Team Herald
PANJIM: The Directorate of Archives & Archaeology has requested the National Archives of India, New Delhi, for digital copies of 62 volumes of the collection known as ‘Moncoes do Reino’ (Monsoon correspondence), as the State government intends to make these records available to the public.
The digital images of the missing volumes of the series were recently handed over to India by the Torre do Tombo (National Archives of Portugal) following an agreement signed between the two countries to promote cooperation in the field of archives.
“We have requested the National Archives of India, New Delhi, for the digital copies of the 62 volumes in order to fill up the missing gaps of the record series “Monsoon Correspondence,” said an official from the State Archives and Archaeology Department.
As per details available with Heald, these volumes were originally part of over 456 volumes that cover the period from 1568 to 1914 and formed the largest of all record collections in the State Archives. The collection consists of direct correspondence from Lisbon to Goa and is an important primary source for the study of the Portuguese expansion in Asia, their trade rivalries with the Arab and European powers and their relations with neighbouring kings in South Asia and East Asia.
In 1777, these 62 volumes, consisting of over 12,000 documents, pertaining to the period from 1605 to 1651 were shifted from Goa to Lisbon where these were subsequently printed under the title ‘Documentos Remetidos da India’ (Documents sent from India) by the Academy of Science at Lisbon between 1880 and 1893. The original volumes had remained in Lisbon since then.
After 240 years, the gap in the collection was filled when on May 17, 2017, a delegation from Portugal submitted the copies to their Indian counterparts in New Delhi. The State has now written to the Centre requesting to hand it over to Goa.
