Re-exploring the Links
Re-exploring the Links

Author: Jorge Manuel Flores

Publisher: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 9783447054904

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The island of Ceilao occupied a permanent and singular place in the political imagination of early modern Portugal. Concurrently, the Portuguese left a strong imprint in the Sri Lankan collective memory of the period. Five centuries later, a group of historians, art historians, anthropologists, and linguists reflect on the multiple dimensions of this phenomenon by rethinking texts and maps, ruined churches and ivory caskets, oral tales and Creole communities. Authored by 15 international scholars, Re-exploring the Links is divided in four parts: "Political Realities and Cultural Imagination"; "Religion: Con. ict and Interaction"; "Space and Heritage: Construction, Representation"; "Language and Ethnicity, Identity and Memory". While published on the occasion of the Portuguese arrival in Sri Lanka five centuries ago, this book is far from being a celebratory piece. Re-exploring the Links does not conform to nationalist models of historical interpretation and refuses both the rhetoric of discovery and the rhetoric of aggression. The aim of the volume is not to celebrate "encounters", but to reinvent an academic debate, independent of any political agenda and concerning a history that is Portuguese and Sri Lankan alike.INTRODUCTORY ESSAYChandra R. de Silva, Portugal and Sri Lanka: Recent Trends in HistoriographyPOLITICAL REALITIES AND CULTURAL IMAGINATION S. Pathmanathan The Portuguese in Northeast Sri Lanka (1543-1658): An Assessment of Impressions Recorded in Tamil Chronicles and Poems Rohini Paranavitana, Sinhalese War Poems and the Portuguese Karunasena Dias Paranavitana The Portuguese Tombos as a Source of Sixteenthand Seventeenth-Century Sri Lankan History Rui Manuel Loureiro, The Matter of Ceylon in Diogo do Couto's Decadas da Asia Jorge Flores, Maria Augusta Lima Cruz A 'Tale of Two Cities', a 'Veteran Soldier', or the Struggle for Endangered Nobilities: The Two Jornadas de Huva (1633, 1635)RELIGION: CONFLICT AND INTERACTIONAlan Strathern, The Conversion of Rulers in Portuguese-Era Sri Lanka John Clifford Holt, Buddhist Rebuttals: The Changing of the Gods and Royal (Re)legitimization in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Sri Lanka Ines G. Zupanov, Goan Brahmans in the Land of Promise: Missionaries, Spies and Gentiles in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Sri Lanka Jurrien van Goor, State and Religion under the Dutch in Ceylon, c. 1640-1796SPACE AND HERITAGE: CONSTRUCTION, REPRESENTATIONZoltan Biedermann, Perceptions and Representations of the Sri Lankan Space in Sixteenth-Century Portuguese Texts and MapsHelder Carita, Portuguese-Influenced Religious Architecture in Ceylon: Creation, Types and ContinuityNuno Vassallo e Silva, An Art for Export: Sinhalese Ivory and Crystal in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth CenturiesLANGUAGE AND ETHNICITY, IDENTITY AND MEMORYKenneth David, Jackson Singelle Nona/Jinggli Nona: A Traveling Portuguese Burgher MuseDennis B. McGilvray, The Portuguese Burghers of Eastern Sri Lanka in the Wake of Civil War and Tsunami

The Desclergues of la Villa Ducal de Montblanc, Second Edition Omnibus
The Desclergues of la Villa Ducal de Montblanc, Second Edition Omnibus

