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Charity and Discrimination: The Misericórdia of Goa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2010

Isabel dos Guimarães Sá
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Domination is not hegemony, and no stable colonial system can survive on the basis of permanent physical violence over the local populations; a fiction of generosity has to be installed in order to create a bond between the rulers and the ruled. In order to establish a rhetoric based on disinterested giving, colonial powers had to make available to the colonised populations some “benefits” that could be claimed as being advantageous for the recipients and testify to the generosity of the givers. The “gift” on the part of the Portuguese in the Asian colonial context was their effort to convert the local populations to Christianity, a major enterprise that was undertaken with the help of the religious orders, and most especially the Jesuits. As a result of efforts to convert the masses, newly baptised populations could be granted some degree of integration in colonial society. One of such instances of integration was charity, although, as we shall see, converts were taken care of in a luminal social space that was well below that awarded to the colonists. The example of the Misericórdia of Goa can illustrate the point I am trying to make. The charity provided to the converted populations by this confraternity was directed mainly to the Portuguese-born elites, or their descendants, but did nevertheless include those willing to be integrated in the Catholic Church through conversion.

Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 31 , Issue 2: Portugal Índico: Essays on the History of the Portuguese Presence in South Asia in the Colonial Period , July 2007 , pp. 51 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 2007

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References

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