Jorge Flores - Centre Alexandre Koyré

Jorge Flores
Institut Universitaire Européen, Département d’histoire et civilisation, Florence
Professeur invité à l’EHESS, Paris, mai 2015
Conférences
1. Mercredi 6 mai, 17h-19h
Dans le cadre du séminaire d’Antonella Romano, Rafael Mandressi et Jean-Marc Besse, Savoirs et productions du monde au XVIe siècle : Lieux,
acteurs, échelles
EHESS, bât. France, salle 2 (rdc), 190-198 av. de France 75013 Paris
IMAGES AND EMPIRES
Early modern Western visual culture was strongly impacted by the “imperial factor”. Distance was partly negotiated through images, since – either for political
and economic business, or for the sake of curiosity - the members of the political, mercantile and cultural elites who did not travel outside Europe wanted and
needed to “see” those faraway places and peoples. On the other hand, and along with their writings, travelers, soldiers, administrators, scientists and missionaries
engaged in an overseas career, often drew to visually convey and “translate” their experiences. The production and dissemination of visual materials on Africa,
America and Asia in early modern Europe constitutes a rather complex problem. There are many issues to be taken into account, such as the interplay between
word and image, the nature of a given image (European? “native”? both?), or the form of the images in question (manuscript? printed?). One has also to address
the tricky issue of authorship, for numerous images equally belonged to their authors, engravers, publishers, collectors and readers; different people who perceived
those pictures differently, transforming them in myriad ways. Do images show reality or do they represent a constructed reality, according to a multiplicity of
agendas at stake? And, if one wants to look at the reverse side of this topic, how were European images perceived, appropriated and manipulated by non-European
societies? A thorough discussion of the Portuguese case can add some complexity to the ongoing debate about early modern visuality. When compared to other
European imperial powers, the Portuguese undoubtedly produced little visual materials and have printed them even less. But they drew puzzling ones, which
deserve to be discussed in the framework of a global early modern history of images.
2. Lundi 18 mai
Dans le cadre de la journée d’étude « Histoires et historiographies des empires ibériques », en collaboration avec le Centre des Mondes Américains
et le Centre Alexandre-Koyré
EHESS, bât. France, salle B (sous-sol), 190-198 av. de France 75013 Paris
THE WORLD OF MANUEL GODINHO DE ERÉDIA (ca 1558-1623)
Manuel Godinho de Erédia was born in Malacca either in 1558 or in 1563 and died in Goa ca. 1623. The son of a Portuguese soldier and a Malay “princess”, Erédia
was a mestizo and a somewhat puzzling figure in the context of Portuguese Asia, one that has been attracting the attention of scholars since the second half of
19th century. Professionally, he became simultaneously cartographer and cosmographer, ethnographer and chronicler, mathematician, botanist and mineralogist,
painter and about-to-be Jesuit missionary, genealogist and biblist, soldier and military engineer with an interest in shipbuilding. Erédia’s production is thus
extensive and diversified, mostly geographical treatises, “informations”, “discourses” and a considerable number of maps; writing, petitioning and drawing were
at the core of his professional and intellectual life. The present seminar intends to reconsider the figure of Erédia and analyze the rather complex profile of a
multifaceted and eccentric man who found himself at the crossroads of several cultural traditions. Erédia hold a multiple, composite identity, between his Malay
ancestry, his European (and Jesuit) education and his long experience as a Portuguese resident of Goa, familiar with its cultural and political elite. He therefore
constitutes the model of someone who managed to live between worlds (geographic, cultural, social), mastering the dominant cultural debates in Europe and its
social and political conventions. Ultimately, the study of Manuel Godinho de Erédia and of his work may contribute to a more balanced view about the ways in
which knowledge was produced and circulated between different cultural zones of the early modern world.
