Agata Bloch
Polish Historian investigating the colonial Portuguese empire using Social Network Analysis.
Assistant Professor in Institute of History in Polish Academy of Sciences.
PhD in Institute of History of Polish Academy of Sciences (2021)
MA in the History of the Portuguese Empire at NOVA University of Lisbon (2018)
MA in the Latin American Studies at Warsaw University (2014)
BA in European Studies at Warsaw University (2011)
Granted with National Science Center of Poland (2023-2027): Imperial Commoners in Brazil and West Africa (1640–1822): A Global History from a Correspondence Network Perspective” (Project No. 2022/45/B/HS3/00473).
Granted with National Science Center of Poland (2018-2021): The Portuguese overseas identity in the context of the Social Network Analysis. Project number: 2017/27/N/HS3/01104.
Granted with Calouste Gulbankian Foundation for International Researchers Investigating Portuguese Culture in Lisbon, Portugal (2016-2017)
Granted with Institute of History of Polish Academy of Sciences:
- (2017-2018): IT services, database, web develop and web design in collaboration with dr Michał Bojanowski (Kozminski University in Poland) and Demival Vasques Filho (University of Auckland in New Zealand).
- (2016): Archival queries in the Portuguese Overseas Archives, National Archives of Torre de Tombo and National Library of Portugal.
Supervisors: dr hab. prof. IH PAN Tomasz Wiślicz-Iwańczyk, dr Michał Bojanowski, and Prof. João Paulo Oliveira e Costa
Assistant Professor in Institute of History in Polish Academy of Sciences.
PhD in Institute of History of Polish Academy of Sciences (2021)
MA in the History of the Portuguese Empire at NOVA University of Lisbon (2018)
MA in the Latin American Studies at Warsaw University (2014)
BA in European Studies at Warsaw University (2011)
Granted with National Science Center of Poland (2023-2027): Imperial Commoners in Brazil and West Africa (1640–1822): A Global History from a Correspondence Network Perspective” (Project No. 2022/45/B/HS3/00473).
Granted with National Science Center of Poland (2018-2021): The Portuguese overseas identity in the context of the Social Network Analysis. Project number: 2017/27/N/HS3/01104.
Granted with Calouste Gulbankian Foundation for International Researchers Investigating Portuguese Culture in Lisbon, Portugal (2016-2017)
Granted with Institute of History of Polish Academy of Sciences:
- (2017-2018): IT services, database, web develop and web design in collaboration with dr Michał Bojanowski (Kozminski University in Poland) and Demival Vasques Filho (University of Auckland in New Zealand).
- (2016): Archival queries in the Portuguese Overseas Archives, National Archives of Torre de Tombo and National Library of Portugal.
Supervisors: dr hab. prof. IH PAN Tomasz Wiślicz-Iwańczyk, dr Michał Bojanowski, and Prof. João Paulo Oliveira e Costa
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historiografia internacional, a qual visava extrair as vozes dos subalternos que muitas vezes habitavam na margem da sociedade. Um dos principais historiadores relacionados ao Grupo de Estudos Subalternos do Sul da Ásia, Ranajit Guha, apelava à reconstrução
da história do ponto de vista das massas, afirmando que tal narrativa historiográfica pudesse contrariar a historiografia tradicional "vista de cima". Portanto, ao longo deste artigo, vamos refletir se a história entendida desta forma no contexto brasileiro seria uma ameaça à "história tradicional" ou a complementaria.
main catalyst of the diffuse anti-left wing sentiment spread throughout Brazilian society after four consecutive center-left wing governments led by Worker’s Party (PT). In our article, we try to understand whether his presidency is a result of a major crisis of the “Brazilianness”.
In this article two countries were analyzed Brazil and Japan, because at the time of their discovery, both were inhabited by societies that had never encountered the Christian religion before, so in the eyes of the Portuguese they were unconscious. In Brazil, the first Portuguese-Indigenous contacts, which were described by Pêro Vaz de Caminha, Pêro de Magalhães Gândavo and Gabriel Soares de Sousa, were considered pacific, however the superiority of European culture and the idea of a civilization mission were highly noticeable. It is worth noting that in spite of Brazil being an exotic land and a lost paradise, its inhabitants were seen first as “good savages” and then as barbaric and cruel cannibals.
