The Enlightenment and Colonial Projects in Angola (1797-1802)

Diogo Ramada Curto1
Translated by Mariana de Moraes Silveira and Martyn Lyons

Originally published as: Diogo Ramada Curto, “Iluminismo e projectos coloniais para Angola (1797-1802),” in Frei Veloso e a Tipografia do Arco do Cego, eds. Ermelinda Moutinho Pataca and Fernando José Luna (São Paulo: Edusp, 2019), 25-45.

Throughout the eighteenth century, new bodies of knowledge associated with the use of reason were transferred from Europe to the territories of European colonial empires. Such transfers evidently entailed adjustments and appropriations, which were determined by the configurations of different cultures and local groups. It should also be noted, at least in passing, that colonial experiences provoked a wide range of responses: Raynal and Diderot’s criticisms of European colonizing projects are good examples. Enlightened rationality generated in Europe was gradually transferred to the colonized world by Europeans, but it was also permeable to extra-European modes and bodies of knowledge. Scientific expeditions, encyclopedic efforts to build an inventory of the world, reflections on new technologies, and studies of natural products increased considerably, rooted to a large extent in new ideas about political economy, military engineering, and natural history. At the same time, the reforms of colonial government introduced by the Bourbon monarchy and the Marquis of Pombal2 tried to put Enlightenment rationality into practice.3

Any inquiry into the ties between the Enlightenment and the European colonies must start by investigating cases in which such transfers occurred. They must, however, be situated within the bodies of knowledge and the political and economic processes that give them meaning. Otherwise, analyses that pay almost exclusive attention to the social life of objects and the autonomy of the institutions where knowledge is produced run two kinds of risk. First, there is a danger of eulogizing modernity and the types of rationality represented by the objects transferred and the institutions to which they were connected. Second, it is easy to overlook the ways in which the same enlightened rationality, with its modern traits, helped to oil the wheels of the machine of extortion and controlled exercise of violence in its concrete historical configurations.

Knowledge Transfer and the False Autonomy of Cultural Institutions

One of the key moments of Enlightenment knowledge transfer occurred in October 1797, when Dom Miguel António de Melo, governor of Angola, received a set of works printed in Lisbon from Dom Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho, minister of the Navy and Overseas Affairs. The package that arrived in Luanda contained books about natural products and technological instruments. Such works can be seen as central objects of a type of enlightened culture with a scientific bent but an essentially practical connotation, long ago identified and studied by Maria Odila da Silva Dias, which found one of its most intense expressions around the Arco do Cego print shop and literary house.4 The package contained nine printed works. The first two concerned cinnamon cultivation and its transfer from India to Brazil. Then came a memoir on distilling spirits. The fourth title dealt with methods for preparing cochineal; the following three small-format volumes dealt with the production of saltpeter. The eighth book discussed a new method for curing the plague, while the last volume concerned the therapeutic effects of the quina-quina plant.5 As the letter that accompanied the shipment stated, these editions were financed by the crown “to spread knowledge among the inhabitants of Brazil from which considerable advantages could stem.” It was up to Angola’s governor to put them to the “uses which best correspond to the benevolent intentions of His Majesty in increasing National Wealth.”6

Where identified, the authors were, with one exception, born in Brazil but had studied in Europe. The author of Memoria sobre o loureiro cinnamomo [Memoir on the Cinnamon Laurel Tree] was Manuel Jacinto Nogueira da Gama, who first appeared as a graduate of the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Coimbra, in the work sent to Luanda in 1797. In later works, he started signing as professed knight of the Order of St. Benedict of Avis, a graduate of the Faculties of Mathematics and Philosophy of the University of Coimbra, captain-lieutenant of the Royal Army, and professor of Mathematics at the Royal Naval Academy (1798); some years later, he was lieutenant-colonel of the Royal Corps of Engineers, inspector-general of the Minas Gerais captaincy’s nitrate mines and powder factory, and registrar of the Minas Gerais Board of the Royal Treasury (1803).7 João Manso Pereira, author of Memoria sobre a reforma dos alambiques [Memoir on the Reform of Distilleries], presented himself as emeritus regius professor of grammar in Rio de Janeiro. The following year, he devoted himself to studying how to transport spirits from Brazil to Portugal, having also published works on nitrate mines and annotated a translation into Portuguese of another work on distilleries.8

The name of Friar José Mariano da Conceição Veloso – who liked to be known as a reformed Friar minor of Rio de Janeiro province – did not appear in the list of books that arrived in Luanda. Such an omission can be explained by the fact that his presence was evident in the contents of the books. For instance, parallel to Nogueira da Gama’s work on cinnamon, starting in 1797 or 1798 Veloso himself published memoirs about the transfer of cinnamon and Indian black pepper to Brazil, at the initiative of Dom Francisco da Cunha e Meneses, governor of the State of India.9 The list sent to Luanda also mentioned Methodo de preparar a cochonilha segundo Stauton [sic] (Inglez) [Method for Preparing Cochineal According to Stauton [sic] (English)] (1797); this was probably another publication by Friar José Mariano da Conceição Veloso, since he himself reaffirmed his interest in cultivating the plant and discussed George Staunton’s research.10 Friar Veloso was also likely connected with the publication of two 1797 leaflets on the list concerning the production of saltpeter, a vital component of gunpowder:11 he also promoted a work about the production of saltpeter in Brazil at the Arco do Cego.12 Alongside books or printed leaflets about cinnamon, distilleries, cochineal and saltpeter, the package sent to Luanda contained a “Description of quina-quina”, an important drug for combating tropical fevers, to which Nogueira da Gama attributed an almost miraculous curative capacity.13 Friar Veloso and one of the most prolific Arco do Cego writers, José Ferreira da Silva, born in Santa Luzia do Sabará, ended up writing about the same product; da Silva may have done so at Veloso’s behest.14

The origins and activities of all the authors of the books sent to Angola – Manuel Jacinto Nogueira da Gama, João Manso Pereira, Friar Veloso, and José Ferreira da Silva – were connected to Brazil, which complicates our interpretation of the overseas transfer of works printed in Lisbon. Only one exception seems to prove the rule: the work published by the adventurer and traveler Leopold von Berchtold, which dealt with the method for curing the plague.15 In this case, the book was printed “in favor of those who sail to the Coast of Africa,” and it considered the extent to which the remedies might be useful there:

Our wise Physicians should decide: whether this remedy will be equally useful to the livestock of the National Garrisons on the coasts of Africa, Western and Eastern, and adjacent Islands, that is to say: Bissau, Cacheu, Judá, Angola, Benguela, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe, Mozambique, as it promises to be? Could any usefulness be found in coconut oils, and others that the natives employ?16

