Inflation
In economics, inflation is a sustained increase in the general price level of goods and services in an economy over a period of time. When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys services; the measure of inflation is the inflation rate, the annualized percentage change in a general price index the consumer price index, over time. The opposite of inflation is deflation. Inflation affects economies in various negative ways; the negative effects of inflation include an increase in the opportunity cost of holding money, uncertainty over future inflation which may discourage investment and savings, if inflation were rapid enough, shortages of goods as consumers begin hoarding out of concern that prices will increase in the future. Positive effects include reducing unemployment due to nominal wage rigidity, allowing the central bank more leeway in carrying out monetary policy, encouraging loans and investment instead of money hoarding, avoiding the inefficiencies associated with deflation.
Economists believe that the high rates of inflation and hyperinflation are caused by an excessive growth of the money supply. Views on which factors determine low to moderate rates of inflation are more varied. Low or moderate inflation may be attributed to fluctuations in real demand for goods and services, or changes in available supplies such as during scarcities. However, the consensus view is that a long sustained period of inflation is caused by money supply growing faster than the rate of economic growth. Today, most economists favor a steady rate of inflation. Low inflation reduces the severity of economic recessions by enabling the labor market to adjust more in a downturn, reduces the risk that a liquidity trap prevents monetary policy from stabilizing the economy; the task of keeping the rate of inflation low and stable is given to monetary authorities. These monetary authorities are the central banks that control monetary policy through the setting of interest rates, through open market operations, through the setting of banking reserve requirements.
Rapid increases in the quantity of money or in the overall money supply have occurred in many different societies throughout history, changing with different forms of money used. For instance, when gold was used as currency, the government could collect gold coins, melt them down, mix them with other metals such as silver, copper, or lead, reissue them at the same nominal value. By diluting the gold with other metals, the government could issue more coins without increasing the amount of gold used to make them; when the cost of each coin is lowered in this way, the government profits from an increase in seigniorage. This practice would increase the money supply but at the same time the relative value of each coin would be lowered; as the relative value of the coins becomes lower, consumers would need to give more coins in exchange for the same goods and services as before. These goods and services would experience a price increase. Song Dynasty China introduced the practice of printing paper money to create fiat currency.
During the Mongol Yuan Dynasty, the government spent a great deal of money fighting costly wars, reacted by printing more money, leading to inflation. Fearing the inflation that plagued the Yuan dynasty, the Ming Dynasty rejected the use of paper money, reverted to using copper coins. Large infusions of gold or silver into an economy led to inflation. From the second half of the 15th century to the first half of the 17th, Western Europe experienced a major inflationary cycle referred to as the "price revolution", with prices on average rising sixfold over 150 years; this was caused by the sudden influx of gold and silver from the New World into Habsburg Spain. The silver spread throughout a cash-starved Europe and caused widespread inflation. Demographic factors contributed to upward pressure on prices, with European population growth after depopulation caused by the Black Death pandemic. By the nineteenth century, economists categorized three separate factors that cause a rise or fall in the price of goods: a change in the value or production costs of the good, a change in the price of money, a fluctuation in the commodity price of the metallic content in the currency, currency depreciation resulting from an increased supply of currency relative to the quantity of redeemable metal backing the currency.
Following the proliferation of private banknote currency printed during the American Civil War, the term "inflation" started to appear as a direct reference to the currency depreciation that occurred as the quantity of redeemable banknotes outstripped the quantity of metal available for their redemption. At that time, the term inflation referred to the devaluation of the currency, not to a rise in the price of goods; this relationship between the over-supply of banknotes and a resulting depreciation in their value was noted by earlier classical economists such as David Hume and David Ricardo, who would go on to examine and debate what effect a currency devaluation has on the price of goods. The adoption of fiat currency by many countries, from the 18th century onwards, made much larger variations in the supply of money possible. Rapid increases in the money supply have taken place a number of times in countries experiencing political crises, produ
Mozambican escudo
The escudo was the currency of Mozambique from 1914 until 1980. It was subdivided into 100 centavos; the escudo replaced the real at a rate of 1 escudo = 1000 réis. It was equal in value to the Portuguese escudo until 1977. Mozambique had its own paper money but used Portuguese coins. Only in 1935 were coins issued for use in Mozambique. In 1975, the metica was proposed as a replacement for the escudo; the escudo was replaced by the metical in 1980 at par. Between 1935 and 1936, coins for 10, 20 and 50 centavos, 1, 2½, 5 and 10 escudos, with the 2½, 5 and 10 escudos in silver. In 1952, silver 20 escudos were issued. Between 1968 and 1971, base metal coins replaced the silver 10 and 20 escudos; the last coins were issued in 1974. In 1914, provisional issues for 100 and 1000 escudos were introduced, alongside regular issues for 10, 20 and 50 centavos, by the Banco Nacional Ultramarino. Emergency issues of notes for 10, 20 and 50 centavos and 1 and 2½ escudos were introduced in 1920, followed by regular issues for 1, 2½, 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 escudos.