The relationship between the Portuguese and the Japanese was based on the descriptions of Jorge Alvares, as well on the letters sent by Francis Xavier to the Society of Jesus. The letters described the richness of the first contacts with the Japanese, as well as their daily lives, religion, tradition, honor and the social hierarchy.
Unlike in Brazil, where the native population was illiterate and the diseases decimated great part of the indigenous tribes, making it impossible to analyze the first contact in the eyes of the Indians, in the case of Japan it was completely different. Francis Xavier himself noted that the society of the Land of Rising Sun was highly literate therefore the Japanese also decided to immortalize this encounter, through the Nanban art and in the Japanese chronicle Teppo-ki, in which the Portuguese were called the “barbarians from the south”.
It is worth reflecting the cultural relativism of the concept of barbarism, referring to “others” who are differing in their ways of speaking or behavior, emphasizing that there is no human race that would not be barbarian for the other.
historiografia internacional, a qual visava extrair as vozes dos subalternos que muitas vezes habitavam na margem da sociedade. Um dos principais historiadores relacionados ao Grupo de Estudos Subalternos do Sul da Ásia, Ranajit Guha, apelava à reconstrução
da história do ponto de vista das massas, afirmando que tal narrativa historiográfica pudesse contrariar a historiografia tradicional "vista de cima". Portanto, ao longo deste artigo, vamos refletir se a história entendida desta forma no contexto brasileiro seria uma ameaça à "história tradicional" ou a complementaria.
main catalyst of the diffuse anti-left wing sentiment spread throughout Brazilian society after four consecutive center-left wing governments led by Worker’s Party (PT). In our article, we try to understand whether his presidency is a result of a major crisis of the “Brazilianness”.
In this article two countries were analyzed Brazil and Japan, because at the time of their discovery, both were inhabited by societies that had never encountered the Christian religion before, so in the eyes of the Portuguese they were unconscious. In Brazil, the first Portuguese-Indigenous contacts, which were described by Pêro Vaz de Caminha, Pêro de Magalhães Gândavo and Gabriel Soares de Sousa, were considered pacific, however the superiority of European culture and the idea of a civilization mission were highly noticeable. It is worth noting that in spite of Brazil being an exotic land and a lost paradise, its inhabitants were seen first as “good savages” and then as barbaric and cruel cannibals.
The relationship between the Portuguese and the Japanese was based on the descriptions of Jorge Alvares, as well on the letters sent by Francis Xavier to the Society of Jesus. The letters described the richness of the first contacts with the Japanese, as well as their daily lives, religion, tradition, honor and the social hierarchy.
Unlike in Brazil, where the native population was illiterate and the diseases decimated great part of the indigenous tribes, making it impossible to analyze the first contact in the eyes of the Indians, in the case of Japan it was completely different. Francis Xavier himself noted that the society of the Land of Rising Sun was highly literate therefore the Japanese also decided to immortalize this encounter, through the Nanban art and in the Japanese chronicle Teppo-ki, in which the Portuguese were called the “barbarians from the south”.
It is worth reflecting the cultural relativism of the concept of barbarism, referring to “others” who are differing in their ways of speaking or behavior, emphasizing that there is no human race that would not be barbarian for the other.
The article explains the history of Brazilan pleasures with reference to carnal delights. The first part of the article describes the relationship between the first emperor of Brazil, D. Pedro, his wife Leopoldina and his mistress Domitila. The second part is an attempt to explain the beginning of sexual freedom in the context of the history of colonial Brazil.
The Native Brazilian women demanded not only the personal freedom but also the freedom to choose and perform work according to their own will, as we will see in the case of Ana Caldeira (1783), Maria Silvana (1785), Sinflosia with their daughters Ana Raimunda and Joaquina (1788), Bonifácia da Silva (1790), Juliana (1799), Josefa Martinha (1799) and Patronilha (1799). The Black women, for instance, demanded access to court documentation in the trials in which they were involved, as was the case of Isabel Caetana, a slave woman who, on behalf of her lawyer, asked for a person to assess her market value, so she could buy her freedom (1791). If not represented by lawyers, they acted together with their masters, as it was in the case of a slave woman Mariana, who being supported by her slave owner Maria Joaquina and her daughter Ana Francisca, was demanding access to justice documentation (1799). Brazilian women’s’ struggle to obtain freedom was also carried out in courts and such cases required administrative procedures. Those situations can be illustrated by a freed slave Josefa Maria Rosário who aimed to buy the freedom of her enslaved husband, arguing she had successfully collected a sufficient amount of money (1783), a slave Geralda, who demanded freedom for herself and her children (1795), slave Luzia, who asked for her own freedom after her master's death and a slave woman Rita de Sousa Lobo who demanded freedom for her creole daughters (1799). A slave woman originally from African region Benguela, Joana Correia, complained to Brazilian authorities about an influential man named Francisco Lopes de Sousa, who decided to buy her, even though Joana had the financial means to apply for her freedom (1775).
