Zambezia (1990), XVII (ii).ESSAY REVIEWPUBLISHING THE PAST: PROGRESS IN THE'DOCUMENTS ON THE PORTUGUESE' SERIESTHOSE INTERESTED IN the people of Zimbabwe and their environment areextraordinarily lucky when compared with their counterparts interestedin many other African countries. This is because, whereas almost theentire coastline of Africa was described in first-hand accounts by about1497, there were very few descriptions of this kind of the interior south ofthe Equator until well into the nineteenth century.1 The Zimbabweanplateau and the adjoining parts of central Mozambique and southernMalawi, however, are an exception. It is possible-to read either first-handor good second-hand accounts of virtually every aspect of human activityin this area, as well as descriptions of the physical environment, theclimate, the vegetation, animal life and so forth, that were written downover the four centuries prior to the coming of colonial rule.2The reason for this comparative wealth of descriptive works was thegold of the Zimbabwean plateau which attracted the Portuguese inland ata very early date while they ignored the interior between Ethiopia and theShire River and between the Save River and the Cape. The descriptions ofhuman society and the environment were a by-product of the year-to-yearadministration of the Portuguese state, church and mercantile capital infour continents and two oceans. This administration involved the accumu-lation of very many documents, so many that losses by fire, earthquakeand neglect have only slightly reduced their numbers. These documentshave found homes in a number of archives in Portugal, Goa, Maputo,Rome, London and Paris, and they provide an essential base for the studyof every region visited by the Portuguese.The publication of these documents is an essential and vital task. Inthe first place, even the durable paper and ink of past centuries will not,last for ever, and the publication of documents makes it less likely thatthey will be lost, as some undoubtedly have been in the past. Secondly,old-fashioned Portuguese and old-fashioned Portuguese handwriting arenot easy to follow even for those who read Portuguese, while the translationof Portuguese transcripts into a more widely-known language such asEnglish or French helps very considerably in the spread of knowledge.The Portuguese themselves have a long tradition of publishing theirdocuments. Even their very early chroniclers often came close to repro-ducing the originals in the course of their chronicles, which is fortunate asthe originals have not always survived. For example, the description of the1 A. Jones, "The dark continent Š a preliminary study of the geographical coverage inEuropean sources, 140O-1880', in B. Heintze and A. Jones (eds.), 'European sources for Sub-Saharan Africa before 1900: Use and abuse', Paideuma, Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde (1987),XXXIII, 19-26.1 D. N. Beach, 'Documents and African society on the Zimbabwean plateau before 1890",in Heintze and Jones, 'European sources', 129-43.175176 PUBLISHING THE PASTZimbabwean plateau in the Da Asia of Jo5o de Barros is obviously basedclosely on the report that the Captain of Sofala, Vicente Pegado, wasordered to supply in 1530.3 That report is now lost. In the nineteenthcentury the publication of historical documents by the Portuguese inLisbon, Mozambique and Goa became common, and the crisis of 1890 ledto even more publications in the vain hope that Britain would be impressedby ancient treaties of over two centuries before.4 The further publicationof documents by the very historically-conscious Estado Novo of AntonioSalazar was simply building on an earlier tradition.5 Nevertheless, thedocuments published solely in Portuguese were apparently selected on arather haphazard basis. George Theal's nine-volume work of transcriptionand translation was also haphazard, but by sheer energy and byconcentrating on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries he did a greatdeal to alert English-speakers to the value of the Portuguese archives.6In the 1950s a serious attempt was finally made to produce a definitivepublication of the documents on the Mozambique coast and its hinterland.As most of the hinterland was at that time occupied by the Federation ofRhodesia and Nyasaland, it was logical that the project should be run bythe National Archives in Salisbury and the Centra de Estudos Hist6ricosUltramarinos in Lisbon. The project was initiated by the Director of theSalisbury archives, and the basic selection of documents was made byEric Axelson, who had already carried out pioneering work in the 1930sand who was later to publish two major surveys covering the period1488-1700.7The first volume of the project appeared in 1962.