Village Normativities and the Portuguese Imperial Order: The Case of Early Modern Goa

Abstract

Upon visiting the villages of the ‘Old Conquests’ of Goa today—the territories that included Tiswadi, Salcete, and Bardez—it would be clear that they are very different from those of Portugal. Dominated by the Portuguese for 450 years, one could conceivably expect more similarities. Their ‘Indianness’, particularly in what concerns their religious normativity, was reconstructed during the 19th and 20th centuries. However, before the 19th century, the ‘Lusitanization’ of these villages—that is to say, the incorporation of Portuguese-style practices into village life—was more explicit in very specific dimensions, namely the administrative, legal, and religious ones. This chapter addresses some of the dimensions of this process from the perspective of the life and afterlife of a Portuguese imperial document of 1526, the Foral dos usos e costumes dos Gancares e Lavradores da Ilha de Goa e outras annexas a ella, better known as Foral de Mexia, henceforth referred to as Foral.1 Since the 16th century, Portuguese imperial administrators and, later, scholars have collected a large body of knowledge about Goan normative orders and their cultural differences in relation to the Portuguese normative orders they were familiar with (which included their African dominions). Following this, European travelers, missionaries, and merchants have also registered information about the rules that operated in different parts of Western India, particularly those relating to religion, marriage, hereditary offices, and land. The relationship between these normativities and the Portuguese imperial order, however, still needs further study. Normativities, as defined by Thomas Duve, are the sets of juridical, religious, social, and economic norms which guide individuals, groups, and peoples in