3. Mardi 19 mai, 13h30-16h30
Dans le cadre du séminaire du CEIAS, Actualité de la recherche sur l'Asie du Sud, avec la participation de Davesh Soneji, Faculty of Religious Studies,
McGill University, Canada, professeur invité à l’EHESS
EHESS, bât. France, salle 2 (rdc), 190-198 av. de France 75013 Paris
THE UNDERGROUND MOGOR : EUROPEAN « POOR » TEXTS ON MUGHAL INDIA
Studies about the European visions of the Mughal empire during its “golden age” have fundamentally concentrated on two main topics, anchored in two different
sets of texts. The first focus has been on the Jesuit missions to the court of the “Great Mughal” and their writings. The second line of research has concentrated
on the commercial race to reach the Mughal empire at a time when European trading companies came to the fore. To research the latter subject, covering the
last twenty years of Akbar’s rule and above all pertinent to the reign of Jahangir, one usually explores a group of 17th-century texts penned by authors coming from
Protestant Europe. English observers established their hegemony in this field and there can be no denying that Sir Thomas Roe’s embassy to Jahangir’s court in
1615-19 (and resulting sources) played a decisive role in formatting the Western knowledge about the Mughal Empire. European flashy texts on the Mughals
continued to be produced, published and circulated throughout the 17th century, the apex of such phenomenon being François Bernier’s account of the Mughal
War of Succession of 1656-1658 and subsequent rise of Emperor Aurangzeb. Side by side with such rich European imagery of Mughal India, somewhat “poorer”
authors were writing “alternative” texts which seem to have circulated through unflashy circuits and were far from achieving Bernier’s fame. Numerous Portuguese
materials in manuscript form fall into this category, but one should not essentialize this category, as many non-Portuguese texts can also be considered here, from
the “Relatione dell’Imperio Indico del Gran Mogul” penned by one of the celebrated Vechietti brothers in 1623 to the anonymous “Partenza del Re Gran Mogor
della Citta d’Agra per la Citta di Laor”, written by a native of Piemonte in 1638 and richly describing the moving of Shahjahan’s court to the latter city. Other pieces,
such as “hybrid texts” – Mughal materials disguised as European and often housed in the so-called European archive –, should also be studied along these lines.
4. Mercredi 27 mai, 17h-19h
Dans le cadre du séminaire de Dejanira Couto, Claudia Damesceno Fonseca et Catarina Madeira Santos, L'empire portugais, entre l'Amérique,
l'Afrique et l'Asie : perspectives coloniales et post-coloniales (XVe-XXIe siècle)
EHESS, 96 bd Raspail 75006 Paris, IMAf, salle de réunion, 2e étage
DIALOGICAL EMPIRE: THE POLITICAL DEBATE ABOUT OVERSEAS PORTUGAL THROUGH FICTIONAL WRITINGS
Broadly speaking, the present seminar intends to study the “venues” for, and multiple forms of, political debate and contest in an early modern imperial setting.
Focus will be put on the Portuguese empire and one will particularly look at the ways in which fictional writings – fictive letters, and especially imagined dialogues
– mirrored and triggered such debates and tensions in the 17th century. The dialogic form was deeply rooted in Western culture from Antiquity to the Renaissance
and it is also known that this literary device had a sizeable impact in early modern Iberia, making its way into Portugal’s overseas empire and respective cultural
practices. Among many other examples, we count imagined dialogues on (Portuguese) language (João de Barros, 1540; Pero de Magalhães Gândavo, 1574), as
well as on science (Dom João de Castro, before 1538), medicine (Garcia de Orta, 1563), religion (Father Manuel da Nóbrega, 1558) and painting (Francisco de
Holanda, 1548). While building on this context and set of rich precedents, the seminar will alternatively offer a close reading of four “political” dialogues penned
in the first half of the seventeenth-century that critically discuss imperial policies spanning different continents. Together with the celebrated Diálogo do Soldado
Prático by Diogo do Couto (in fact, two different dialogues, the second dated 1611-12), and the Diálogos das Grandezas do Brasil by Ambósio Fernandes Brandão
(1618), I will be presenting two lesser known pieces related to Sri Lanka: Dom Filipe Botelho’s Jornada de Uva ordenada a maneira de dialogo (1633) and the
anonymous Jornada do Reino de Uva (1635). I am currently preparing with Maria Augusta Lima Cruz an annotated critical edition of these two Jornadas.