Portuguese presence in Asia
In 1505, King Manuel of Portugal appointed Dom Francisco de Almeida as viceroy of India, with jurisdiction over all Crown domains east of the Cape of Good Hope.
Duarte Barbosa was an official of Portuguese India between 1500 and 1516-17 holding the post of scrivener in Kannur and at times local language interpreter (for Malayalam).
His "Book of Duarte Barbosa" describing the places he visited is one of the oldest examples of Portuguese travel literature soon after their arrival in the Indian Ocean.
[9] It was Coimbra that printed eight of the ten books that Fernão Lopes de Castanheda had scheduled about the history of the discovery and conquest of India by the Portuguese.
[10] Written by João de Barros following a proposal of Dom Manuel I from a story narrating the achievements of the Portuguese in India and thus titled because, like the work of the Roman historian Livy, he also grouped the events in periods of ten years.
As a historian and linguist, de Barros made "Decades" a precious source of information about the history of the Portuguese in Asia and the beginnings of modern historiography in Portugal and worldwide.
Written in Portuguese in the form of a dialogue between Garcia da Orta and Ruano, a newcomer colleague in Goa looking forward to encountering the materia medica of India.
The Colloquium includes 57 chapters covering an approximately equal number of oriental drugs such as aloe, benzoin, camphor, the canafistula, opium, rhubarb, tamarinds and many others.
It includes information about geography, provinces, royalty, employees, bureaucracy, transport, architecture, agriculture, handicrafts, trade matters, clothing, religious and social customs, music and instruments, writing, education and justice, thus containing a text which had a role in influencing the image Europeans had of China.
En route from Goa to Portugal, Camões in 1568 made a stopover on the island of Mozambique, where Diogo do Couto found, as was related in his work, "so poor living friends" (Decade 8th Asia).
The author is an expert in describing the geography of India, China and Japan, laws, customs, morals, festivals, trade, justice, war, funerals, etc.