Since the list sent to Luanda contained several books whose themes would be taken up by the Arco do Cego print shop, it is interesting that the concern with the best method for preventing the plague, infectious diseases, and contagions was also discussed by José Ferreira da Silva, in a leaflet published by Arco do Cego.17

The works sent to Angola which have been identified were all dated 1797. Two of them were printed in João Procópio Correia da Silva’s workshop, a further two in the Régia Oficina Tipográfica [Royal Typographic Workshop], two more at João António da Silva’s workshop, while one came out of the Patriarchal workshop. It would be hard to draw conclusions about the role that typesetters played in establishing the meaning of these works. One observation, however, seems inescapable: this set of works generally published under the prince’s patronage coincides, in at least four cases, with houses owned by João Procópio and the Royal Workshop which, in collaboration with those owned by Simão Tadeu Ferreira and António Rodrigues Galhardo, later published Friar José Mariano da Conceição Veloso’s great compilation O Fazendeiro do Brazil [The Brazilian Farmer] (1799-1806).18 The agronomic nature of this work, which was clearly intended to modernize colonial Brazil, found its expression in the graphic apparatus, mainly visual, present throughout the various volumes. Veloso’s compilation relied on the collaboration of artists and engravers such as Manuel Luís Rodrigues Vianna, and others who signed Correia e Freitas and Sousa e Almeida. The names of the last two came with the additional note “In the Arco do Cego.”19 The collaboration between Lisbon print shops and the Arco do Cego suggests a context in which other houses sought royal patronage for their activities. Before Friar Veloso began producing books and engravings for the Arco do Cego, he organized several printed compilations of works pertaining not only to agriculture, but also to manufacture, commerce, and mineralogy.20

So far, the analysis has focused on a list of books sent to Angola, with mainly technical content, largely related to Friar Veloso and other Brazilians’ initiatives. Two conclusions are clear: first, the technical orientation, agronomical but not exclusively so, peculiar to a practical form of Enlightenment concerned with modernizing reforms and a transfer of models from Europe to the overseas colonies, at least in the version adopted by Friar Veloso, which predates the Arco do Cego print shop and literary house; second, instead of conceiving of such a print shop as an autonomous institution, it is worth looking into the collaborations and associations which connect it to broader frameworks of authors and typographic workshops with overlapping interests. In fact, another list of printed materials drafted around the same time confirms the idea that the meaning of the books produced by the Arco do Cego – far from presupposing the institution’s autonomy – implies a reconstitution of its relations with other sources of print production, especially by print shops interested in the same topics, starting at least from 1795.21

We should reject notions of the autonomy of such institutions which we now anachronistically call cultural. This caveat also applies to other cases that embody a recurrent narrative about the Enlightenment in Portugal and in Brazil. The same is true for the learned academies which, when seen as the ambivalent products of patronage and peer-group sociability, are not understood in their role as part of the dominant political culture of the eighteenth century.22 It is easy to recognize that the Royal Academy of Sciences was a creation contrary to Pombal’s ministry, sponsored by one of those excluded from it, the Duke of Lafões. He, in turn, sought to discipline and integrate the new intellectuals trained in the previous period. In response to the contempt for the Royal Academy expressed by Friar Manuel do Cenáculo, a Franciscan and one of the driving forces behind the teaching reforms that took place in the reign of Dom José, the Royal Maritime, Military and Geographic Society was established by Dom Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho, one of Pombal’s heirs. It is harder, however, to go beyond an interpretation based upon the simple tension between principles of patronage and intellectual sociability, favored by these same societies, and seek instead to understand them in the light of principles of power, of individual careers, and of processes within a wider political culture, invested with a strong imperial and colonial dimension.23

A Framework of Colonial Bodies of Knowledge

The bodies of knowledge transferred to Luanda in the letter and package sent by Dom Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho to Dom Miguel António de Melo might at first sight seem autonomous. They could, however, be considered marginal in relation to other bodies of knowledge involving controversial materials and projects, which were certainly far more important. In this regard, the social life of objects – that is, the life of a series of printed materials pertaining to the cultivation of cinnamon and cochineal, the production of saltpeter, a new technology for building distilleries etc. – must be assessed in relation to the place occupied by other topics, at least in the exchanges established between Luanda and Lisbon. Their recurrence in the correspondence between the minister and the governor certainly contradicts the false idea of the autonomy of so-called cultural institutions.

An inventory of topics which led to the mobilization of knowledge during Dom Miguel António de Melo’s governorship of Angola should start by taking into account the production of statistical charts, concerning the population (number of inhabitants, their territorial distribution, marriages, births and deaths, by year), trade balance and port traffic, as well as charts about “black subjects and those who live in separate settlements” and mortal diseases. Having arrived in Luanda on 28 July 1797, the new governor took up his office on August 1 and received orders from Dom Rodrigo on October 21 to send such charts.24 This request for information overrode previous orders dated September 14, 1796, sent to all captains-general in Africa and America. Dom Miguel António de Melo responded in early December 1797, sending blueprints of fortifications at Benguela and Novo Redondo, drawn up by the engineer Justino José de Andrade. He postponed shipping the “Geographic and Topographic Description of Angola,” produced by Luís Cândido Pinheiro Furtado between 1785 and 1787, until de Andrade’s blueprints of the Luanda fortifications were ready. He also sent news about the state of the population in Luanda and the garrisons at Ambaca, Pedras de Pungo Andongo, Cambambe, Massangano, Muxima, Novo Redondo, and Encoje. A third set of charts concerned the trade balance since 1785, but its dispatch was postponed from 1795 to 1797. Finally, statistics on military officials, Justice and Treasury workers, and other civilians were sent.25 The orders from Lisbon suggested that such population charts should be prepared in cooperation with parish priests and the ecclesiastical authorities. This provoked resistance, not least from the Bishop of Angola.26 Statistical charts were sent in the following years, revealing an obsession with new forms of graphic order.27 The governor equally sought to adapt the criteria for gathering information that would be sent to Lisbon to local possibilities of knowledge.28

While the production of knowledge translated into topographical and thematic charts tended to conquer the most varied domains of action within the colonial state, the main agents at the center of decision processes also asserted themselves through major wealth-producing projects. Under Dom Miguel António de Melo’s administration, three projects of very uneven direction and development were under discussion. The first attempted to improve the agricultural development of the colony. These attempts proved fleeting, starting with the book list we have already analyzed. Other initiatives, such as one in January 1798, saw Dom Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho put forward an explicit proposal to enhance agriculture by introducing new crops and perfecting old methods of cultivating the terrain. He recommended introducing oxen and plows to cultivate the land and spare much manpower, burning crushed cane in sugar mill furnaces, as practiced by the English and French in the West Indies, and bringing in incentives for farmers using such methods. The incentives were to be organized by the chambers.29 However, just as with the list of books about Brazil, such agricultural improvement projects – inspired by physiocratic political economy – were ill-suited to Angola. They were idealistic projects, as shown by the demand for a description of the methods for cultivating and processing foodstuffs exported by the colonies, “as well as of the machines that clean and peel cotton and coffee and very particularly of everything regarding sugar, its refinement, furnaces, and mills.”30

