Paper short abstract:

The 19th century brought the raise of technology and science in Europe which resulted in getting nearer to places, especially by the sea (introduction of the steam and other innovations). While closer, the difference of scientific knowledge and technology made the others look far-away from us.

Paper long abstract:

A very recent work described the efficiency of technology and science in reducing the distance between countries and peoples with the example of the British Empire and Bombay. This applies to all the European Empires of the 19th century, as well as for the Portuguese. The steam on the seas, the typography and, later, the telegraph made possible to rule over distance and to have the perception of the gap between technologies and scientific knowledge dominated by colonizers and colonized. The colonized only accessed to these innovations by integrating the colonial system and the colonizer semiosphere. This resulted in epistemological operations for both sides.

Our questions are: how did the Portuguese, who based their arguments in keeping the colonies in the 19th century on a historical argument, worked on this? Portuguese were known as being adaptable and the first to exchange knowledge with the overseas communities; how were they bringing science and technology to their territories? Could Atlantic and Indian Oceans that always united people (even more now, with the decrease of distance) become the oceans which transported a science which divided people? Could science separate people and turn on arguments like otherness and sameness so absolute? Were the Portuguese forgetting a part of their historical legacy of tropical knowledge to implement a new colonial science? These are the challenges to rethink the role of the oceans not only in the political occupation or economic exploitation but also in terms of creation and reception of knowledge in the Portuguese empire.