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Colonial experience did have an impact in the construction of caste as a common sense social category in the Portuguese world. This category would mainly be applied, eventually, to Indian social groups. What explains this difference? Why did the Portuguese abroad selected it to perceive and describe humans, while, when at home, this use was not so immediate and obvious? Is the scale of civility that operated in the Portuguese world somehow related with these differences? Since "casta" was initially used to refer plants and animals, was it less appropriated to refer "metropolitan" Portuguese, whose humanity was unquestionable?

Inventories of goods, where cattle and slaves were located in the same category of commodities, are very telling about the easy associations established between humanity and beasts. In some of them, the word "casta" also appears. Was there an ambivalence, a hesitation, even an anxiety, that shaped the ways the Portuguese operated in the moment of finding the right words to define new things Indian social groups?

Further analysis is needed in order to answer properly these questions. Still, in contrast with the previous hypothesis, the findings of this essay show that in early modern India, the uses of "casta" associated it more with "chaste" and "castus" than with "raza". The association with "raza" which evoked immediately the realm of animals, as well as the people of Jewish and Moorish ascent was rare in early modern India. If in India the "animal link" does not explain the selection of the word by the Portuguese, some data indicates that in Brazil these uses could be otherwise, as John Manuel Monteiro has already demonstrated.

Can we find differences in the uses of the word "casta"? Did it have a similar impact in the Atlantic societies as it had in the Indian Asian one? These questions invite us to expand this enquiry to the Atlantic world. My aim is to engage, in the near future, in a comparison between the circulation and dissemination of the word "casta" in the Indian and in the Atlantic worlds, focusing on Mexico, the immediate counterpart of the Indian experience.

This comparison requires, obviously, several methodological precautions. However, I am convinced that we need to pursue it in order to complexify our understandings of the experiences of caste in the early-modern period. The Mexican system has not been interpreted yet as the key to understanding contemporary Mexico, even if some of its diachronic consequences were very explicit in the nineteenth-century "guerra das castas".

Also in contrast with the Indian castes, where endogamy prevailed, mixed-blood people constituted Mexican castes. Another difference is that occupation a variable that was important in the Indian case was not crucial in Mexico either. Instead, the quality of people "calidad", somehow absent as such in the Indian experience, was a relevant variable to assign someone to a certain Mexican caste.

In spite of the differences of longevity, scale, interest of scholarship, and impact in social theory, there are similarities between the Indian and the Mexican cases and castes that justify a parallel enquiry. In both cases, ethnicity was an important variable. This means that for ethnic reasons or for reasons of "nation" the "pure Spaniards" were not included in the Mexican caste-system; somehow a positive parallel of the exclusion of the "untouchables" from the Indian one.


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Both systems excluded some people, and in both for ethnic reasons. Adding to that, similarly to its Asian counterpart, depending on the marriages and the social groups involved in them which had more or less Spanish blood , Mexican people could be ranked in different positions in a very complex and nuanced hierarchy. They intended to verify as in the Mexican case the amount of Spanish blood of a certain person in order to locate him or her in the scale of "castas", or out of it; or to ensure as in India the purity of blood of another one, permitting to ascribe or expel him or her to or from an upper caste those that claimed purity of blood.

In both cases, castes were tools of inclusion and exclusion, as well as forms of differentiation, organization and hierarchization of multi-ethnic and multicultural societies. Can the parallels identified in these two geographically and culturally distant territories be attributed to the Iberian imperial presence in both? Independently of the pre-existing local systems of ranking people, the interference of Iberian imperial rule was surely relevant for the discursive invention and therefore, and in certain ways, social invention of both systems.

Still, this assumption does not explain why the word "casta" became so powerful. Only further research can provide data that will help us to understand these new problems. Collegio das Artes da Companhia de Jesus, Cartas de Affonso de Albuquerque. Academia Real das Sciencias de Lisboa, Historia do descobrimento e conquista da India pelos Poruguezes.

Matteo de Castro profilo di una figura emblematica del conflitto giurisdizionale tra Goa e Roma nel secolo Typographia da Academia Real das Sciencias, Publisher Asian Educational Services, Imprensa da Universidade, Low Price Publications, The Livro da Seita dos Indios Gentios. Gavetas da Torre do Tombo. Chronica do Serenissimo Senhor Rei D. Miguel Manescal da Costa, Linschoten, Jan Huyghen van. Itinerario, voyage ofte schipvaert naer Oost ofte Portugaels Indien.