Alongside the fleeting, ill-fated attempt at agricultural development in Angola, mining, particularly of iron, was the object of a voluminous correspondence between the minister Dom Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho and the governor of Angola. The minister had plans to establish an iron foundry – an idea first proposed by his father, himself a well-known former governor of Angola, Dom Francisco de Sousa Coutinho. Dom Rodrigo, keen to please his superior, sought to push the project ahead.31 Dom Miguel António de Melo even sent him a paper “On Mineralogical Findings,” on September 19, 1799.32 The governor compiled many such reports, taking stock of the situation, evaluating the possibilities for incorporating local techniques, finding the perfect place to set up foundries near suitable supplies of firewood and clay and transport links, adopting a model of government administration and providing the financing rather than relying on a business contract to handle the project.33

Another major project in which Dom Miguel António de Melo was called to intervene was the plan to cross Africa from coast to coast. The idea stretched back to at least Pombal’s day, when Dom Francisco de Sousa Coutinho governed Angola. According to the governor, it could be traced back to “readings of travel narratives to which Dom Luiz da Cunha devoted himself while in Paris as Ambassador of His Majesty the King João V,” way back in 1745. The project for the crossing was formulated only later, in a memoir by Dom Francisco dated February 3, 1773.34 The project caused much ink to be spilled during the administration of Dom Miguel António de Melo. Dr. Francisco José de Lacerda e Almeida was active in gathering accounts by those with knowledge of the interior gained from their commercial activities. But the governor opposed the project, aimed at the internal and territorial colonization of Africa:

Starting from this part of the World, sailing round the Cape of Good Hope to get to the Eastern Coast of Africa and searching for the riches to be found there is not currently a very daunting enterprise. One has much more reason to fear that such riches may be lost when brought by land from Sena35 to Benguela through the various immense nations of barbarian Negroes. It is much harder to gather forces to tame them than for ships to go to the Eastern Coast. It is much more impracticable to find men who could establish themselves in the African Hinterland than sailors to man commercial vessels to visit the Eastern Coast […]. I wish I could either bring this colony to your Court so that Your Royal Highness and your Ministers could see with your own eyes the deplorable state it is in, or that Your Lordship could give me credit and convince yourself that Angola is not Brazil, that all that we attempt to do in Africa is bound to be lost, and whatever is spent in assets or in labor would be more profitable in America. The force and the vigor of the Portuguese Crown will never draw power from Angola, but from Brazil, and this colony in Africa is nothing but a means for those in Portuguese America to thrive through Agriculture and Mineralogy. It is very painful for me to find myself in a place in which, no matter how much I work, it is to no avail, because I lack either men or the things without which I cannot set them in motion.36

The governor of Angola drew on many bodies of knowledge during his administration. An inventory of what was analyzed so far includes the transfer of printed books of a technical nature, the production of thematic and statistical charts, proposals for agricultural projects, the mineralogical investigations which accompanied the plans for revitalizing an iron foundry and, lastly, the ideas and information about the crossing of Africa. This same order of practical knowledge applied to Enlightenment reason and science can be seen in several other areas, such as the importance of engineers, put forward at the time as though their technical knowledge was a requisite for good colonial government37 and the establishment of a postal service as a rational system of communication,38 as well as several other colonial projects such as the creation of a company for trade with Asia,39 studies of the economic or medicinal uses of natural products,40 the revitalization of the fishing industry41 and collecting artifacts for museums. This was an order of knowledge characterized by diverse strands of a practical Enlightenment involving economic and scientific projects such as transfers and local adaptations, attempts at gathering local produce to be sent to Europe, new systems of communication and thematic and statistical charts.

However, as with the list of books discussed previously, this order of knowledge proved idealistic, ephemeral, barely functional and thoroughly ill-suited to colonial Angola. To raise this order of knowledge to an autonomous level seems to be a mistake fostered by certain directions in cultural history, centered in the social life of objects and the role of institutions which are similarly treated as autonomous. An analytical emphasis on the social life of objects, such as scientific or technical books or the nature of colonial projects, rarely allows for a reconstitution of their broader framework. The excesses engendered by the analyses of institutions seen as cultural, apprehended in their internal logic, equally conceive of and essentialize them as instances of autonomous fields. It is in reaction to those deviations and false perceptions that the descriptive argument advanced here requires the reconstitution of the relevant context, so as to reveal the limits of the order of knowledge – starting with the incorporation of those technical and scientific books sent from Lisbon to Angola into institutions of culture such as academies or print shops.

The Colonial State in Angola

Controlling Violence and the Slave Trade

On June 5, 1798, Dom Miguel António de Melo informed Dom Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho back in the metropolis of his research into rosin, among several other major products of economical and medical utility. He identified a natural type of bitumen known as pissasphalt, describing its source and production cycle and referring to its use as ship caulking. It could be found in a mountain in the Induhy Range between the districts of Dande and Libongo, one and a half leagues from the delta of the Dande River, near the lands of the sobas42 Mueni-Lemba and Mueni-Cutumbo. Between fifteen and twenty barrels reached the Royal Arsenal in Luanda each year, at the unit price of a thousand reis, sent by the sobas, who thereby became exempt from paying tithes, to which all others were apparently subject. To increase production, the Royal Treasury would need to have the rosin collected at its own expense; daily salaries were too high even in those sobados.43 The alternative would be to “force them to work, even if gently,” but such a coercive measure would lead workers to desert. The governor continued: “because no Negro wants to work for greater profits offered to them, since only by becoming a slave and being watched very closely by his Master does the Negro cease to live in his natural state of idleness, on account of the influence of the climate and even the superstitious principles of which all Peoples of Western Africa are greatly and generally fond”.44

The governor of Angola’s ideas about rosin bring together some of the main features of the order of knowledge often conflated with the practical Enlightenment, which reveal encyclopedic concerns with inventorying nature and its commercial potential. Apart from expressing doubts and limits over the possibilities of moving from the inventorying and the description of rosin and other products to their economic exploitation, the same ideas help us to reconstitute the broader framework in which such an order of knowledge is located. Instead of seeking to reconstitute such a framework starting from multiple factors, it is better to focus on two main dimensions: first, to inquire about how violence is experienced and partially controlled by the colonial state; second, how the forms of organizing and commercializing labor are almost always connected to the existence of a slave market.

