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History of Goa, printed there

COTTINEAU DE KLOGUEN, Denis Louis and Miguel Vicente d'ABREU (translator).
Bosquejo historico de Goa escripto em inglez ... vertibo em Portuguez, e accrescentabo com algumas notas, e rectificações ...
Nova-Goa, Imprensa Nacional, 1858. 8vo. With a small illustration of one of the gates of Goa. Later half red morocco. VII, [1 blank] 5-"202" [=203], [1] pp.
€ 950
First and only edition in Portuguese of a description and history of the Portuguese colony in India. It describes the history of Goa and gives an overview of the religious establishments, population, government, religion, language, trade and industry, as well as on the behaviour and dress of the inhabitants. Several notes and excerpts from other authors were added by the translator and include a more recent description of Goa, as well as a list of publications on the revolution of 1821, descriptions of the activities of the inquisition and a description of the tomb of St. Francis Xaverius.
Written by a French priest who had visited Goa in 1829, it was originally published in Madras in 1831 as An historical sketch of Goa. With the colony surrounded by the much larger British possessions in India, the Goan elite tried to mimic the British model of empire. The belief that better knowledge led to better administration of the colony increased the need for studies such as those by Cottineau. "Despite the prevalence of detailed critical studies of the impact of the Portuguese on Goa in the form of economic histories or pamphlets, it was works such as Cottineau de Kloguens text that were said to represent the empiricist splendour achieved by the English academia, which Portuguese and Goans hoped to mimic... This combination of orientalist bureaucratic and ethnographic writing had begun to be admired and reproduced" (Pinto).
With an oval cut-out on the title-page and repaired; a very good copy. Pinto, Between empires, pp. 51-52; Scholberg, Bibliography of Goa and the Portuguese in India, C17.
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