Documental Anthology

DECADE OF ASIA --III*

João de Barros

[INTRODUCTION]

João de Barros [° ca 1496- † ca 1570] was one of the most respected Portuguese men of letters in the sixteenth century. Alongside his literary activities, he also dedicated himself to more prosaic matters, as in 1533 he was nominated feitor (Administrator) of the Casas (Government Offices) of Guinea and India. This important post gave him access to an inexhaustible source of information on the Orient, as that institution governed over the area and was an obligatory stopover for anyone on their way back to Portugal, following a more or less long period of service, over and above receiving unbelievable quantities of exotic Asian merchandise each year. All the letters, information and inventories sent by civil servants working in oriental countries under the Crown passed through there as well as details from private concerns. The post of Administrator consequently gave João de Barros a strategic observation post which allowed him to gather together an impressive quantity of material on a great variety of aspects of Portuguese presence in Asian in the years that followed.

The royal official appears to have been encouraged by King Dom João III [°1502-r.1521-†1557] in the sense of writing"[...] facts about Indian [...]" in his free time, and threw himself immediately into the preparation of a chronicle on Portuguese affairs, as around 1539 he had already completed the first draft of the four Décadas da Ásia (Decades of Asia) which in the ensuing years were revised and constantly added to whenever he received new information on the Orient as these works only just began being printed in 1552. In writing of the agreements and disagreements the Portuguese had with other peoples, João de Barros followed an extremely complicated method as he not only wrote in a circumstantial way in his compatriots' activities, but he also concerned himself with placing them properly into context. The physical ambiance and human aspects of where the Portuguese operated -- in travels for exploration and for trade, in naval combat and in embassies, in sieges and victories -- are described with great attention to detail. The Décadas [...] (Decades [...]) stand out not only as a synthesis of events in which the Portuguese were played the leading role in Asia, but also as a realistic documented summary on the geography of the Asian coast and the main activities and customs of the people who lived there and even on the history of some of these peoples.

From his strategic position in the Indian Government Office, João de Barros interviewed many of the protagonists of the Portuguese Expansion in the Far East, at the same time as carefully examining an enormous body of official and unofficial information on the journeys, trade and overseas acquisitions. However as if this were not enough, he also endeavoured to collect additional material from Asian sources which allowed him to form a cleared image of the area where these events were taking place. Throughout these years in India he was also receiving maps and some books printed in different oriental languages from his correspondents. Thanks to these efforts, he acquired a vast wealth of knowledge which he sought to adapt into the writing of the Décadas [...] (Decades [...]) and also in the preparation of a lost treatise on Geography to which he often referred.

Almost all the Oriental regions visited by the Portuguese throughout the first half of the sixteenth century warranted the attention of João de Barros. China seems to have impressed the historian most of all the other powers as he made a special effort when he was documenting Chinese material. In this way the Administrator of the Indian Government Office managed to obtain "[...] a book on Chinese cosmograpy printed by them [... which contained...] all aspects of the country like an itinerary [... and which he had translated by a Chinese slave specifically bought for...] interpreting these matters [... and who...] also knew how to read and write in our language." [Décadas [...] (Decades [...])] References to China are scattered throughout his various works yet the Década da Ásia -- III (Decade of Asia -- III), first published in 1563, merits special attention as it also includes a detailed description of the Middle Kingdom where the writer very painstakingly used the diverse material he had collected. The image of China presented by João de Barros was extraordinarily positive since the historian himself never tired of praising the wonders of that remote empire where "[...] all the possible government controls [...]" imaginable could be found.

* First edition: Lisbon, 1563.

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