* It was a mostimpressive work, a solid 867 pages, with Portuguese and English textsfacing each other. The texts started a third of the way down each page,which looked most impressive but which also meant that sometimes apage of the original document needed two pages in the new publication.The title, place, date and provenance of the document were given, as weredetails of its previous publication if it had been published (unless it hadr IA iJ"de Barros'Livro Decimo da Primeira Decada da Asia [ 1552] (Lisbon, Agenda Geral dasŁ J*? 5)' 391"8; A- da Sllva Re8° and T- w- Baxter (eds.), Documents on the PortugueseA£aT que and Central Africa 1497-1840 (Lisbon, Centra de Estudos Hist6ricos Ultramarinosana National Archives of Rhodesia, 1969), VI, 324-7.M7.RT? ®xamPle. O Chronista de Tissuary (Goa, 1866-9); Arquiuo Portugues Oriental (Goa,ipp'-O'j; Annaes do Concelho Ultramarino, parte nao official (Lisbon, 1854-66); Memoria eNarl "Tilacerca dos Direitos de Portugal aos Territorios de Machona e Nyassa 1890 (Lisbon,Žcional, 1890); Boletim do Govemo da Provincia de Mocambique (Mozambique and LourencoMarques, Nacional, 1854-1975).Ret * Mocambique, Documentario Trimestral (Louren?o Marques, 1935-61); A. A. Andrade,Carv ihS n Mocambi<l^ Setecentista (Lisbon, Agenda Geral do Ultramar, 1955); L. F. deXVIII)'A Ł ^ed-)' "Fontes Para a hist6ria, geografia e comercio de Mozambique (SeculoColony" <f'Theal ^ed'-''Records [of South Eastern Africa] (Cape Town, Government of the CapePorh,a' Ax?lson> Portuguese in South-east Africa 1488-1600 (Johannesburg, Struik, 1973) andrmguese m South-east Africa 1600-1700 (Johannesburg, Witwatersrand Univ. Press, 1960).1497-1840 r?of° and ^axter' Documents on the Portuguese in Mocambique and Central AfricaD. N. BEACH 177been published by the interloper Theal, who was not mentioned). Notes atthe end of some documents explained points that the editors thoughtneeded comment, though in both this volume and Volume III theyunfortunately referred the reader to the work of Hugh Tracey for thehistorical geography Š and Tracey's work was fundamentally wrong.9 Thedetail of the documents published was absolutely amazing. For example,eight pages detailed the payments made to the garrison of Sofala for threemonths in 1506, a page tells us that a book and some paper were sent fromSofala to Kilwa in the same year, and so forth.1" This was the very stuff ofthe history of Portuguese colonization, which was obviously the maininterest of the Portuguese half of the project, but for historians of theinterior who were hungrily waiting for vital documents on the Zimbabweanplateau to emerge it was a little frustrating to see so much space spent onwhat, to them, was trivial.Over the next four years further volumes continued to appear,produced to the same impressive standard. Unfortunately, whereas thefirst volume had covered ten years, the later ones covered only four(Volumes II and III) or two (Volumes IV and V). Obviously, if this rate wasto be maintained, it would take the compilers a very long time to reach thecut-off date (1840) for the completion of the project Š in fact, the projectwould be completed only in the year 2127, and that on the assumptionthat the volume of documentation was constant throughout the wholeperiod, whereas in fact it increased. The editors of this series onlyoccasionally supplied introductions, so one does not know whether it wasintentional or not, but after Volume V the project seems to have movedinto a brisk trot, and Volumes VI, VII and VIII which came out over the nextnine years covered 19, 21 and 28 years, respectively. As the editors notedin 1975, it was decided not to publish entire documents where only part ofthem related to the Mozambican region." The long lists and accounts ofthe garrisons that had taken up so much space in the earlier volumesbecame much rarer. It is not clear whether fewer of these lists had survivedor whether the editors deliberately omitted them.The revolution in Portugal in 1974 and the independence of Mozambiquebrought the project to a halt for fifteen years, but before we go on to lookat the latest volume produced, which is the subject of