Subject: [Goanet] HISTORY HOUR YouTube Video - Alan Machado XCHR recently organized the History Hour: GOA'S INQUISITION: FACTS-FICTION-FACTOIDS, presented by Mr. Alan Machado. For those who missed the History Hour, the Youtube video is finally out!
https://youtu.be/wcAMRq-z520 - click this link to view the video, and please share this link. [Goanet] HISTORY HOUR YouTube Video - Alan Machado GL responds: Thank you very much for posting the entire presentation about the Inquisition on the U-Tube. Thus, those of us overseas could view the presentation. Compliments for a very professional presentation and to the attentive audience. I have a few comments: In the initial 50 years of colonization, there was a great reluctance of the Portuguese to make the voyage and come to the tropics, not to mention to fight the constant battles at various coastal forts. The mortality rate was high with the voyage, wars, and tropical diseases. The only population subset that did not need much inducement to come east were the Conversios, Jews and Muslims. They were jobless as many of them moved from Spain, as well as due to the inquisition in Portugal. Many of them could make a success in Portuguese colonies as well as the neighboring Muslim territories as mercenaries and traders as they spoke Arabic from their own Iberian colonial days. Hence the 20% Muslim and the 18% Jewish cohort in the Inquisition group of the sixteenth century may just be a reflection of their percentage of the colonizers' population of Goa. Both Machado's presentation and TR DeSouza's writings report that these two groups dominated the trade of the colonies. Yet unlike the other European colonials and their private companies, the Portuguese trade was supposed to be a monopoly of the king who owned and operated all the vessels. So, it would appear that these groups by-passed the Carreira da India and had their own clandestine routes via the Persian Gulf and Red Sea. Trading arms in Asia was in essence supplying arms to the enemy that were constantly fighting the Portuguese in the first decades of their consolidation in Asia. A label of Heresy was a 'politically benign' term rather than having to explain and admit the existence of various criminal activities in the colonies, which could also be involving the king's own men including the governor. Regards, Gilbert Lawrence
