Rediscovered Visual Documents of the Portuguese Estado da Índia: The Filippe Nery Xavier Collection

The so-called Filippe Nery Xavier Collection in the British Library includes an unresearched set of manuscript visual documents relating to the Portuguese State of India (Estado da Índia), dating between the mid-seventeenth century and the second half of the nineteenth century. The collection was in Goa in the early years of the twentieth century and was acquired in 1978 by the British Library from a Parisian rare book dealer. The collection also includes printed maps and statistical charts. Filippe Nery Xavier [1801-1875] was a Goan civil servant working for the Portuguese colonial government and a self-taught historian who wrote extensively on Goa. Among his many interests was the process of lithographic printing, which developed in Goa during the second quarter of the nineteenth century. As a source of rediscovered visual documents related to the port cities and territories of the Estado da Índia, the Filippe Nery Xavier Collection was studied in the framework of the PORTofCALL project (FCT/PTDC/ART-DAQ/4357/2021). This research project aims at studying the relation between the early modern African-Asian-European encounters and the cultural landscapes of the Indian Ocean’s port settlements frequented by the Portuguese.