Women in the Portuguese Colonial Empire: The Theatre of Shadows

Introduction

Part I: Female Slavery

Chapter One
Memories of Slavery: Women and Human Trade in the Newspapers of Pernambuco, Brazil, from 1850 to 1888
Maria Ângela de Faria Grillo

Chapter Two
Black Slaves and the Practice of Witchcraft in Portugal During the Modern Era
Daniela Buono Calainho

Chapter Three
Female Slavery, Domestic Economy and Social Status in the Zambezi Prazos during the 18th Century
Eugénia Rodrigues

Chapter Four
The Contribution of the Anais de Vila Bela to the Study of Slavery in the Portuguese Empire
Leny Caselli Anzai

Chapter Five
Slave Women’s Children in the Portuguese Empire: Legal Status and its Enforcement
Margarida Seixas

Chapter Six
Women’s Work in the Fairs and Markets of Luanda
Selma Pantoja

Chapter Seven
Food and Religion: Women and the African-Brazilian Identity in the late Nineteenth Century
Zélia Bora

 

Part II: Literature and Female Voices

Chapter One
Autobiographic Writing and the Adoption of a Female Voice: A Portrait of Mariana Alcoforado’s letters
Betina Ruiz

Chapter Two
Representations of Gender in the Letters and Writings of St. Francis Xavier
Clara Sarmento

Chapter Three
Battle Against Silence: The Diary of Graciete Nogueira Batalha, A Teacher in Macao
Cristina Pinto da Silva

Chapter Four
Female Voices in the Fall of the Empire: O Esplendor de Portugal by António Lobo Antunes
Dalila Silva Lopes

Chapter Five
Ibicaba and the Exploitation of Swiss Immigrants in Brazil
Maria Helena Guimarães

Chapter Six
Settlers and Slavery in Brazil: The Need for a New Approach
Luisa Langford Correia dos Santos

Chapter Seven
Pre-Feminism in the 19th Century: Guiomar Torresão and her Baroness
Monica Rector

Chapter Eight
19th Century Women Travellers: A Female View on the Feminine Condition in Brazil
Teresinha Gema Lins Brandão Chaves

 

Part III: Cultural Behaviour

Chapter One
The Conquest of Public Space: Female Protagonism in the Religious Sphere (17th and 18th centuries)
Célia Maia Borges

Chapter Two
Equal Before the Law, Unequal in the Community: Education and Social Construction of Female Authority in East Timor
Daniel Schroeter Simião

Chapter Three
The Feminine Ideal of 18th Century Colonial Brazil
Maria de Deus Beites Manso

Chapter Four
Meanders of Female Subordination: When the Servant Becomes the Master
Isabel Pinto

Chapter Five
Gender and Notability: Portuguese Immigrant Women in the Societies of Beneficence in Brazil, 1854-1889
Larissa Patron Chaves

Chapter Six
Women and the Macao Holy House of Mercy
Leonor Seabra

Appendix
Bibliography
Contributors
Index

Women in the Portuguese Colonial Empire: The Theatre of Shadows compiles an extensive collection of essays on the status of women throughout the vast Portuguese colonial space, from Brazil to the Far East, crossing Europe, Africa and India, between the 16th and the 20th century. Absent or mystified, silenced or victimized, women in the History of Portugal and its colonial venture are the living example of the part historiographical discourse, ideology and popular memory have played in the construction of identities, their practices and representations. The production and critical consumption of History have long revealed countless gaps and silences within its own discourse. This book questions the reason for such gaps and silences and wonders about the real role of all those who do not or have never had access to power and to the perpetuating word, those whose voices have been systematically erased from sources and documents because of past or present attending interests.

Women in the Portuguese Colonial Empire: The Theatre of Shadows congregates a wide assortment of disciplines so as to provide multiple independent viewpoints, sources and methodologies. By bringing authors from around the world together, this work ensures that the various cultures and memories that are part of the global saga, as well as the various versions of the history of the Portuguese colonial empire may be heard.

REFERENCES

Barbara Watson Andaya, Asian Studies Program, University of Hawai’i, USA.
David Inglis, Department of Sociology, School of Social Science, University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom.
ECREA Newsletter, issue 4, June 2009, p. 5.
IIAS Newsletter, nº 48, Summer 2008, p. 46; nº 50, Spring 2009, p. 30.
Philip Rothwell, School of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers, State University of New Jersey.
Portal de la Comunicación InCom-UAB, Institut de la Comunicació, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona.
New Books on Women, Gender, & Feminism, nos. 58–59, University of Wisconsin, Spring–Fall 2011, pp. 27 and 90.
Websites: IIAS (International Intitute for Asian Studies) Network; Net Humanities and Social Sciences Online; Forum for Medieval and Renaissance Studies in Ireland; Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical; UNJobs – A Swiss Association; ABES – Agence Bibliographique de L’Enseignement Supérieur.

