2024 - 25 | Re-Editing the Portuguese Empire

As part of a growing international collaboration, Re-Editing the Portuguese Empire brought together researchers from Brazil and Oxford to explore how early Portuguese texts about Brazil can open up new conversations about epistemologies, empires, and indigenous cultures.

          The project looks again at sixteenth- and seventeenth-century accounts of Brazil, not just as colonial documents, but as sites where different ways of understanding the world—indigenous and European—met and mingled. By re-reading these texts today, we aim to bring them into current debates about the legacies of empire and the rights of communities in Brazil.

          Over the course of a week in Oxford, Brazilian researchers Marcelo Lachat (UNIFESP) and Sheila Hue (UERJ) joined Simon Park (Medieval and Modern Languages) and students and colleagues from the Portuguese Sub-Faculty for a series of conversations, talks, and workshops. Marcelo spoke about early Portuguese accounts of the Amazon, and Sheila presented her new edition of the Carta de Pêro Vaz de Caminha, showing how even in this well-known colonial text, glimpses of indigenous perspectives can still be found.

          The highlight of the week was a hands-on session with the Bodleian Library’s special collections. Participants explored rare materials including a sixteenth-century Portuguese portolan chart, Damião de Góis’s writings on Ethiopia—featuring a treatise by the ambassador Säga-Zä-'Ab—and a first edition of Gândavo’s 1578 description of Brazil, complete with handwritten notes revealing early readers’ curiosity about indigenous cultures. Prof. Vivien Kogut Lessa de Sá (Cambridge) also joined to share the story behind the Bodleian’s manuscript of a catechism in Tupi and its unexpected journey from Brazil to Oxford.

          The events brought together an interdisciplinary audience—from undergraduates in Portuguese to scholars in History and Music—and sparked exciting new connections. The collaboration has already led to an application to the British Academy’s Global Frontiers scheme, and lays the foundation for future joint projects between Oxford and Brazilian universities.