Controlling violence and the slave trade seem therefore to be the two main dimensions of a more general picture making sense of the aforementioned order of knowledge, which analysis tends to essentialize by creating a false idea of autonomy composed of fragments and objects of scientific modernization. The signs of the practical Enlightenment found in Angola at the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century can only be understood in the light of this more general framework, fundamentally constituted by two major axes of controlling violence and the slave trade, which are not always easily articulated with each other. For this reason, instead of continuing to construct an autonomous order of knowledge and organizing it around the transfers and adaptations of ideas and objects, it is better to see how the Enlightenment was used to rationalize colonial violence and the slave trade. In other words, the context in which transfers from Lisbon to Angola and vice versa occurred – such as the previously analyzed list of books sent by Dom Rodrigo and Dom Miguel’s report on rosin – was that of a colonial state interested in controlling violence and organizing the slave trade.

Two problems face those who seek to understand colonial societies in the course of their formation, like Angola. The first concerns the way in which the two principles under consideration related to each other: on the one hand, the formation of the colonial state, starting with the violent practices of extortion and participation in local wars and involving successive waves of militarization of the colonial state and external European powers; on the other, slavery and the labor market. The second, more specific, problem was no less important. It consists of knowing how to gauge the dimensions of the colonial state, especially since in this period its agents were often aware of the precarious nature of the forces available to them. Dom Miguel António de Melo’s instructions, correspondence and speeches allow for a reconstitution of such logic and a reflection on these problems.

The conception of the colonial state in question had a strong military dimension. The official classification of subject matters and the production of thematic charts about staff statistics reflect a militarized conception of the state. The discussion about fortresses, which mobilized bodies of knowledge and technologies calling for specialist military engineers, was another key subject. Several plans for military reforms were discussed during Dom Miguel António de Melo’s administration. This whole militarized conception of the state was justified by a scenario of international competition, frequent allusions to alliances and local collaborations, and as a response to the extremely violent behavior of settlers identified as convicts and captain-majors capable of practicing all sorts of extortion. In fact, the precarious and therefore ongoing process of inventing ways of controlling violence simply engendered violence itself. The militarization and regulation of such practices, which pointed towards normative and legal definitions, simultaneously created conflicts of jurisdiction and, perhaps more importantly, modes of appropriation of resources generated by the colonial state for the benefit of individuals or groups of individuals. The same is true of the system granting honors and titles, as well as new attempts at publicly regulating inheritances and forms of succession.

The collaboration of the Church in this enterprise, which provoked inevitable conflicts, should be seen as a product of a supposedly necessary demand to undertake missionary work and of the traditional expansion of Catholicism. The role of ecclesiastics did not, however, come even close to competing with the central process of exercising and controlling violence, including operations aimed at terrorizing populations. In any case, from an analytical point of view, the great difficulty consists in explaining the concrete configurations of exercising and controlling violence, in which successive projects for militarizing the colonial state developed, intersecting with market mechanisms and a system of credit always associated with the slave trade. The connection between politics and economics stands out in the discussions about the reform of customs duties, seen in counterpoint to a fiscal system based on tithes paid by indigenous communities, and in the protests formulated by Luanda merchants during Dom Miguel António de Melo’s administration.

In conclusion, and based upon Luanda and Dom Miguel António de Melo’s administration, only abstraction can attribute autonomous value to the knowledge transfers and to the social life of objects recorded during this late Enlightenment period. The uselessness and dysfunctional nature of the bodies of knowledge evoked in the list of books received in Luanda went hand in hand with a series of other themes and projects founded on specific bodies of knowledge, from the elaboration of population charts to the plans for an iron foundry. The transfer of knowledge brought about by the Enlightenment must be understood first and foremost in reference to this framework of knowledge employed by the colonial government, which rarely went beyond the project stage. Such bodies of knowledge can only be understood within a broader political and economic context capable of including the processes of exercise and control of violence associated with forms of colonial state building, however precarious. Rather than conceiving of Enlightenment knowledge transfers as being vested with an autonomous character, they should be placed in the central processes of colonial state-building and participation in an intense slave market. Only by breaking free from the ideas of the false autonomy of an order of knowledge and of culture is it possible to deconstruct the implicit eulogy of modernity contained in the bodies of knowledge transferred during the age of Enlightenment and seek to understand how those bodies of knowledge and rationality acted only as elements of intensification of the exploitation of Africans and of the extortion that was practiced in the name of their supposed inferiority.

