Thesiss

The following dissertation traces the convergence of science, culture, and politics in Portugal’s most important tropical colonies—Goa, India and Bahia, Brazil. It shows how contradictions between an idealized colonial order and the exigencies of settlement patterned debates ove…

This dissertation develops an understanding of ardent submission to coercive authority through a historical-ethnographic study of the missionary encounter in colonial Goa—the religious and political capital of the Portuguese Empire in Asia. After its conquest in 1510, Goa was su…