this essay review, itis important to review the content of the first eight volumes that werepublished between 1962 and 1975.Firstly, there are relatively few obvious errors of dating or inter-pretation. Four thousand cows were reduced to four in Volume I,12 a letter9 Ibid., 400-1; Silva Rego and Baxter, Documents (1964), III, 180-1; R.W. Dickinson, 'Ant6nioFernandes Š a reassessment', Rhodesiana (1971), XXV, 47.10 Silva Rego and Baxter, Documents (1962), 1,632-51,410-1.11 A. da Silva Rego and E. E. Burke (eds.), Documents on the Portuguese in Mozambique andCentral Africa 1497-1840 (Lisbon Centro de Estudos Hist6ricos Ultramarinos; National Archivesof Rhodesia, 1975), VIII, xviii-jdx." Silva Rego and Baxter, Documents (1962), 1,392-3.178 PUBLISHING THE PASTof 1528 was placed in the volume for 1518,13 and the word muroyi (wizard)used to accuse Goncalo da Silveira was mistranslated mouro (Muslim),which was inappropriate since his accusers themselves were allegedlyMuslims.14Secondly, some documents simply ought not to have been in thecollection at all, even by the most generous interpretation of the project'sterms of reference. For example, documents on Ethiopia, the Red Sea andthe Gulf were not the business of the project, any more than were theaffairs of the Church in India.15 The editors sometimes included onlyextracts of much longer documents, putting in only what concernedMozambique, but they were not consistent. An example of an inclusion ofmaterial that ought to have been left out is in Volume VII: the clerk JoaoVelho wrote two letters to the king complaining of the behaviour of DomJorge, the captain of Sofala, on 4 November 1547.18 Presumably he wrotetwo in case one should be lost or intercepted, for they were practicallyidentical, and it would have been easy and space-saving to note thedifferences between the two in footnotes, but instead both letters werepublished. Yet another example: once the news of the death of Goncalo daSilveira reached India it was mentioned in several letters from clericsthere writing back to Portugal, but they hardly ever mention anything thatwe did not know already from the accounts of Antonio Caiado and LuisFrois. As both of these accounts were very properly included in VolumeVIII, there was no need to include the later versions.17On the other hand, the volumes had some unfortunate omissions. Thelong and valuable account of Andre Fernandes on the area south ofInhambane in 1562, which was published by Theal, was not in VolumeVIII.18 This is a serious omission, but a much more serious one is theexclusion of Joao de Barros's Da Asia from the collection. There was noexplanation for this. It cannot have been because it was a publishedsource, for the published accounts of Martin Fernandez de Figueroa andDuarte Barbosa had already been included.1" It cannot have been becauseBarros had been published by Theal, since one of the avowed purposes ofthe project was to update Theal.2" It cannot have been because Da Asiaappeared long after some of the events that it chronicled, because VolumeVIII included part of the Da Asia of Diogo do Couto, also published longafter the event, as a necessary companion to Francisco de Monclaro's13 Silva Rego and Baxter, Documents (1966), V, 538-73. As Dickinson pointed out, as theletter refers to a Captain of Sofala of the late 1520s (and to the Straits of Magellan), it is actuallyof 1528: 'Ant6nio Fernandes', 51.14 Silva Rego and Burke, Documents (1975), VIII, 4-5.15 Silva Rego and Baxter, Documents (1965), IV, 234-59; Silva Rego and Baxter, Documents0969), VI, 20-33, 68-87.16 Silva Rego and Baxter, Documents (1971), VII, 184-95.17 Silva Rego and Burke, Documents (1975), VIII, 2-9, 24-59, 70-81, 100-3, 112-17.18 Theal, Records (1898), II, 19-52.19 Silva Rego and Baxter, Documents (1964), III, 586-633; (1966), V, 354-81.20 Silva Rego and Baxter, Documents (1962), I, vi-vii.D. N. BEACH 179account of the 1569-76 period.21 The reader is left to suspect that the realreason for the omission was the length of the account. This, howeverought not to have entered into the argument: some of the primarydocuments of the seventeenth and later centuries were very long indeed,so the problem will recur in future editions, while if more care had beentaken to exclude material that had little or nothing to do with Mozambiqueand its hinterland then there would have been plenty of room for therelevant and important parts of Barros's Da Asia. (I suggest an