Beyond the visible: power, catholicism and trade at Congo and Angola, XVIth and XVIIth Centuries

• Grant number: 16/13356-6
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants - Publications - Books published in Brazil
• Start date: October 01, 2016
• End date: March 31, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History
• Principal Investigator: Marina de Mello e Souza
• Grantee: Marina de Mello e Souza
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Beyond the visible: power, catholicism and trade at Congo and Angola, XVIth and XVIIth Centuries, concerns with the ways that Central African societies that got in touch with the Portuguese since the end of the XVth century respond to their presence and how the relations established in the region took different features. The new possibilities of trade created new interests in the local societies, and the Portuguese wars of conquest let to specific reactions, related to the different contexts in which they happened. Catholicism was a central instrument in the contact between Europeans and Central Africans and was always linked to relations of power, as was the trade, which was the basis for the construction of new relations. The contact between different cultural systems was built on the knowledge of each one of them about the processes that were going on and what this book intends to do is perceive the non-apparent determinations of them which can be accessed by the documentation. (AU)