Emergency issues for 50 centevaos and regular 500 and 1000 escudos notes were introduced in 1941. In 1976, 50, 100, 500 and 1000 escudos notes of the Banco Nacional Ultramarino were overprinted with the name of the new issuing bank, the Banco de Moçambique
Fernando Pessoa
Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa known as Fernando Pessoa, was a Portuguese poet, literary critic, translator and philosopher, described as one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th century and one of the greatest poets in the Portuguese language. He wrote in and translated from English and French. Pessoa was a prolific writer, not only under his own name, for he dreamed up seventy-five others, he did not call them pseudonyms because he felt that did not capture their true independent intellectual life and instead called them heteronyms. These imaginary figures sometimes held extreme views. Pessoa was born in Lisbon on 13 June 1888; when Pessoa was five, his father, Joaquim de Seabra Pessôa, died of tuberculosis and the following year, on 2 January, his younger brother Jorge, aged one died. After the second marriage of his mother, Maria Magdalena Pinheiro Nogueira, proxy wedding to João Miguel dos Santos Rosa, Fernando sailed with his mother for South Africa in the beginning of 1896, to join his stepfather, a military officer appointed Portuguese consul in Durban, capital of the former British Colony of Natal.
On, in 1918, Pessoa wrote a letter in which refers: There is only one event in the past which has both the definiteness and the importance required for rectification by direction. My mother's second marriage is another date which I can give with preciseness and it is important for me, not in itself, but in one of its results – the circumstance that, my stepfather becoming Portuguese Consul in Durban, I was educated there, this English education being a factor of supreme importance in my life, whatever my fate be, indubitably shaping it; the dates of the voyages related to the above event are: 1st. Voyage to Africa – left Lisbon beginning January 1896. Return – left Durban in the afternoon of 1st. August 1901. 2nd. Voyage to Africa – left Lisbon about 20th. September 1902. Return – left Durban about 20th. August 1905; the young Pessoa received his early education at St. Joseph Convent School, a Catholic grammar school run by Irish and French nuns, he moved to the Durban High School in April 1899, becoming fluent in English and developing an appreciation for English literature.
During the Matriculation Examination, held at the time by the University of the Cape of Good Hope, in November 1903 he was awarded the created Queen Victoria Memorial Prize for best paper in English. While preparing to enter university, he attended the Durban Commercial High School during one year, in the evening shift. Meanwhile, Pessoa started writing short stories in English, some under the name of David Merrick, many of which he left unfinished. At the age of sixteen, The Natal Mercury published his poem "Hillier did first usurp the realms of rhyme...", under the name of C. R. Anon, along with a brief introductory text: "I read with great amusement...". In December, The Durban High School Magazine published his essay "Macaulay". From February to June 1905, in the section "The Man in the Moon", The Natal Mercury published at least four sonnets by Fernando Pessoa: "Joseph Chamberlain", "To England I", "To England II" and "Liberty", his poems carried humorous versions of Anon as the author's name.
