Work in progress
“Holding hands over Africa.” Geographical societies in Portuguese Africa, 1880-1881
In 1880, Portugal celebrated the tricentennial of the death of the poet Luiz Vaz de Camões, the national literary hero who sung the valiant deeds of the Portuguese sixteenth-century maritime empire in the epic Os Lusíadas. One of the organisers of the commemoration was the Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa, Society of Geography of Lisbon, SGL, created in December 1875. Amidst the nineteenth-century search for romantic heroes and the source for the identity of the nation, the year 1880 highlighted the role of geography as a field of all-encompassing knowledge and triggered the creation of new geographical societies in Portugal, two of them established on the colonial cities of Luanda, Angola and Lourenço Marques (present-day Maputo), Mozambique.
This presentation will present the social and cultural context of the creation of these two geographical societies in a colonial setting, far away from the metropole centre of Lisbon. I will analyse various published bulletins of geographical societies in order to better understand the emergence of these associations and their programmatic lines, but also to examine the convoluted relationship between Lisbon’s geographical society and its counterparts. Although these colonial geographical societies were short-lived they nevertheless provide a lens to examine the main narratives of the political context of the Portuguese empire in the late nineteenth-century, as well as opening a path towards a compared study of the international establishment of geography as an imperial science.
Scientific Instructions and Centres of Calculation
A paper tackling the concept of centres of accumulation and calculation with reference to the case-study of Barbosa du Bocage's set of Instrucções published in 1862.
"Ni Marquis, ni Vicomte":
The construction of a scientific persona of disinterest, José Vicente Barbosa du Bocage (1823-1907)
In his work, the naturalist Barbosa du Bocage defined himself around a scientific persona of disinterested interest. This paper tries to tease out the different aspects of this approach to objectivity in scientific practice.
In the final decades of the 19th century when Jules Verne's novels were at their height of popularity, utopian projects for steam-powered transportation were similarly widespread. This paper presents two such proposals. The first one a revolutionary method of transportation proposed by the Italian engineer Roberto Arménio (1836-1900), consisted of a system that would allegedly replicate the camel in its progression on sandy terrain. The idea was presented in Brazil as a solution to social inequality assured to connect peoples of all races and colours. The second, by Francisco Bayão (1833-1883), a Portuguese army Captain, was a «Portable Railway», where the locomotive would move inside a huge moving rail circumference. Without requiring placement of tracks this system would, according to the author, be adaptable to any terrain, and even water travel.
Both proposals addressed the challenge of transportation fostered by colonial expansion towards the hinterland. Their bold designs and revolutionary outcomes reveal a cultural and social environment rich with shared ideas of techno-scientific progress and social utopia. Ironically the same techno-scientific development would ultimately lead to colonial dominance. This paper aims to provide a reflection on social and technical utopia and the representations of social change via technological and scientific progress in the imperial context.
Natural banks of oysters occur in Lisbon, in the southern margins of the river Tagus’ estuary. The Portuguese Oyster, or the Crassostrea angulata, probably developed in Lisbon after arriving inconspicuously attached to cargo ships coming from the Pacific, in the 16th century. The Portuguese oyster, although never popular in Portuguese
gastronomical traditions, became attractive for French oyster merchants especially around the 1860s, after a shortage of their oyster population. French cargo vessels came to Lisbon to get Portuguese oysters, directly from the local fishermen. Free from customs charges, they were then transported to France, grown in oyster parks and
finally sold with great profit.
This situation changed dramatically, in 1867, due to the intervention of José Vicente Barbosa du Bocage (1823-1907), Director of the Zoological Section of the National Museum of Lisbon. The reputed naturalist unmasked the French “illegal” incursion into Portuguese natural resources in a document presented to the Government explaining
the urgency of imposing market regulations, and suggesting the benefits of a scientific study, allowing for acclimatization and encouraging national oyster production and export trade. Bocage signed a contract with the government for the possession of these
oyster banks, with the objective of cleaning the existing banks, creating artificial growing tanks, and designing a scientific station for zoological research on mollusks. While this latter objective failed, the Tagus oyster industry still proved to be a profitable business for other concessionaires.
In this paper, I argue that Bocage’s strategy, and specifically the contract he signed were an ingenious combination of scientific expertise, economic liabilities and financial decisions in order to secure the nation’s sovereignty over its natural resources.
The nineteenth century is commonly associated with the growth of imperial trade routes and a 'deluge' of specimens that is said to have flooded natural history museums and collections together with a surge in the number of known biological species. However, the practice of naming new species continued to pose a challenge to an increasingly larger, more international, and more specialized community of naturalists.
This paper introduces the context behind the numerous names and descriptions of the elusive giant otter shrew (Potamogale velox), a small African mammal with a laterally compressed tail, aquatic feeding, and elusive behaviour that challenged its first scientific descriptions. In his travel accounts in 1861, the French-American explorer Paul Du Chaillu provisionally called the animal that he had caught in Gabon – and that he thought was a new species of carnivore – Cynogale velox. After observing the specimen, John Edward Gray, the keeper of the British Museum, called the animal Mythomys, a figment of the explorer's imagination. When new and more complete specimens arrived in Europe some years later, the Portuguese zoologist and museum director José Vicente Barbosa du Bocage, proposed to review it as the insectivore Bayonia angolensis, while almost at the same time, the Scottish professor George J. Allman named it Potamogale velox, referring back to Du Chaillu as the original describer.
The problematic characteristics of the actual animal were reflected in the confused description, publication, and nomenclature process. Beyond the specimens themselves, this paper demonstrates that the naturalists' practices of negotiation of credibility and authority were just as problematic, as these experts put forward their claims for what constitutes a credible name and an appropriate description, and fought over who should have the credentials to name new species. This paper shows how the Code for Zoological nomenclature, the nature of which was being discussed in the community at the time, was not sufficient to assure standardization of practices when so little information was available and, especially, when credit, authority, and reputation were at stake.