The article illuminates the aspirations and choices of the Brazilian subaltern women and discusses the concept of freedom among them and what role it played in their lives. Besides, it also demonstrates different mechanisms for struggling for freedom, decision-making, public expression of opinion and the techniques of everyday resistance of Native and Brazilian women that might represent a very effective means of class and gender struggles in colonial slave-based Brazil.
Freie Universität Berlin
October 20-21, 2017.
The undervalued archipelago of Cape Verde was a first, silent carrier of culture, people and exotic products in the early XVI century, also famous for being a strategic place in all overseas journeys between the Europe, the Africa and the Americas.
There is a great number of explorers, adventurers, slavers and pirates who shared their feelings in their travel journals, while anchoring in the islands. Special attention is paid to the emotions that motivated to taking risks, such as fear, ambition, aspiration, belief, desire, expectation, promise or eagerness, according to the statement of one of those explorers: „to discover new countries and to try my luck”.
The chronological analyse of such documents leads us to the emotional travel through both, the Atlantic World and the early modern human mind from the late fifteenth century until early seventeenth - from the passionate exploration to the compassionate solidarity and understanding. The travel narrative provides a wider view on the sixteenth-century phenomena of Cape Verde which has been internationalized throughout one hundred years. It has been transformed from being the absolutely unexplored place, through the heart of the trade routes, to the total abandonment.
The paper not only discusses the main emotional theories related to the subject, but also provides a wider perspective explaining the development and changes of the human feelings throughout the XVI century.
Demival Vasques Filho (University of Auckland)
Michał Bojanowski (Kozminski University)
No século XVI, tornou-se o coração responsável pelo percurso das ideias, pessoas, mercadorias e conhecimentos através de todo o Império colonial português, envolvendo várias heranças e tradições culturais. Foi um lugar de transplantação de inúmeras espécies vegetais e animais, um verdadeiro campo de experimentação e um lugar estratégico no cruzamento das mais importantes rotas marítimas.
Tudo o que foi enviado de África para a América ou para a Ásia, passou por um processo de adaptação em Cabo Verde. Plantas e animais foram sendo aí preparados para a reexportação, enquanto os escravos foram submetidos a um processo de adaptação, sendo batizados no porto da Ribeira Grande, sede da missão cristã em África, onde lhes era ensinada a língua portuguesa e onde eram obrigados a aceitar as matrizes culturais básicas dos Europeus. As novas circunstâncias permitiram o nascimento de uma sociedade distinta e mista, que foi obrigada a aprender tudo a partir do zero. Surpreendentemente rápido, conseguiram ultrapassar as suas fronteiras, contribuindo para a difusão cultural e comercial da Europa, da América, da África e da Ásia, sendo o Cabo Verde um ponto de encontro de quatro continentes. Na fronteira de vários mundos, aproveitou um pouco de cada um deles. Cabo Verde foi principalmente um espaço de oportunidades para as ideias místicas, os sonhos e os medos ocidentais, permanecendo o paraíso do Atlântico colonial. Contudo, foi verdadeiramente um paraíso para todos?
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There are many myths about Brazil - the good and bad ones. These are the myths about the "country of coconut milk and flowing gold" [Polish expression], as well as the country of the violence and discrimination due to race or ethnicity. The question is not only how Brazil's image has changed over the centuries, but who and for what purpose created them? We invite you to a journey about the contruction of the Brazilian national identity: from its discovery by Pedro Alvares Cabral in 1500 to Jair Bolsonaro's presidency in 2019, who is called by supporters Bolsomito, because he is to become another myth of this country.