  1. Professor, Department of Political Studies, Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Research Fellow, Universidade Nova de Lisboa (IPRI), Portugal.↩
  2. Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo (1699-1782), known as the Marquis of Pombal, was chief minister to King João I from 1750 until 1777. He played a central role in the reconstruction of Lisbon after the 1755 earthquake and led a series of administrative, economic, and educational reforms inspired by enlightened ideals (translators’ note).↩
  3. The production of statistics, seen as a “study and inquiry into the forces, wealth, population, and whatever other resources of a state”, was part of political economy, as stated in 1814 by a colonel- lieutenant attached to the Royal Naval Brigade, Miguel M. Franzini, Instrucções statisticas que por ordem do Excellentissimo e Reverendissimo Senhor Principal Souza compilou… (Lisbon: Impressão Régia, 1815), 3. On the first censuses of the Portuguese Kingdom, see Domingos António de Sousa Coutinho, Notas ao pretendido Manifesto da Nação Portugueza aos Soberanos e Povos da Europa (London: T. C. Hansard, 1821), 51-3. About the limits imposed upon statistical inquiry by the state’s difficulty in penetrating the territory, and the pioneering role of the Board of Trade from Pombal’s ministry to 1834, see Nuno Luís Madureira, As ideias e os números: ciência, administração e estatística em Portugal (Lisbon: Livros Horizonte, 2006), 90-1.↩
  4. The Arco do Cego was a Lisbon print shop active between 1799 and 1801. It was directed by José Mariano da Conceição Veloso (1741-1811), a friar and naturalist born in Brazil. See Maria Odila da Silva Dias, “Aspectos da ilustração no Brasil,” Revista do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro 278 (1968), 105-70, and the article by Eliana de Freitas Dutra in this issue (translators’ note).↩
  5. This seems to refer to a plant identified in Linnaean nomenclature as Coutarea hexandra, a member of the Rubiaceae family. It can be used as a substitute for quinine in the treatment of malaria (translators’ note).↩
  6. Arquivos de Angola, IV (1938), 25-6.↩
  7. Manuel Jacinto Nogueira Gama, Memoria sobre o loureiro cinnamomo, vulgo caneleira de Ceylão por ordem de Sua Alteza Real o Principe Nosso Senhor… Para acompanhar a remessa das plantas, que pelas Reais Ordens vão ser transportadas ao Brasil (Lisbon: Oficina Patriarcal, 1797); id., Theorica das funções analyticas, que contem os principios do calculo differencial (Lisbon: João Procópio da Silva Correia, 1798); id., Memoria sobre a absoluta necessidade, que ha, de Nitreiras nacionaes para a independencia e defensa dos Estados com a Descripção da origem, actual estado, e vantagens da Real Nitreira Artificial de Braço de Prata (Lisbon: Impressão Régia, 1803).↩
  8. João Manso Pereira, Memoria sobre a reforma dos alambiques ou de hum proprio para a distilação das aguas ardentes, offerecida a Sua Alteza Real o Principe do Brasil Nosso Senhor (Lisbon: Oficina de João Procópio Correia da Silva, 1797); id., Memoria sobre o methodo economico de transportar para Portugal a agua-ardente do Brazil com grande proveito dos fabricantes, e commerciantes, appresentada, e offerecida a Sua Alteza Real o Principe do Brazil (Lisbon: Oficina de Simão Tadeu Ferreira, 1798); id., Copia de huma carta sobre a nitreira artificial, estabelecida na villa de Santos, na capitania de S. Paulo, dirigida a esta corte por João Manso Pereira e publicada de ordem de S. Alteza Real o Principe Regente Nosso Senhor por Fr. José Mariano Velloso (Lisbon: Oficina da Casa Literária do Arco do Cego, 1800); id., Memoria sobre huma nova construcção do alambique para se fazer toda a sorte de distillações com maior economia, e maior proveito no residuo: sobre a distillação das aguas ardentes traduzida do francez pelo P. J. P. de A.; acrescentada e illustrada com as notas de João Manso Pereira (Lisbon: Impressão Régia, 1805). Cf. Carlos A. L. Filgueiras, “João Manso Pereira, químico empírico do Brasil colonial,” Química Nova 16, no. 2 (1993), 155-60.↩
  9. Friar José Mariano Veloso, Memoria sobre a cultura do loureiro cinamomo, vulgo canelleira de Ceilão, que acompanhou a remessa das plantas da mesma feita de Goa para o Brazil pelo Illustrissimo Francisco da Cunha Menezes, então governador, e capitão general do Estado da India (Lisbon: Oficina de Simão Tadeu Ferreira, 1798). He was also probably responsible for the publication of the anonymous leaflet that appears in the list sent to Luanda: Memoria sobre a caneleira, para acompanhar a remessa das plantas, que o Principe N. Senhor manda transportar para o Brazil (Lisbon: Régia Oficina Tipográfica, 1797). Friar Veloso is equally the author of the leaflet titled Memorias, e extractos sobre a pipereira negra (Piper nigrum L.) (Lisbon: Oficina de João Procópio Correia da Silva, 1798).↩
  10. Methodo de preparar a cochonilha segundo Stauton (Inglez) (Lisbon: Oficina de João Procópio Correia da Silva, 1797); Friar José Mariano da Conceição Veloso, Memoria sobre a cultura da urumbeba e sobre criação da cochonilha extrahida por M. Bertholet das observações feitas em Guaxaca por M. Thiery de Menonville; e copiada do V Tomo dos Annaes de Chymica (Lisbon: Oficina de Simão Tadeu Ferreira, 1799). One year later, Friar Veloso wrote that “I know, with Stauton [sic], that it hasn’t yet been decided whether the cochineal found in Rio de Janeiro or Santa Catarina is the same found in the wild in Mexico, or whether it is another species”, cf. O Fazendeiro do Brazil, II, III (Lisbon: Oficina de João Procópio Correia da Silva, 1800), IX.↩
  11. Memoria, ou extracto sobre o salitre, trasladada do Manual do Artilheiro de Theodoro d’Urtubie (Lisbon: Régia Oficina Tipográfica, 1797); Extracto do modo de se fazer o salitre nas fabricas de tabaco da Virginia (Lisbon: Oficina de João António da Silva, 1797). An unidentified “Memoria sobre a practica de se fazer o salitre” [“Memoir on the Practice of Making Saltpeter”] also appears in the list.↩
  12. Copia de huma carta sobre a nitreira artificial, estabelecida na villa de Santos, na capitania de S. Paulo, dirigida a esta corte por João Manso Pereira e publicada de ordem de S. Alteza Real o Principe Regente Nosso Senhor por Fr. José Mariano Velloso (Lisbon: Oficina da Casa Literária do Arco do Cego, 1800). It is worth noting that Manuel Jacinto Nogueira da Gama also showed interest in the same subject in Memoria sobre a absoluta necessidade, que ha, de Nitreiras nacionaes.↩
  13. Gama, Memoria sobre o loureiro cinnamomo, 36-7.↩