Pessoa started using pen names quite young. The first one, still in his childhood, was Chevalier de Pas a French noble. In addition to Charles Robert Anon and David Merrick, the young writer signed up, among other pen names, as Horace James Faber, Alexander Search, other meaningful names. In the preface to The Book of Disquiet, Pessoa wrote about himself: Nothing had obliged him to do anything, he had spent his childhood alone. He never joined any group, he never pursued a course of study. He never belonged to a crowd; the circumstances of his life were marked by that strange but rather common phenomenon – in fact, it’s true for all lives – of being tailored to the image and likeness of his instincts, which tended towards inertia and withdrawal. The young Pessoa was described by a schoolfellow as follows: I cannot tell you how long I knew him, but the period during which I received most of my impressions of him was the whole of the year 1904 when we were at school together. How old he was at this time I don’t know, but judge him to have 15 or 16.
He was pale and thin and appeared physically to be imperfectly developed. He was inclined to stoop, he had a peculiar walk and some defect in his eyesight gave to his eyes a peculiar appearance, the lids seemed to drop over the eyes. He was regarded as a brilliant clever boy as, in spite of the fact that he had not spoken English in his early years, he had learned it so and so well that he had a splendid style in that language. Although younger than his schoolfellows of the same class he appeared to have no difficulty in keeping up with and surpassing them in work. For one of his age, he thought much and and in a letter to me once complained of "spiritual and material encumbrances of most especial adverseness", he took no part in athletic sports of any kind and I think his spare time was spent on reading. We considered that he worked far too much and that he would ruin his health by so doing. Ten years after his arrival, he sailed for Lisbon via the Suez Canal on board the "Herzog", leaving Durban for good at the age of seventeen.
This journey inspired the poems "Opiário" published
Pedro Álvares Cabral
Pedro Álvares Cabral was a Portuguese nobleman, military commander and explorer regarded as the European discoverer of Brazil. In 1500 Cabral conducted the first substantial exploration of the northeast coast of South America and claimed it for Portugal. While details of Cabral's early life remain unclear, it is known that he came from a minor noble family and received a good education, he was appointed to head an expedition to India in 1500, following Vasco da Gama's newly-opened route around Africa. The undertaking had the aim of returning with valuable spices and of establishing trade relations in India—bypassing the monopoly on the spice trade in the hands of Arab and Italian merchants. Although the previous expedition of Vasco da Gama to India, on its sea route, had recorded signs of land west of the southern Atlantic Ocean, Cabral led the first known expedition to have touched four continents: Europe, Africa and Asia, his fleet of 13 ships sailed far into the western Atlantic Ocean intentionally, made landfall on what he assumed to be a large island.
As the new land was within the Portuguese sphere according to the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, Cabral claimed it for the Portuguese Crown. He explored the coast, realizing that the large land mass was a continent, dispatched a ship to notify King Manuel I of the new territory; the continent was South America, the land he had claimed for Portugal came to be known as Brazil. The fleet reprovisioned and turned eastward to resume the journey to India. A storm in the southern Atlantic caused the loss of several ships, the six remaining ships rendezvoused in the Mozambique Channel before proceeding to Calicut in India. Cabral was successful in negotiating trading rights, but Arab merchants saw Portugal's venture as a threat to their monopoly and stirred up an attack by both Muslims and Hindus on the Portuguese entrepôt; the Portuguese sustained their facilities were destroyed. Cabral took vengeance by looting and burning the Arab fleet and bombarded the city in retaliation for its ruler having failed to explain the unexpected attack.
From Calicut the expedition sailed to the Kingdom of Cochin, another Indian city-state, where Cabral befriended its ruler and loaded his ships with coveted spices before returning to Europe. Despite the loss of human lives and ships, Cabral's voyage was deemed a success upon his return to Portugal; the extraordinary profits resulting from the sale of the spices bolstered the Portuguese Crown's finances and helped lay the foundation of a Portuguese Empire that would stretch from the Americas to the Far East. Cabral was passed over as a result of a quarrel with Manuel I, when a new fleet was assembled to establish a more robust presence in India. Having lost favor with the King, he retired to a private life, his accomplishments slipped into obscurity for more than 300 years. Decades after Brazil's independence from Portugal in the 19th century, Cabral's reputation began to be rehabilitated by Emperor Pedro II of Brazil. Historians have long argued whether Cabral was Brazil's discoverer, whether the discovery was accidental or intentional.
