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Accepted Paper:

Visions of Portuguese India in the Italian documentation of the 16th century  
Nunziatella Alessandrini (CHAM)

Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to discuss ideas about and visions of India, more specifically Portuguese India, as they were developed in the second half of the 16th century, when Portugal was about to be subjected to the Spanish rule. Its main goal is to see how Portuguese India was perceived and portrayed in the Italian documentation (merchant letters, travel accounts, and so forth) of the 16th century.

Paper long abstract:

At the beginning of the 16th century, the Portuguese created an overseas empire in the Orient. The Indian Ocean became the centre of Portuguese trading activities, linking strategic spots on the Indian coast to Lisbon. Since the establishment of the so-called Carreira da India, Italian merchants, above all Florentine economic operators, were involved in the Portuguese long-distance trade with the Orient.

Italian princely states were particularly attracted by everything that came from the Orient and developed a great interest in the narratives, particularly travel accounts, about Asian lands and peoples. Works relating the longs journey undertaken by travelers and merchants throughout Asia became thus fashionable readings which stirred the curiosity of many princes and kings, as the circulation enjoyed by the work of Giovan Battista Ramusio, Delle navigationi et viaggi, shows. In his work Ramusio collected the travel accounts of Portuguese authors, and texts produced by Italian travelers.

The dissemination of works of this sort within Italian courts during the 16th century, shows that the Orient, and particularly India, represented an interesting and fascinating topic. This paper aims to discuss ideas about and visions of India, more specifically Portuguese India, as they were developed in the second half of the 16th century, when Portugal was about to be subjected to the Spanish rule. Its main goal is to see how Portuguese India was perceived and portrayed in the Italian documentation of the 16th century.

Panel P19
Visions of Portuguese India, Portuguese visions of India, 16th-18th centuries
  Session 1