Colonial Press

This paper examines the representation of the Goan ayah in the recent history of Goa. Taking Damodar Mauzo's Karmelin (1981), a novel which portrays the life of a Goan woman who migrates to Kuwait for employment, as an entry point, I will attempt to discuss the various issues pertaining to the representation of the Goan ayahs found in the historical record. It is claimed that the figure of the Goan ayah was viewed with suspicion when they migrated from Goa to Bombay, to be employed as domestic helpers. I attempt to highlight how Goan men and a few upper-class Goan women, in Goa and Bombay, shared an anxiety that in the anonymity of the metropolis the Goan ayah might transgress various boundaries: sexual, religious, caste, moral, and societal. Following this logic, I argue that rather than being a complex narrative about Goan women, Karmelin is a reiteration of a form of representation that harbors suspicion and anxiety about the migrating woman. Karmelin places the figure of the Goan ayah as central in its storyline precisely because stories about the 'scandalous' behavior of the ayahs in the diaspora have been circulating in Goan society for many years.

More than a century ago, in June 1905, Dutch editor Mathijs (Thijs) Vierhout was taken hostage for three weeks by the colonial authorities in the Dutch East Indies. This particular case will be examined in this article. Where was the commotion about and in which larger context can we place this event? Vierhout was the editor of the Semarang based newspaper De Locomotief and under his reign two anonymous letters were published in November and December 1904. The letters concerned the expected mobilization of the colonial army in relation to the arrival of the Russian Fleet. A court case was filed against the legal owner of the newspaper: law firm Bergsma-Van Hasselt. Apparently the colonial authorities eagerly wanted to know who wrote the letters. Vierhout was summoned to testify because the assumption was that he must have known the name of the writer. After he refused he was taken hostage for nearly three weeks. This caused great outrage in the Dutch national and colonial press. In the Netherlands the federation of journalists demanded an audience with the Minister of Colonies. This essay will focus on the question why this extraordinary measure was chosen. Was the content of the letters of such importance?

Surprisingly, it turns out that this case is related to a political scandal caused by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Baron Melvil van Lynden. He was accused of having endangered national security. The whole event led to his resignation in March 1905.

A Bulletin to rediscover Portuguese Guinea
 
Between 1946 and 1973, a 110 number and a special issue were published of the Boletim Cultural da Guiné Portuguesa. In the beginning of this periodical the tone of the discourse was that of the rediscover of “Guinea”. It is easy to conclude that the Bulletin was born as an instrument of knowledge(s) set to serve the local colonial government, in the moment of recreation of the Portuguese Empire that followed the end of the Second World War. The Boletim Cultural da Guiné Portuguesa quickly imposed itself as an innovative periodical in comparison with similar coeval periodicals. As such it is important to ask two questions: which was the influence in its edition, production and conception of other foreign periodicals, in particular that of the bulletin of the «Institut Français de l'Afrique Noire»; at a second level, which was its impact in the birth of similar periodicals in the Empire and in the Portuguese metropolitan space.

Keywords: Bulletin, Centre for studies, Colony, Guinea, Institut Fundamental de l'Afrique Noire