alternativemethod of dealing with this problem later in this review.)The revival of the project in the 1980s was a remarkable achievement.Mozambique, Portugal and Zimbabwe, the eventual heirs of the plan formu-lated in the 1950s, were all short of money, and even when the GulbenkianFoundation in Portugal, the Portuguese Government and the NationalArchives of Zimbabwe found the necessary funds it was, almost certainly,not easy to re-create a momentum that had (temporarily) fallen away. Istress this because I wish it to be understood that my criticisms of VolumeIX, which has just been published,22 are being made in a constructive spiritand in the hope that the project will go on and continue to play a vital role.Volume IX is produced to the same high standard as the previouseight volumes. There is the same generous allocation of space and thesame layout of basic information. There is also the same failure to mentionwhether the document in question had been published by Theal. (Thereappear to be about 20 documents out of the 82 in this category.) Thefootnotes are only in English, and appear to be accurate apart from a fewinteresting errors.23 In short, the volume has all of the characteristics thatthe series has displayed since 1962.Unfortunately, it also has some of the same faults. Although I noted atthe beginning that there is a wealth of documentation in the Portuguesearchives on Mozambique and the interior, it has to be admitted that thewealth is unevenly distributed. In the period 1589-1615 it so happens thatdocuments actually written in Mozambique appear to be rare, and of the82 published here only 3 came from Sena or the Ilha de Mozambique, and2 came from Goa. The rest all came from Lisbon or the Spanish court.(This bias seems to be confirmed by the works of Axelson and by thecontents of the Goan archives.24) What this means is that, whereas we2[ Silva Rego and Burke, Documents (1975), VIII, 248-429.22 L. de Albuquerque (ed.), Documents on the Portuguese in Mozambique and CentralAfrica 1497-1840 (Lisbon, National Archives of Zimbabwe, Universidade Eduardo Mondlaneand Centra de Estudos de Hist6ria e Cartografia Antiga do Instituto de Investlgacao CientificaTropical, 1989), IX, xxxi, 498 pp., Z$40,00, hereafter cited as Documents, IX.a The main errors are: p. 21, Fort Jesus was not destroyed by the Turks or anybody elsein 1729 or since, and the island of Corvo was and is in the Azores group in the Atlantic; p. 67,the 'Cabires' were almost certainly not Makua (see fn. 31 below) and G. M. Theal as a historianof African peoples was extremely untrustworthy; pp. 44-5, Pedro de Sousa's expedition wasnot to the Mutapa state (see fn. 31); and p. 59, 'Bazarugos' is noted as possibly being Bazaruto,but it is beyond the bounds of probability that Lisbon could have thought that anything grownon the desolate island of Bazaruto could have been worth shipping 6 000 kilometres tosupport the navy in Goa. The lands of Bazarugos have to have been close to Goa.'" Axelson, Portuguese in South-east Africa 1488-1600, 169-79, and Portuguese in South-eastAfrica 1600-1700, 1-14; Goa Archives, Panaji, Livros das Moncoes, vols. 7-12.180 PUBLISHING THE PASTknow a great deal about what the Portuguese government and its Hapsburgoverlord wanted to do about Mozambique and the Zambezi area, it is notso easy to deduce what was actually happening in that region. If it had notbeen for the habit of the Iberian officials to remind the Viceroy in Goa ofwhat he had written about on a specific matter, we would often be at a lossto understand events: lacking the original reports from Mozambique toGoa and even those from Goa to Lisbon, we are seeing things at thirdhand. (Indeed, Axelson's skill in making sense of these documents isimpressive.2*)Nevertheless, even though the compilers of Volume DC were facing anexceptionally intractable set of sources, they continued to publish whatshould have been omitted and to omit what should have been included,just as happened with the previous eight volumes. Far too many of thedocuments published here are mainly or entirely about areas outsideMozambique. It is true that they are interesting, but their publicationshould be the result of agreements between the archives of Portugal andthose of Madagascar, Tanzania, Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia, rather thanthose of Mozambique and Zimbabwe which are in effect supporting thehistories of other countries for no direct return.26 