  14. Friar José Mariano da Conceição Veloso, Quinografia portugueza ou collecção de varias memorias sobre vinte e duas especies de quinas, tendentes ao seu descobrimento nos vastos dominios do Brasil (Lisbon: Oficina de João Procópio Correia da Silva, Impressor da Santa Igreja Patriarcal, 1799); José Ferreira da Silva, Observações sobre a propriedade da quina do Brasil por Andre Comparetti … traduzidas do italiano por ordem de S. Alteza Real o Principe Regente (Lisbon: Tipografia Calcográfica e Literária do Arco do Cego, 1801). The same author published Methodo com que se governa o estado de Raguza e Dalmacia, quando nos confins se percebe algum ataque de peste ou outro mal contagioso traduzido por ordem de S. Alteza Real o Principe Regente Nosso Senhor por … (Lisbon: Tipografia Calcográfica e Literária do Arco Cego, 1800); Historia dos principaes lazaretos d’Europa: acompanhada de differentes memorias sobre a peste, etc.: tirada da Collecçaõ de memorias sobre os estabelecimentos d’humanidade por João Howard membro da Sociedade Real; traduzido por ordem de S. Alteza Real Nosso Senhor por … (Lisbon: Tipografia Calcográfica e Litterária do Arco Cego, 1800); Manual pratico do lavrador: com hum tratado sobre as abelhas por Chabouillé; traduzido do frances por ordem de S. Alteza Real o Principe Regente Nosso Senhor por … (Lisbon: Tipografia Calcográfica e Litterária do Arco Cego, 1801).↩
  15. Leopold Berchtold, Exposiçaõ de hum novo remedio curativo, e preservativo da peste, presentemente usado com feliz successo no hospital de Santo Antonio de Esmyrna: recebida naquella cidade, e dada á luz para ser distribuida gratis pelo Conde Leopoldo de Berchtold, cavaleiro da Ordem Militar de Santo Estevão de Toscana; traduzida do italiano por ordem do… Senhor *** a favor dos que navegão para a Costa d’Africa (Lisbon: Oficina de João António da Silva, Impressor de Sua Magestade, 1797).↩
  16. Berchtold, Exposição de hum novo remédio curativo, 28.↩
  17. Silva, Methodo com que se governa o estado de Raguza e Dalmacia.↩
  18. Friar José Mariano da Conceição Veloso, O Fazendeiro do Brazil melhorado na economia rural dos generos já cultivados, e de outros, que se podem introduzir; e nas fabricas, que lhe são proprias, segundo o melhor, que se tem escrito a este assumpto… colligido de memorias estrangeiras, 5 vols. (Lisbon: Oficina de Simão Tadeu Ferreira, Oficina de João Procópio Correia da Silva, Régia Oficina Tipográfica, 1799-1806); id., Collecção de memorias inglezas sobre a cultura e commercio do linho canamo: tiradas de differentes authores que devem entrar no quinto tomo do Fazendeiro do Brazil: traduzidas de ordem de Sua Alteza Real o Principe do Brazil nosso senhor / e publicadas por … (Lisbon: Oficina de António Rodrigues Galhardo, 1799), the translation of the leaflet Descripção sobre a cultura do canamo, ou canave (Lisbon: Oficina de Simão Tadeu Ferreira, 1799). Friar Mariano was also a keen student of Linnaean science: see his translation Helminthologia portugueza, em que se descrevem alguns generos das duas primeiras ordens, intestinaes, e mollluscos da classe sexta do Reino Animal, vermes… segundo o sistema do cavalheiro Carlos Linne, por Jacques Barbut (Lisbon: Oficina de João Procópio Correia da Silva, Impressor da Santa Igreja Patriarcal, 1799); and the monumental Flora fluminensis, seu descriptiones plantarum praefectura fluminensi sponte nascentium, 12 vols. (Paris: Typographia Nationali Parisiis, 1825-1827). Friar Mariano additionally ordered the publication of a set of memoirs by other authors, with a physiocratic orientation and the aim of disseminating knowledge of agronomy: José Feliciano Fernandes Pinheiro, Cultura americana que contem huma relação do terreno, clima, producção, e agricultura das Colonias Britanicas no Norte da America, e nas Indias Occidentais, 2 vols. (Lisbon: Oficina de António Rodrigues Galhardo, 1799); id., Discursos apresentados á Meza da Agricultura… traduzidos da lingua ingleza por… (Lisbon: Tipografia Calcográfica, e Literária do Arco do Cego, 1800); José Gregório de Moraes Navarro, Discurso sobre o melhoramento da economia rustica do Brazil: pela introducção do arado, refórma das fornalhas, e conservação das suas mattas (Lisbon: Oficina de Simão Tadeu Ferreira, 1799). Friar Mariano equally published Manuel Arruda da Câmara, Memoria sobre a cultura dos algodoeiros (Lisbon: Oficina da Casa Literária do Arco do Cego, 1799), and Ensayo sobre o modo de melhorar as terras composto em francez por M. Patullo (Lisbon: Tipografia Calcográfica, Tipoplástica e Literária do Arco do Cego, 1801); José Caetano Gomes, Memoria sobre a cultura e productos da cana de assucar (Lisbon: Oficina da Casa Literária do Arco do Cego, 1800), I-II. One of the best illustrations of the Eurocentrism of these processes of knowledge transfer is found in the preface of this work: “Agriculture, the first, the most useful of Arts, the one that nourishes all others, and lays the basis for prosperity, and the power of states, is still in its infancy in Brazil, all plants are cultivated according to custom, and without principles; the light emanating from Europe is so weak when it reaches here, that it cannot enlighten us; no-one knows how to cultivate the most trivial things, which we could have in abundance. The produce of sugar cane, the most precious plant, is less than half of that which foreigners extract from the West Indies. Its cultivation is handed to slaves conducted by a foreman, with no talents other than those that his ferocity suggests; the manufacture of sugar and of spirits, executed by ignoramuses, who do not know the reasons for the facts or the nature of the different parts that constitute the liquids upon which they work; the owners of the factories looking with indifference at all these objects, judging them unworthy of application; it is therefore no surprise that such backwardness is seen in the cultivation and production of the sugar cane”.↩
  19. For example O Fazendeiro do Brazil, vol.1, part 1: “Engraving. Plan for the reform of grinders and milling wheels in sugar mills, by Jeronymo Vieira de Abreu”. Correia drew and Viana Lx.ª; “Reform of Furnaces”. Vianna des. e abr.; vol. 2, part 1: engravings with reference to Viana and Freitas and without the indication of having been made at the Arco do Cego; vol. 2, part 2 (Oficina de António Rodrigues Galhardo, 1800), indication in the engravings “Souza f. No Arco do Cego”; “Alm.da f. No Arco do Cego”; other engravings merely indicate “No Arco do Cego”; others still present no indications.↩
  20. As well as the works mentioned in the previous note, cf. Friar José Mariano da Conceição Veloso, Palladio portuguez, e Clarim de Pallas que annuncia periodicamente os novos descobrimentos, e melhoramentos n’agricultura, artes, manufacturas, commercio & offerecido aos Senhores Deputados da Real Junta do Commercio, 2 vols. (Lisbon: Oficina Patriarcal, 1796); Idem, Manual do mineralogico, ou esboço do reino mineral, dispostos segundo a analyse chimica por Mr. Torbern Bergman; traduzido e augmentado de notas por Mr. Monge, o moço; publicado por Mr. Ferber; ultimamente traduzido por Martim Francisco Ribeiro de Andrade Machado, 2 vols. (Lisbon: Oficina de João Procópio Correia da Silva, 1797). Just as Friar Mariano’s interests did not begin with the Arco do Cego, nor did they cease when it closed down, cf. id., Instrucções para o transporte por mar de arvores, plantas vivas, sementes, e de outras diversas curiosidades naturaes (Lisbon: Impressão Régia, 1805).↩