The first question has been settled by the observation that the few, cursory encounters by explorers before him were noticed at the time and contributed nothing to the future development and history of the land which would become Brazil, the sole Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas. On the second question, no definite consensus has been formed, the intentional discovery hypothesis lacks solid proof. Although he was overshadowed by contemporary explorers, historians consider Cabral to be a major figure of the Age of Discovery. Little is certain regarding Pedro Álvares Cabral's life before, or following, his voyage which led to the discovery of Brazil, he was born in 1467 or 1468—the former year being the most likely—at Belmonte, about 30 kilometres from present-day Covilhã in central Portugal. He was a son of Fernão Álvares Cabral and Isabel Gouveia—one of five boys and six girls in the family. Cabral was christened Pedro Álvares de Gouveia and only supposedly upon his elder brother's death in 1503, did he begin using his father's surname.
The coat of arms of his family was drawn with two purple goats on a field of silver. Purple represented fidelity, the goats were derived from the family name. However, only his elder brother was entitled to make use of the family arms. Family lore said that the Cabrais were descendants of Caranus, the legendary first king of Macedonia. Caranus was, in turn, a supposed 7th-generation scion of the demigod Hercules. Myths aside, the historian James McClymont believes that another family tale might hold clues to the true origin of Cabral's family. According to that tradition, the Cabrais derive from a Castilian clan named the Cabreiras who bore a similar coat of arms; the Cabral family rose to prominence during the 14th century. Álvaro Gil Cabral was one of the few Portuguese nobles to remain loyal to Dom João I, King of Portugal during the war against the King of Castile. As a reward, João I presented Álvaro Gil with the hereditary fiefdom of Belmonte. Raised as a member of the lower nobility, Cabral was sent to the court of King Dom Afonso V in 1479 at around age 12.
He learned to bear arms and fight. He would have been age 17 on 30 June 1484 when he was named moço fidalgo (yo
Banknote
A banknote is a type of negotiable promissory note, made by a bank, payable to the bearer on demand. Banknotes were issued by commercial banks, which were required to redeem the notes for legal tender when presented to the chief cashier of the originating bank; these commercial banknotes only traded at face value in the market served by the issuing bank. Commercial banknotes have been replaced by national banknotes issued by central banks. National banknotes are legal tender, meaning that medium of payment is allowed by law or recognized by a legal system to be valid for meeting a financial obligation. Banks sought to ensure that they could always pay customers in coins when they presented banknotes for payment; this practice of "backing" notes with something of substance is the basis for the history of central banks backing their currencies in gold or silver. Today, most national currencies have no backing in precious metals or commodities and have value only by fiat. With the exception of non-circulating high-value or precious metal issues, coins are used for lower valued monetary units, while banknotes are used for higher values.
In China during the Han dynasty promissory notes were made of leather. Rome may have used a durable lightweight substance as promissory notes in 57 AD which have been found in London. However, Carthage was purported to have issued bank notes on parchment or leather before 146 BC. Hence Carthage may be the oldest user of lightweight promissory notes; the first known banknote was first developed in China during the Tang and Song dynasties, starting in the 7th century. Its roots were in merchant receipts of deposit during the Tang dynasty, as merchants and wholesalers desired to avoid the heavy bulk of copper coinage in large commercial transactions. During the Yuan dynasty, banknotes were adopted by the Mongol Empire. In Europe, the concept of banknotes was first introduced during the 13th century by travelers such as Marco Polo, with European banknotes appearing in 1661 in Sweden. Counterfeiting, the forgery of banknotes, is an inherent challenge in issuing currency, it is countered by anticounterfeiting measures in the printing of banknotes.
Fighting the counterfeiting of banknotes and cheques has been a principal driver of security printing methods development in recent centuries. Paper currency first developed in Tang dynasty China during the 7th century, although true paper money did not appear until the 11th century, during the Song dynasty; the usage of paper currency spread throughout the Mongol Empire or Yuan dynasty China. European explorers like Marco Polo introduced the concept in Europe during the 13th century. Napoleon issued paper banknotes in the early 1800s. Cash paper money originated as receipts for value held on account "value received", should not be conflated with promissory "sight bills" which were issued with a promise to convert at a date; the perception of banknotes as money has evolved over time. Money was based on precious metals. Banknotes were seen by some as an I. O. U. or promissory note: a promise to pay someone in precious metal on presentation, but were accepted - for convenience and security - in the City of London for example from the late 1600s onwards.