REVIEWS

Michael Pearson (University of Technology, Sydney).
IIAS (International Institute for Asian Studies) Newsletter, nº 51, Summer 2009, p. 31.
Cathryn Clayton (University of Hawai’i at Manoa), Journal of Global History, vol. 4, issue 03, London School of Economics and Political Science, Nov. 2009, pp. 506-7.
Hilary Owen (University of Manchester), Ellipsis: Journal of the American Portuguese Studies Association, vol. 7, 2009, pp. 173-6.

LIBRARIES

According to the World Catalogue, this book is available in 1172 libraries around the world (september 2022). LINK

QUOTES

1. Eric Morier-Genoud e Michel Cahen, Imperial Migrations: Colonial Communities and Diaspora in the Portuguese World. Londres: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012, pp. 35-6.
2. Marcella Fultz (Towson University, Maryland), “Bibliography of Books and Articles Published in English on Colonialism and Imperialism in 2008”, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, vol. 10, nº 2. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Fall 2009.
3. Roquinaldo Ferreira, Cross-Cultural Exchange in the Atlantic World: Angola and Brazil during the Era of Slave Trade. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012, p. 133.
4. Rhian Atkin, Paul Melo e Castro, Raquel Ribeiro, “Portuguese Studies – Literature, 1928 to the present day”, The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies, vol. 70, 2008, general editor Stephen Parkinson. Leeds: Maney Publishing for the Modern Humanities Research, 2010, pp. 418 e 1044.
5. Mariana Candido (Princeton University, USA), “Los lazos que unen Centroamérica a un puerto africano del Atlántico Sur. Benguela y la Trata de esclavos, 1617-1800”, Boletín AFEHC – Asociación para el Fomento de los Estudios Históricos en Centroamérica, nº 55, 4 diciembre 2012.
6. Mariana Candido (Princeton University, USA), “Aguida Gonçalves da Silva, unedona à Benguela à la fin du XVIII^e siècle”, Brésil(s) – Sciences Humaines et Sociales, nº 1, 2012.
7. Sarah Owens e Jane Mangan (eds.), Women of the Iberian Atlantic. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2012, pp. 13, 16, 32 e 276.
8. Olatunji Ojo e Nadine Hunt (eds.), Slavery in Africa and the Caribbean: A History of Enslavement and Identity since the eighteenth century. New York: I.B.Tauris, 2012, p. 215.
9. Elizabeth S. Cohen, “Women on the margins”, The Ashgate Research Companion to Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe, eds. Jane Couchman, Katherine McIver, Allyson Poska. Ashagte e-book, 2013.
10. Ema Ribeiro Pires e Maria de Fátima Nunes, “Práticas científicas e colonialismo tardio em Portugal: acerca da (in)visibilidade de género em narrativas sobre quotidianos asiáticos”, Cadernos Pagu, nº 49,  Univ. Campinas, 2017. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/18094449201700490011. 
11. Sylvia Yazid, “Post Military Intervention: Protecting and Empowering Women in Post-Conflict Timor-Leste”, Military Interventions: Considerations from Philosophy and Political Science, eds. Christian Neuhäuser e Christoph Schuck. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2017, pp. 273 e 282.
12. Vanessa Oliveira, “The Gendered Dimension of Trade: Female Traders in Nineteenth Century Luanda”, Portuguese Studies Review 23:2, 2015, pp. 93-121.
13. Rômulo da Silva Ehalt, Dissertação de Doutoramento Jesuits and the Problem of Slavery in Early Modern Japan, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, 2018, pp. 32 e 599.
14. Maria de Deus Manso e Leonor Seabra, “Escravatura, concubinagem e casamento em Macau: séculos XVI-XVIII”, Afro-Ásianº 49, Janeiro/Junho 2014. DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0002-05912014000100004.
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16. Vanessa Oliveira, “Women, trade and landed property in Africa”, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 54:3 (2020): 367-371. DOI: 10.1080/00083968.2020.1749680
17. Vanessa Oliveira, “Donas, Pretas Livres e Escravas Em Luanda (Séc. XIX)”, Estudos Ibero-Americanos, 44:3 (2018): 447-56. doi:10.15448/1980-864X.2018.3.29583
18. Stuart McManus, “Partus Sequitur Ventrem in Theory and Practice: Slavery and Reproduction in Early Modern Portuguese Asia”, Gender and History, 32:3 (2020): 542–61. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0424.12499
19. Vasco Gil Calado, Drogas em combate. Usos e significados das substâncias psicoativas na Guerra Colonial Portuguesa, Dissertação de Doutoramento em Antropologia, Escola de Ciências Sociais, ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, 2018.