecture. Any aid in locating materials once in the archives, however, can be obtained from the functionaries, who are usually eager to oblige the researcher.

43. If one wishes to utilize the materials in these smaller institutions, obtain information on their location, hours, and current particulars from the Ministério de Educação Nacional, Divisão das Bibliotecas e Arquivos (ADDRESS: Campo dos Martíres da Patria, Lisboa). The Divisão keeps current all information of this nature. Both the Director, Dr. Luis Silveira, or his assistant director, Dr. Fernando Bandeira Ferreira, are helpful.

Briefly, the smaller archives and libraries include the Arquivo da Administração Militar, materials from 1641-1816; the Arquivo da Faculdade de Medicina de Lisboa, for Portuguese Empire medical history; the Arquivo Geral do Ministério do Interior; the Arquivo Geral do Ministéro da Justica; the Arquivo do Governo Civil de Lisboa; the Arquivo Histórico Municipal (of the Camara Municipal, Lisboa) has some records such as those of oil commerce between Portugal and overseas territories (1626-1884); the Arquivo do Hospital de São Jose; the Arquivo da Imprensa Nacional; the Arquivo da Junta do Credito Publico; the Arquivo da Misericordia de Lisboa; the Arquivo do Recolhimento de Lazaro Leitão; the Arquivo de São Vicente; the Arquivos de Confraries, Irmandades, Casas de Beneficencia e Igreja; and the Arquivos de Escola da Academia Nacional de Belas Artes.

44. For a good guide to the materials, see Dona Luisa da Fonseca's “Mapas e plantas do Brazil do Arquivo de Desenhos de Direcção da Arma de Engenharia,” in the Proceedings …, I (1950), 224-234.

45. See Virginia Rau (1953), pp. 192-194, for a detailed list of the holdings.

46. The Arquivo Geral do Ministério das Obras Publicas, cited hereinafter as AGMOP.

47. In the Boletim Internacional Biblioteca Luso-Brasileira, IV (January/March 1963), pp. 115-164, Lisbon.

48. Some of the collections housed here have larger sections of documentation in the ANTT or AHU; in the case of the Junta do Comercio, the documentation is in the ANTT and AHMF.

49. Virginia Rau, in her article cited above, overestimated the amounts of material in the AGMOP; this was especially true for the documentation she noted for the Pombaline companies and the Junta do Comercio. Dr. Nunes Costa claims that the collection did not approach 270 maços; the cards on the subjject indicate slightly more than 30 full bundles. Reappraisal and cataloging of the materials has shown far fewer than the number previously assumed for the AGMOP. Still, the small nuclei on the Junta and the Companies are extremely valuable. Also, there are about 40 maços or codices of the Montaria Mordo Reino of the original nucleus of the civil government of Lisbon, as well as documents from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. This collection is well indexed and has several annex codices. Very old documents from the Ministério das Obras Publicas, some from the eighteenth century, and others from the Ministério do Reino, are indexed on 71 note cards, with another 71 annex books also filed; several of the documents in this section also refer to the Pombal companies. There are, in addition, various ledgers and miscellaneous manuscripts.

50. For a detailed appraisal of this collection, see Henrique de Campos Ferreira Lima's “Documentos Manuscritos e cartograficos relativos ao Brazil que existem no Arquivo Histórico Militar,” in Congresso do Mundo Portugues, XI, pp. 222-241.

51. Eric Axelson, in his introduction to Portugal and the Scramble for Africa, 1875-91 (Johannesburg, 1967), outlines the difficulties for the scholar of Portuguese overseas history relative to the Foreign Ministry.

52. The Biblioteca da Academia das Ciencias de Lisboa, cited hereinafter as the BACL.

53. The Biblioteca e Arquivo da Assembleia Nacional, cited hereinafter as the BAAN.

54. See Virginia Rau (ed.), Documentos Ineditos da Casa de Cadavál Relativo a Brasil, Vols. I and II (Coimbra, 1964 and 1966).

55. The Filmoteca has microfilmed all 361 codices of this collection.

56. The publications have appeared in fourteen supplementary Boletims from 1935 to 1967. Most have been edited by the present director, Dr. M. Lopes de Almeida.

57. Cobb, pp. 118, 124, notes that this collection was microfilmed by the Univ. of Coimbra for the Bancroft Library in 1954.

58. This old catalogue, issued in sections, gives summaries of one or more pages on each manuscript relative to Portuguese America. All the indices can be obtained at the main desk in the manuscript room.

59. See Cobb, pp. 118, 124-125, for a description of the documents she had microfilmed for the Bancroft.

60. Dr. Iría, Director of the AHU, has done much research on the Algarve. In this Da Navegação Portuguesa no Índico no Século XVII (Lisboa, 1963), he discusses documents of the AHU and Faro, most of which are unpublished and almost completely unknown.

61. One of the principal avenues for promotion of research in Portugal have been the Luso-Brazilian Colloquiums, which have been held with some regularity over the past 18 years. During the first conference, in Washington, D. C., at the Library of Congress (October 18-21, 1950), one of the sessions was devoted to the “instruments of scholarship.” Charles Boxer's, “Some Considerations of Portuguese Colonial History,” stressed the need for guides and documentary publications from archival records relating to Portuguese civilization and expansion, important for the history of Portugal as well as of Brazil. Virginia Rau's “Arquivos de Portugal: Lisboa,” gave an account of the 25 or so archives in Lisbon, while Bailey Diffie's “Bibliography of the Principal Published Guides to Portuguese Archives and Libraries” fulfilled its purpose. All three of these significant articles can be found in the Proceedings of the International Colloquium on Luso-Brazilian Studies, edited by A. Merchant (Nashville, 1953). See also Os Arquivos e as Bibliotecas em Portugal by Antonio Ferrao (Coimbra, 1920), and Instituções Cientificas, Literarias e Artisticas Portugueses (Lisboa, Centro de Documentação Cientifica, 1953).