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Xavierii, Santi Francisci, and Alessandro Valignano. Monumenta Xaveriana, ex autographis vel ex antiquioribus exemplis collecta. Gabrielis Lopez del Horno, The Census in British India. Intelligence Gathering and Social Knowledge in India, Cambridge University Press, From the Crusades to the Twentieth century. Princeton University Press, Caste and identity in colonial Mexico. University of Connecticut, Imagining identity in New Spain: University of Texas Press, Other Words and Other Worlds".

Race and Blood in the Iberian World. Spaniards, Caciques and Indians: Colonialism and its forms of knowledge, The British in India. Caste in a Changing World: The Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmans, University of California, Columbia University Press, Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. As castas Hindus de Goa. Mestizaje and the Cuadros de Castas: University of Minnesota, Black Africans and Native Americans: Caste and Race in India. Les quatre parties du monde.

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Hispanic American Historical Review The Saint in the Banyan Tree: Christianity and Caste Society in India. University of California Press, Rethinking Modern European Inte llectual History. McMahon and Samuel Moyn. Cadernos de Estudos Sefarditas 4 O sistema das castas ensaio historico-sociologico. The Interpretation of Caste.

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Latin American Caste System: Identity Narratives in Goan Elites". Portuguese Empire, Indian Knowledge, 16thth centuries. All the contents of this journal, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. Services on Demand Article.

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English pdf Article in xml format Article references How to cite this article Automatic translation Send this article by e-mail. Abstract This essay discusses the circulation of the language of caste in the Indian world in the context of the Portuguese Empire. Introduction This essay presents the first results of wider research on the connections between the construction and circulation of the language of caste as a social category in early-modern India and Mexico and the role played by Iberians in this process. For Jaques, caste was the right word to differentiate nations: For example, one of these reports associated caste with other familiar social rules, and stated: No one ignores that the first requisite to marry is the equality of blood and nobility of husband and wife; if there is difference between them concerning the blood, the superior one refuses the alliance.

This is a common practice in the world, especially among the natives of this land. They belong to different castes and do not mix with those that do not belong to the same caste. From the Indian World to the Atlantic As said before, the frequency of the word was higher in India than in the kingdom of Portugal. Notas 1 Sumit Guha, Beyond Caste. Brill, ; since it is impossible to refer here all the bibliography about the Indian caste-system, in this essay I provide only an operational selection of it.

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For other cases, see, for example: Greenwood Press, ; Christopher H. Lutz, Santiago de Guatemala, City, Caste, and the Colonial Experience Norman: The Law Code of Manu Oxford: Oxford University Press, ; Brian K. Smith, Classifying the Universe: Oxford University Press, ; see also Gupta Dipankar, ed. Social Stratification New Delhi: Concepts in Social Sciences New Delhi: Gallimard, ; Louis Dumont, Homo aequalis: Gallimard, ; G.

Madan, Western Sociologists in Indian Society: Besides Guha, see also Bernard. Princeton University Press, ; Christopher H. Cambridge University Press, ; Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India Princeton: Caste in History New Delhi: Christianity and Caste Society in India Berkeley: Labeling can have deep social effects, defining the positions of people in the social, legal and political systems, as well as their horizons of action Lakoff and Johnson, chapter one. Those who had the power of labeling people could define their fixity in a certain position, their mobility, their futures.

University of California, ; Francisco Bethencourt, Racisms. From the Crusades to the Twentieth Century Princeton: Portuguese Empire, Indian Knowledge, 16 th th centuries Delhi: However, people that were considered "different" were not only the ones that were not of Portuguese descent. On that, see Hespanha. Minerva Indiana, ; K. People of Goa Bombay: The reader should keep in mind that in English editions of Barbosa, "ley de gente" was translated as "caste".

Languages of Difference in the Portuguese Empire. The Spread of "Caste" in the Indian World

See, for example, The Book of Duarte Barbosa , ed. Mansel Longworth Dames London: Giovanni Battista Ramusio reproduced parts of Summa Oriental. Typographia da Academia Real das Sciencias, t. Try the Kindle edition and experience these great reading features: Share your thoughts with other customers. Write a customer review. There's a problem loading this menu right now.

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