  21. A compilation of printed materials dating from 1795 to 1805, probably made under the patronage of Dom Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho, as suggested by the last printed artifact that Filinto Elísio dedicated to him (in a type of eulogy that also blossomed in the Arco do Cego), helps to place the Arco do Cego’s activities in context and demonstrates its place within a broader network. It is a miscellany housed in the National Library of Lisbon (SA 10616 P), presented in the following order: Silva, Methodo com que se governa o Estado de Raguza e Dalmacia; Gama, Memoria sobre a absoluta necessidade, que ha, de Nitreiras nacionais; Vicente Coelho de Seabra da Silva Teles, Memoria sobre a cultura do arros em Portugal, e suas conquistas (Lisbon: Arco do Cego, 1800); Memoria sobre as diversas salgas da sardinha (Lisbon: Régia Oficina Tipográfica, 1804); Demonstração das grandes utilidades, que devem resultar a todos aquelles, que emprehenderem a fiação, e tecelagem do algodão em Portugal, sem que lhe obste a fabricação de semelhantes manufacturas estrangeiras, e ainda mesmo a concorrencia das dos pórtos da Asia (Lisbon: Régia Oficina Tipográfica, 1795); António Carlos Ribeiro de Andrade Machado da Silva Araújo, trans., Propostas para formar por subscripção na metropole do Imperio Britanico huma instituição publica para derramar, e facilitar a geral introducção das uteis invenções mechanicas, e melhoramentos, e para ensinar por meyos de cursos de lições phylosophicas, e experiencias, aos communs fins da vida (Lisbon: Oficina de António Rodrigues Galhardo, 1799); José Joaquim da Cunha Azeredo Coutinho, Discurso sobre o Estado actual das minas do Brazil (Lisbon: Impressão Régia, 1804); José Joaquim da Cunha Azeredo Coutinho, Alegasão juridica … do Padroado da Coroa (Lisbon: Oficina de António Rodrigues Galhardo, 1804); Traducção de huma relação dos generos e fazendas proprias do consumo da Colonia do Rio da Prata, reino de Perú, e Presidencia do Chili, trasladada fielmente das folhas periodicas inglezas (London: [n. p.], 1799); Vicente Coelho de Seabra da Silva Teles, Memoria sobre os prejuisos causados pelas sepulturas dos cadaveres nos templos … publicada por Fr. José Mariano Velloso (Lisbon: Oficina da Casa Literária do Arco do Cego, 1800); Réponse à la lettre du Marquis de Penalva par un Portugais attaché à son souverain (no place of publication, 1805) – it is no coincidence that this leaflet, which is full of praise for Pombal and also circulated as a manuscript, precedes an ode dedicated to one of his godsons and followers, Dom Rodrigo. There is an ideological coherence in this combination that crosses two discursive genres: Francisco Manuel do Nascimento, Ode ao Ill.mo e Exm.º Senhor D. Rodrigo de Souza Coutinho (no place or date of publication).↩
  22. “A literary history should be founded not merely upon the sages and their works, analyzing them judicious critic (sic); but also upon academies, public schools, literary societies, libraries, and even the patrons who protect the arts and sciences,” Luís Duarte Vilela da Silva, Observações criticas sobre alguns artigos do Ensaio Estatistico do reino de Portugal e Algarves publicado em Paris por Adrien Balbi (Lisbon: Impressão Régia, 1823), 51.↩
  23. Manuel Jacinto Nogueira da Gama’s preface to his Memoria sobre a absoluta necessidade, que ha, de Nitreiras nacionaes… Lida na Secção publica da Sociedade Real Maritima, Militar, e Geografica de 19 de Janeiro de 1802, 3-7, provides a good example of the intersection of all these principles, seen through the prism of an individual career, as a means for the social accreditation of scientific knowledge: “It will seem inappropriate for me to deal with the Royal Artificial Nitrate Mine of Braço de Prata in this respectable Congress, particularly dedicated to the Drawing, Engraving, and Printing of Hydrographic, Geographic, and Military Charts. Astronomical observations and the resolution of Physical-Mathematical problems concerning the knowledge of the position of different points in our Globe, improvements in the instruments devoted not only to Astronomical observations made over land and sea, but also to the perfection of the Engraving and Printing of Charts, proposals and descriptions of instruments which will be preferably used in Geodesic works, plans of order and individuation, with which all works regarding knowledge should be made, and the determination of points for the Drawing, Engraving, and Printing of these Charts, are in fact the very object of this Royal Society, and should receive preferential attention from each one of its members. However, to a society that, such as this one, has as its ultimate objectives the security of the Royal and Merchant Navy, its increase, the increase of industry and commerce, the defense of the state, and the glory of its Nation, belong all and any object that may conspire to the same ends […]. Other reasons will also direct me towards the task I have set for myself. Having accomplished all the work that this Royal Society has made incumbent upon me, my name has still not appeared in the lists published so far in the Memoirs presented by its Members, whether about objects belonging partially or closely to the Institution, or about objects foreign to it, these being the most praised works, and with all the more reason because they are voluntarily undertaken, and therefore serve as irrefutable proof of the application, and the efforts that its Authors make as they contribute to the glory and credit of this Royal Society, I must expose the reasons that have led me astray from such enterprise”.↩
  24. Arquivos de Angola, vol. IV (1938), 19-23. On the dates of arrival and taking office, Arquivos de Angola, vol. II (1936), 345-7; Dom Miguel António de Melo swore in his successor, Dom Fernando António de Noronha, on August 24, 1802, idem, 265-6.↩
  25. Arquivos de Angola, second series, XVI, no. 66-67 (1959), 151.↩
  26. On 8 September 1799, the Bishop of Angola complained to Dom Rodrigo that the governor of Angola, Dom Miguel António de Melo, had “violated and oppressed not only ecclesiastic Immunity, but also Natural Law, in the person of Father Caetano dos Reis Portugal, taking his jurisdiction far beyond the fair and imperative limits that His Majesty has prescribed” (Historical Overseas Archive [Lisbon; henceforth AHU], Conselho Ultramarino, box 93, doc. 26). According to the Bishop, the governor wanted the parish priests to inform him weekly about individuals in their parishes, in what he considered to be an “innovation and exuberance”. The parish priests complied, providing a chart, about which the governor complained. The discussion was about fulfilling a notice issued on 21 October 1797, accompanied by respective instructions. There were, however, differences between the governor’s models and those sent by the Crown: “His Majesty, in the category of Marriages per annum, only wants to know the number, age, condition, and color of those who got married. The Gov additionally wants to know the name, the place of birth, the parentage etc., without even mentioning age in his models.HM, in the category of Deaths per annum, only wants to know the number, age, sex, condition, and color of the Deceased. The Gov additionally wants to know the name, the place of birth, the parentage, the state of the same deceased people, the street where they lived, the place where they were buried, if they received the sacraments or not, if they died having made a will or not, if they named executors, and who are they, if they left children of age or underage, legitimate or natural, if they named tutors or curators for those children and who are they etc.