With the removal of precious metals from the monetary system, banknotes evolved into pure fiat money. Development of the banknote began in the Tang dynasty during the 7th century, with local issues of paper currency, although true paper money did not appear until the 11th century, during the Song dynasty, its roots were in merchant receipts of deposit during the Tang Dynasty, as merchants and wholesalers desired to avoid the heavy bulk of copper coinage in large commercial transactions. Before the use of paper, the Chinese used coins that were circular, with a rectangular hole in the middle. Several coins could be strung together on a rope. Merchants in China, if they became rich enough, found that their strings of coins were too heavy to carry around easily. To solve this problem, coins were left with a trustworthy person, the merchant was given a slip of paper recording how much money they had with that person. If they showed the paper to that person, they could regain their money; the Song Dynasty paper money called "jiaozi" originated from these promissory notes.
By 960 the Song dynasty, short of copper for striking coins, issued the first circulating notes. A note is a promise to redeem for some other object of value specie; the issue of credit notes is for a limited duration, at some discount to the promised amount later. The jiaozi did not replace coins during the Song Dynasty; the central government soon observed the economic advantages of printing paper money, issuing a monopoly right of several of the deposit shops to the issuance of these certificates of deposit. By the early 12th century, the amount of banknotes issued in a single year amounted to an annual rate of 26 million strings of cash coins. By the 1120s the central government stepped in and produced their own state-issued paper money. Before this point, the Song government was amassing large amounts of paper tribute, it was recorded that each year before 1101 AD, the prefecture of Xin'an alone would send 1,500,000 sheets of paper in seven different varieties to the capital at Kaifeng. In that year of 1101, the Emperor Huizong of Song decided to lessen the amount of paper taken in the tribute quota, because it was causing detrimental effects and creating heavy burdens on the people of the regio
Portuguese India
The State of India referred as the Portuguese State of India or Portuguese India, was a state of the Portuguese Overseas Empire, founded six years after the discovery of a sea route between Portugal and the Indian Subcontinent to serve as the governing body of a string of Portuguese fortresses and colonies overseas. The first viceroy, Francisco de Almeida, established his headquarters in Cochin. Subsequent Portuguese governors were not always of viceroy rank. After 1510, the capital of the Portuguese viceroyalty was transferred to Goa; until the 18th century, the Portuguese governor in Goa had authority over all Portuguese possessions in the Indian Ocean, from southern Africa to southeast Asia. In 1752 Mozambique got its own separate government and in 1844 the Portuguese Government of India stopped administering the territory of Macau and Timor, its authority was confined to the colonial holdings on the Malabar coast of present-day India. At the time of the British Indian Empire's dissolution in 1947, Portuguese India was subdivided into three districts located on modern-day India's western coast, sometimes referred to collectively as Goa: namely Goa.
Portugal lost effective control of the enclaves of Dadra and Nagar Haveli in 1954, the rest of the overseas territory in December 1961, when it was taken by India after military action. In spite of this, Portugal only recognised Indian control in 1975, after the Carnation Revolution and the fall of the Estado Novo regime; the first Portuguese encounter with the subcontinent was on 20 May 1498 when Vasco da Gama reached Calicut on Malabar Coast. Anchored off the coast of Calicut, the Portuguese invited native fishermen on board and bought some Indian items. One Portuguese met with a Tunisian Muslim. On the advice of this man, Gama sent a couple of his men to Ponnani to meet with ruler of Calicut, the Zamorin. Over the objections of Arab merchants, Gama managed to secure a letter of concession for trading rights from the Zamorin, Calicut's Brahman ruler. But, the Portuguese were unable to pay the prescribed customs duties and price of his goods in gold. Calicut officials temporarily detained Gama's Portuguese agents as security for payment.