Moreover, some of thedocuments that do concern our areas are rather trivial: Document 32 of1609 tells us that, if no actual money can be sent for the proposed conquestof Mutapa, at least thirty casks of wine and oil should be sent. Fair enough,but two more documents trace the saga of this wine and oil, as well assome biscuits, taking up another three valuable pages.27 In view of the factthat mighty events were taking place in the region that were virtuallyignored by the documents of this volume, is there not a question ofpriorities? Similarly a whole page tells us that on 4 June 1614 the Kingwished the Treasury to attend to his orders of 23 April. Might not afootnote have sufficed?28It can at least be argued that documents are better included in acollection than excluded on the grounds that at least somebody can learnsomething from them. It is harder to excuse the omission of importantdocuments, especially when earlier writers have made good use of them.The Theal collection was hastily assembled, and it appears from thisvolume that what Theal presented as separate documents in his VolumesIV and V were actually paragraphs of single documents published here. Icount at least twenty documents published in Theal's collection that donot appear here, some of which are trivial, but others are really important,such as the account of Agostinho de Azevedo, undated but from thisperiod,29 and a grant of lands to the Dominicans.30 Even more important isa crucial document of 1598 that identifies Š up to a point Š one of thea Axelson, Portuguese 1488-1600,169-79, and Portuguese 1600-1700,1-14.K Documents, DC, 2-9,42-3,44-51, 78-83." Documents, DC, 184-92,198-203." Documents, DC, 390-1.89 Theal, Records (1899), IV, 33-7.30 Theal, Records (1899), IV, 108-9.D. N. BEACH 181major enemies of the Portuguese on the Zambezi;31 as this document isone of the crucial ones in an ongoing debate between four major academicsin the 1980s, it certainly ought to have been included in the volume but itwas not.32This brings us to the main point of my criticism of this volume: theperiod 1589-1615 was one of tremendous importance in the region, butone, would hardly guess it from the documents reproduced here. On theone hand, as far as we can tell, vast political and military events weretaking place north of the Zambezi, reaching at least as far as Mombasa.33Exactly what was involved is by no means clear, but this volume omitsmost of the evidence that might help us find out what it was. Similarly, themighty Mutapa state was suffering from a mixture of external threats fromnorth of the Zambezi and from the Portuguese and internal troubles of itsown making.34 Also during this time, the heart of the Portuguese conquest,the fortress of Mozambique, was twice attacked by the Dutch. The bestsources on this, in Dutch and Portuguese, are not in this volume.35 Finally,during this period shipwrecked Portuguese in the south were inadvertentlyadding to our knowledge of the region around what is now the capital city,Maputo. One would not know it from this volume.36The missing evidence is to be found in the Ethiopia Oriental of Joaodos Santos which was published in 1609; in part of the Da Asia of Couto,written in 1609-16; in the Decada of Antonio Bocarro, which covers theyears 1597-1616; in the Cercos de Mozambique of Ant6nio Durao and theLofflijcken Voyagie; and in the relevant sections of Gaspar Ferreira Reimao's'Trattado...' and of Joao Baptista Lavanha's Naufragio.31 Why were theseworks omitted? The Zimbabwean introduction to the volume states thatSantos was omitted because his work 'has long existed in accessibleprinted form, with translation'.38 This is only partly true, and no mention ismade of the other missing sources. If previous publication in Theal'scollection had been a bar to publication, then a quarter of the documentsin this volume would not be present, so, as with Barros's Da Asia, one isleft to conclude that the real reason for the exclusion of certain sources is31 Theal, Records (1901), V, 281-3.32 M. D. D. Newltt, 'The early history of the Maravi,' The Journal of African History (1982),XXIII, 145-62; M. Schoffeleers, "The Zimba and the Lundu state In the late sixteenth and earlyseventeenth centuries', ibid. (1987), XXVIII, 337-55; C. Wrlgley, "The river-god and the historians:Myth in the Shire valley and elsewhere'; and M. Schoffeleers, 'Myth and/or history: A reply toChristopher Wrigley', ibid. (1988), XXDC, 367-83,385-90.33 