Author: Nico F. Declercq

Publisher: Nico F. Declercq

Published: 2024-06-23

Total Pages: 2090

ISBN-13: 9083176940

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The Desclergues of la Villa Ducal de Montblanc (2nd edition) is a comprehensive ancestral chronicle, meticulously tracing the Desclergues family lineage from the Greek era through the Villa Ducal de Montblanc in Tarragona to the present in Belgium. This omnibus edition compiles the entire acclaimed series, offering an exhaustive account of the Desclergues of Montblanc alongside the author's other ancestral lines, including de Patin, de Patin de Langemark, Lesage, Benoit, Den Dauw, 't Kint, Surmont, de Croock, Ardan, Lammens, Decaestecker, and de Silva of Uduwara in Sri Lanka. This scholarly work is enriched by a comprehensive DNA analysis, providing genetic depth to the historical narrative. Each family line is intricately contextualized within its historical setting, with facsimile images of archival records offering tangible evidence of the past. This beautifully illustrated book presents a visually engaging experience, enhancing historical insights and making it an invaluable resource for students, historians, and anyone passionate about genealogical studies. Nico Felicien Declercq, a full professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is a distinguished scholar. With a Ph.D. from Ghent University and an MSc from the Catholic University of Leuven, his prolific academic career encompasses numerous published works. His passion for history and genealogy led him to meticulously document his ancestral lineage, culminating in this comprehensive work. Professor Declercq's interdisciplinary approach and dedication to rigorous research have earned him a reputation for excellence in the scientific community and among genealogical enthusiasts. He is also the author of several philosophical novels published under a pseudonym.

A History of Sri Lanka
A History of Sri Lanka

Author: K M de Silva

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2005-08-25

Total Pages: 666

ISBN-13: 9351182398

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Sri Lanka is an ancient civilization, shaped and thrust into the modern globalizing world by its colonial experience. With its own unique problems, many of them historical legacies, it is a nation trying to maintain a democratic, pluralistic state structure while struggling to come to terms with separatist aspirations. This is a complex story, and there is perhaps no better person to present it in reasoned, scholarly terms than K.M. de Silva, Sri Lanka’s most distinguished and prolific historian. A History of Sri Lanka, first published in 1981, has established itself as the standard work on the subject. This fully revised edition, in light of the most recent research, brings the story right up to the early years of the twenty-first century. The book provides comprehensive coverage of all aspects of Sri Lanka’s development—from a classical Buddhist society and irrigation economy, to its emergence as a tropical colony producing some of the world’s most important cash crops, such as cinnamon, tea, rubber and coconut, and finally as an Asian democracy. It is a study of the political vicissitudes of Sri Lanka’s ancient civilization and the successive phases of Portuguese, Dutch and British colonial rule. The unfortunate consequences of becoming a centre of ethnic tension and Sri Lanka’s long-standing relationship with India are also discussed. Exhaustively researched and analytical, this book is an invaluable reference source for students of ancient, colonial and post-colonial societies, ethnic conflict and democratic transitions, as well as for all those who simply want to get a feel of the rich and varied texture of Sri Lanka’s long history.

Buddhist Poetry and Colonialism
Buddhist Poetry and Colonialism

Author: Stephen C. Berkwitz

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2013-01-21

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 0199935777

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Many researchers have explored the impact of British and French Orientalism in the reinterpretations of Buddhism in South and Southeast Asia during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Less noticed, however, and infrequently discussed is the impact of Portuguese colonialists and missionaries upon Buddhist communities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries across Asia. Stephen C. Berkwitz addresses this theme by examining five poetic works by Alagiyavanna Mukaveti (b.1552), a renowned Sinhala poet who participated directly in the convergence of local and trans-local cultures in early modern Sri Lanka. Berkwitz follows the written works of the poet from his position in the court of a Sinhala king, through the cultural upheavals of warfare and the expansion of colonial rule, and finally to his eventual conversion to Catholicism and employment under the Portuguese Crown. In so doing, Berkwitz explores the transformations in religion and literature rendered by what was arguably the earliest sustained encounter between Asian Buddhists and European colonialists in world history. Alagiyavanna's poetic works give expression to both a discourse of nostalgia for the local religious and cultural order in the late sixteenth century, and a discourse of cultural assimilation with the new colonial order during its ascendancy in the early seventeenth century. Employing an interdisciplinary approach that combines Buddhist Studies, History, Literary Criticism, and Postcolonial Studies, this book yields important insights into how the colonial experience contributed to the transformation of Buddhist culture in early modernity.