    HM, in the category of Births per annum, wants to know the number, age, condition, and color of those who are born. The Gov additionally wants to know the day on which they were born, whether they are legitimate or illegitimate, their Parents’ names, the street in which they live, whether they are free by birth or enjoy liberty conceded by their Mother’s Master, and what is the name of the latter.

    HM, in this same category wants to know how many twins were born, how many living, and how many dead, alongside their respective differences. The Gov does not care nor mention any of this in his models.

    HM only wants one chart per year. The Governor wants a chart per week, and day by day, or rather, he wants the Reverend Parish Priests to give him a copy of the registries they have made in the parish records every week” (AHU, Conselho Ultramarino, box 93, doc. 21).↩

  27. AHU, Conselho Ultramarino, box 94, doc. 1: Population of Luanda; doc. 2: “Chart of the current state of the Infantry Company of the Massangano Garrison”; doc. 3: “Chart of ammunition and equipment, materials and combustibles needed for the Park of the City of São Paulo de Assunção of the Kingdom of Angola on January 1, 1800”; doc. 4: “Chart of the Militia Regiment of the City of São Paulo de Assunção of the Kingdom of Angola, where Francisco Mattozo de Andrade e Camara acts as Colonel, according to the new plan established in accordance with the Decree of August 7, 1796”; box 95, doc. 9, Memoir about trade with Angola.↩
  28. AHU, Conselho Ultramarino, box 95, doc. 42.↩
  29. Arquivos de Angola, IV (1938), 27.↩
  30. Arquivos de Angola, IV (1938), 28.↩
  31. AHU, Conselho Ultramarino, Angola, box 92, doc. 23 (office copyist from Dom Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho to Dom Miguel António de Melo: no. 20, “HM was flattered that Your Lordship shall soon manage to execute large scale iron work, and that it may come to be a great export product”, 4 June 1799).↩
  32. AHU, Conselho Ultramarino, box 93, doc. 38, 17 fls., doc. Published in Arquivos de Angola, I (1933), doc. 16.↩
  33. AHU, Conselho Ultramarino, Angola, box 97, doc. 25 (José da Silva Costa about the iron foundry, November 15, 1800); Arquivos de Angola, vol. IV (1938-1939), 31-3, 259-348; id., 2nd series, X, no. 39-42 (Jan-Oct. 1953), 189-96.↩
  34. AHU, Conselho Ultramarino, Angola, box 95, docs. 7 and 8 (March 8, 1800).↩
  35. A city in Mozambique, on the banks of the Zambezi River (translators’ note).↩
  36. “Letter from the Judge and General Magistrate João Alvares de Melo about the discovery of the Hinterlands between the Portuguese settlements in Eastern and Western Africa”, “Memoir by Brant Pontes about the communication of the Eastern Coast of Africa with its Western Coast – September 9, 1800”, Arquivos de Angola, vol. I, n.º 3 (Out., 1935); Arquivos de Angola, III, no.16-178 (Jan-March 1937), 33-52, maxime 35-44: “Report by Manoel Caetano Pereira, Merchant who explored the interior of Africa, up as far as the King Cazembé Settlement, or City, subordinated to its King, this King being closest to the Western Coast of Africa” (written by Dr. Francisco José Lacerda e Almeida, Tete, 22 March 1798). The governor also opposed the construction of garrisons in interior areas, in the hinterland, in order to avoid slave trafficking by other powers, especially England, AHU, Conselho Ultramarino, Angola, box 98, docs. 6, 9, 10, 13, 14, 17, 48 (January 1801).↩
  37. “On the suitable allowances for at least two hydraulic engineers, and two topographic engineers, an accountant, a physician, a surgeon, who should be sent to study etc., 21 October 1798”, Arquivos de Angola, 2nd series, I, no. 35-36 (January-June, 1952), 35-6 [previously published in Arquivos de Angola, IV (1938), 35-6]; “Establishment of a Chair of Arithmetic, Geometry, and Trigonometry, and Other Provisions for the Public Instruction of Angola, Including the Formalities for Appointing Teachers, etc. 19 August 1799”, Arquivos de Angola, III (1937), 209-11; AHU, Conselho Ultramarino, box 99, doc. 27 (6 March 1801, opinion on Justino José de Andrade, sergeant-major of the Royal Corps of Engineers, and his son José Cristino de Andrade, who intended to accompany his father to Lisbon, in order to study mathematical sciences). Overviews of military engineering, albeit focused on another area, are found in the roster of the “engineers with the patent of foreigners” who worked in Brazil, according to Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira, Viagem ao Brasil. A Expedição Philosophica pelas Capitanias do Pará, Rio Negro, Mato Grosso e Cuyabá, ed. José Pereira da Silva, III (n. p.: Kapa Editorial, 2003), 58-61; Rafael Moreira and Renata Malcher de Araújo, “A engenharia militar do século XVIII e a ocupação da Amazónia”, in Amazónia Felsínea. António José Landi. Itinerário artístico e científico de um arquitecto bolonhês na Amazónia do século XVIII, ed. Ana Maria Rodrigues (Lisbon: Comissão Nacional para as Comemorações dos Descobrimentos Portugueses, 1999), 173-95.↩
  38. Arquivos de Angola, II, no. 9-10 (June-July, 1936), 183-96; AHU, Conselho Ultramarino, box 99, doc. 19; P. José Agostinho de Macedo, in António de Morais e Silva, trans., Historia de Portugal composta em Inglez por huma Sociedade de Lietteratos, IV (Lisbon: Tipografia da Academia Real das Ciências, 1802), 142.↩
  39. Dom Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho to Dom Miguel António de Melo, “Let the enclosed plan for the establishment of a Portuguese company for commerce with Asia be examined”, Arquivos de Angola, I, no. 3 (Oct. 1935).↩
  40. “From Dom Miguel Antonio de Mello about Rosin, Resin, Sulfur and the medical uses of certain plants which are well attested by regular experiments – 5 June 1798”, Arquivos de Angola, I, no. 1 (Oct. 1933).↩
  41. Dom Miguel António de Melo, “Discussing the means and ways in which the fisheries can be restored, returning to the state of prosperity they once were in – 26 April 1798”, Arquivos de Angola, vol. I, no. 1 (Oct. 1933).↩
  42. Tribal chiefs in the region currently known as Angola (translators’ note).↩
  43. Territorial domain of a soba (translators’ note).↩
  44. “From Dom Miguel Antonio de Mello about Rosin, Resin, Sulfur, and the medical uses of certain plants which are well attested by regular experiments – June 5, 1798”, Arquivos de Angola, I, no. 1 (Oct. 1933). For an example of data collected by Europeans about African goods and forms of knowledge of medical or pharmaceutical interest, see the information provided by a “certain freed black woman” from Suriname about plants that can cure the plague translated by Friar José Mariano da Conceição Veloso, Colecção de memorias sobre a quassia amarga, e simaruba (Lisbon: Tipografia Calcográfica e Literária do Arco do Cego, 1801), 33-7.↩

Cite: Diogo Ramada Curto, “The Enlightenment and Colonial Projects in Angola (1797-1802),” Lingua Franca, Issue 7 (2021), https://sharpweb.org/linguafranca/2021-Curto.