This, annoyed Gama, who carried a few natives and sixteen fishermen with him by force. Gama's expedition was successful beyond all reasonable expectation, bringing in cargo, worth sixty times the cost of the expedition. Pedro Álvares Cabral sailed to India, marking the arrival of Europeans to Brazil on the way, to trade for pepper and other spices and establishing a factory at Calicut, where he arrived on 13 September 1500. Matters worsened when the Portuguese factory at Calicut was attacked by surprise by the locals, resulting in the death of more than fifty Portuguese. Cabral was outraged by the attack on the factory and seized ten Arab merchant ships anchored in the harbour, killing about six hundred of their crew and confiscating their cargo before burning the ships. Cabral ordered his ships to bombard Calicut for an entire day in retaliation for the violation of the agreement. In Cochin and Cannanore Cabral succeeded in making advantageous treaties with the local rulers. Cabral started the return voyage on 16 January 1501 and arrived in Portugal with only 4 of 13 ships on 23 June 1501.
The Portuguese built the Pulicat fort with the help of the Vijayanagar ruler. Vasco da Gama sailed to India for a second time with 15 ships and 800 men, arriving at Calicut on 30 October 1502, where the ruler was willing to sign a treaty. Gama this time made a call to expel all Muslims from Calicut, vehemently turned down, he captured several rice vessels. He returned to Portugal in September 1503. On 25 March 1505, Francisco de Almeida was appointed Viceroy of India, on the condition that he would set up four forts on the southwestern Indian coast: at Anjediva Island, Cannanore and Quilon. Francisco de Almeida left Portugal with a fleet of 22 vessels with 1,500 men. On 13 September, Francisco de Almeida reached Anjadip Island, where he started the construction of Fort Anjediva. On 23 October, with the permission of the friendly ruler of Cannanore, he started building St. Angelo Fort at Cannanore, leaving Lourenço de Brito in charge with 150 men and two ships. Francisco de Almeida reached Cochin on 31 October 1505 with only 8 vessels left.
There he learned. He decided to send his son Lourenço de Almeida with 6 ships, who destroyed 27 Calicut vessels in the harbour of Quilon. Almeida took up residence in Cochin, he strengthened the Portuguese fortifications of Fort Manuel on Cochin. The Zamorin prepared a large fleet of 200 ships to oppose the Portuguese, but in March 1506 Lourenço de Almeida was victorious in a sea battle at the entrance to the harbour of Cannanore, the Battle of Cannanore, an important setback for the fleet of the Zamorin. Thereupon Lourenço de Almeida explored the coastal waters southwards to Colombo, in what is now Sri Lanka. In Cannanore, however, a new ruler, hostile to the Portuguese and friendly with the Zamorin, attacked the Portuguese garrison, leading to the Siege of Cannanore. In 1507 Almeida's mission was strengthened by the arrival of Tristão da Cunha's squadron. Afonso de Albuquerque's squadron had, split from that of Cunha off East Africa and was independently conquering territories in the Persian Gulf to the west.
In March 1508 a Portuguese squadron under command of Lourenço de Almeida was att
João de Barros
João de Barros, called the Portuguese Livy, is one of the first great Portuguese historians, most famous for his Décadas da Ásia, a history of the Portuguese in India and southeast Africa. Educated in the palace of Manuel I of Portugal, he composed, at the age of twenty, a romance of chivalry, the Chronicle of the Emperor Clarimundo, in which he is said to have had the assistance of Prince John. Upon ascending the throne, King John III awarded Barros the captaincy of the fortress of St George of Elmina, to which he proceeded in 1524. In 1525, he obtained the post of treasurer of the India House, which he held until 1528. To escape from an outbreak of bubonic plague in 1530 Barros moved from Lisbon to his country house near Pombal, where he finished a moral dialogue, Rho pica Pneuma, cheered by Juan Luís Vives. On his return to Lisbon in 1532 the king appointed Barros factor of the "Casa da Índia e da Mina" — a position of great responsibility and importance at a time when Lisbon was the European center for the trade of the East.