Goa Archives, Panaji, Livros das Moncdes, XVII, 138, King to Viceroy of Goa, Lisbon, 27Feb. 1633.34 Axelson, Portuguese 1600-1700,30-53; D. N. Beach, The Shona and Zimbabwe, 900-1850(Gweru, Mambo, 1984), 125-7; S. I. G. Mudenge,-4 Political History ofMunhumutapa, c. 1400-1902(Harare, Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1988), 223-41.35 Axelson, Portuguese 1600-1700,15-29.36 Axelson, Portuguese 1488-1600,219-26.87 Theal, Records (1901), VTI, 1-370; (1901), VI, 339-57,392-410; (1899), III, 254-435; Axelson,Portuguese 1600-1700,15-29; Portuguese 1488-1600,219-26.38 Documents, DC, xli.182 PUBLISHING THE PASTtheir length. As some of the longest documents are the most interesting,their exclusion means that the Documents on the Portuguese project runsthe risk of becoming 'Hamlet without the Prince'.These are fairly severe criticisms of a volume that was eagerly awaited.AH of them can be overcome, in the future volumes that must appear.Material that relates to areas outside Mozambique and its hinterland andtrivial material must be ruthlessly excised or summarized. A new 'masterlist' of documents must be compiled, to augment that of Axelson whichwas composed nearly forty years ago. (This can easily be done by puttingall references to the documents in secondary works and guides into achronological sequence using a computer.)39 As many scholars as possibleshould then be consulted as to the value of the proposed publicationslisted; in this way it is unlikely that valuable documents would be omitted.Much later on as many academics as possible should be consulted on thefootnotes, as no single person is omniscient.Looking ahead, the editors of the project are going to face considerableproblems as the number of documents to be edited increase as thePortuguese expanded their activities in the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies. It could well be that it would take an entire volume to cover thedocuments of a single year in later centuries! A way around this might beto break up the series into concurrent regional series, perhaps those ofthe 'North', 'Centre' and 'South'. Possibly Malawi might be involved in thenorthern series, and Swaziland or even a free South Africa in the southern.This might treble the speed of publication.Finally, what of the problem of very long documents? Here it seemsthat convenience might run hand-in-hand with profit. As Paul Hair haspointed out, the Theal translation of the Ethiopia Oriental of Joao dosSantos covers only of part of the book, so anybody who wants to read thewhole must read Portuguese.*0 Yet, it is a fascinating blend of accurateobservation and fantasy, and is much more likely to appeal to the generalpublic than any of the nine volumes of documents published so far. Thereis no reason at all why such works should not be published in a separateseries. Imagine a full publication of Santos, with facing-page translation,accurate footnotes, maps, colour photographs of the regions described,and a romantic, full-colour cover, perhaps of the Sofala coast! Properlymarketed, such a book ought to do very well in the bookshops of theworld, and the profits might help the main project. Another such volumemight combine the relevant parts of Barros's Da Asia, the Andr6 Fernandesdocument of 1562, part of Couto's Da Asia, and the relevant part ofBocarro's Decada. Similar presentation to that of the Santos volume,perhaps with a cover showing Fura and northern Zimbabwe, would beginto attract the compulsive series-buying members of the general public, aswell as academics. A third volume might include the Antonio Gomes39 Beach, 'Documents and African society", 140-1.40 P. E. H. Hair, "The task ahead: The editing of early European-language texts on BlackAfrica', in Heintze and Jones, 'European sources', 32, 40.D. N. BEACH 183document of 1648, Francisco de Sousa's Oriente Conquistado and otherdocuments of a clerical nature.41In short, the resumption of publication of the documents in thisseries is welcomed, but changes are needed if full value is to be obtainedfrom them.University of Zimbabwe D. N. BEACHŁ" 'Viagem que fez o Padre Ant? Gomes da Comp." de Jesus, ao Imperio de de [sic]Manomotapa; e assistencia que fez nas ditas terras df algu's annos' [2 January 1648], ed. E.Axelson, Stadia (1959), III, 155-242; Francisco de Sousa, Oriente Conquistado a Jesu Christopelos Padres da Companhia de Jesus da Provincia de Goa (Lisbon, V. da Costa Deslandes, 2vols., 1710).