Barros proved a good administrator, displaying great industry and an honesty rare at the time, with the result that he made little profit compared to his predecessors, who had amassed fortunes. At this time, John III, wishing to attract settlers to Brazil, divided it into captaincies and attributed to Barros that of Maranhão. Barros, along with two partners, prepared an armada of ten vessels, carrying nine hundred men each, which set sail in 1539. Owing to the ignorance of the pilots, the whole fleet was shipwrecked, which entailed serious financial loss to Barros; as a gesture of goodwill, Barros subsequently paid the debts of those who had perished in the expedition. During these years he had continued his studies in his leisure hours, shortly after the Brazilian disaster he offered to write a history of the Portuguese in India, the Décadas da Ásia, which the king accepted, he began work forthwith, before printing the first part, he published a Portuguese grammar and some further moral Dialogues.
The first of the Décadas da Ásia appeared in 1552, its reception was such that the king straightway charged Barros to write a chronicle of King Manuel. His many occupations, prevented him from undertaking this book, composed by Damião de Góis; the second Decade came out in 1553 and the third in 1563, but he died before publishing the fourth Decade. The latter was published posthumously in 1615 at Madrid by the Cosmographer and Chronicler-Royal Joao Baptista Lavanha, who edited and compiled Barros' scattered manuscript, his Decades contain the early history of the Portuguese in India and Asia and reveal careful study of Eastern historians and geographers, as well as of the records of his own country. They are distinguished by clearness of exposition and orderly arrangement, they are lively accounts, for example describing the king of Viantana's killing of the Portuguese ambassadors to Malacca with boiling water and throwing their bodies to the dogs. Diogo de Couto continued the Décadas, adding nine more, a modern edition of the whole appeared in Lisbon in 14 vols. in 1778—1788 as Da Asia de João de Barros, dos feitos que os Portuguezes fizeram no descubrimento e conquista dos mares e terras do Oriente.
The edition is accompanied by a volume containing a life of Barros by the historian Manoel Severim de Faria and a copious index of all the Decades. In January 1568 Barros retired from his remunerative appointment at the India House, receiving the rank of fidalgo together with a pension and other pecuniary emoluments from King Sebastian, died on 20 October 1570. Chronica do Emperador Clarimundo, donde os Reys de Portugal descendem, tirada da linguagem ungara em a nossa portugueza.. Coimbra: João da Barreira. Rhopica Pneuma, ou mercadoria espiritual. Lisbon Cartinha para aprender Lisbon: L. Rodrigues. Grammatica da lingua portuguesa, Lisbon:L. Rodrigues. Dialogo da viciosa vergonha, Lisbon: L. Rodrigues. Dialogo de preceitos moraes com pratica delles em modo de jogo. Lisbon: L. Rodrigues. Primeira Década da Ásia, dos feitos que os Portugueses fizeram no descobrimento dos mares e terras do Oriente, Lisbon: Germão Galherde Segunda Década da Ásia &c. Lisbon: Germão Galherde Italian translation of Dec. I & Dec. II by Alfonso Ulloa, l'Asia del S.
Giovanni di Barros Consigliero del Christianissimo Re di Portugallo de Fatti de' Portughesi nello scropimento, e conquista de' mari, e terre di Oriente. Venice: Vicenzo, Valgrisio Terceira Década da Ásia &c. Lisbon: João da Barreira. Quarta Década da Ásia &c. Madrid: Imprensa Real. New edition of Dec. I-III. Lisbon: Jorge Rodrigues. Da Ásia de João de Barros e Diogo do Couto, dos feitos que os portugueses fizeram no descobrimento dos mares e terras do Oriente, Lisbon: Régia Officina Typografica. (24 volumes. 1-8 are reprints of Dec. I-IV of João de Barros. 10-23 are reprints of Dec. IV-XII of Diogo do Couto, vol. 24 general index for Couto. Online Chisholm, Hugh, ed.. "Barros, João de". Encyclopædia Britannica. Cambridge University Press. Manoel Severim de Faria "Vida de João de Barros", 1778, in vol. 9 of"Da Ásia de João de Barros e Diogo do Couto, Lisbon. Boxer, C. R.. João de Barros: Portuguese Humanist and Historian of Asia. New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company. Portuguese Site about João de Barros containing information about his life and work - by Bruno Figueiredo Barros:Decadas da Ásia … - links to scans of all 4 Barros-written, most of the
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Portugal
