Gazeta de Goa

The Gazeta de Goa was the first periodical edited within the Portuguese empire outside the Portugal-Brazil axis. It was published weekly, and occasionally biweekly, between 22 December 1821 and the end of September 1826, being printed in Goa at the "“Impressão do Governo” which since issue 33, 21 August 1822, was renamed “Officina Typográfica de Goa”. 

Its creation resulted from the establishment of a revolutionary government in Goa in September 1821, following news about the liberal revolution in Portugal that took place on 24 August 1820.

One of the first measures of the new government was to purchase in Bombay a typography to print a gazette. In fact, notwithstanding previous attempts to publish periodicals and other prints in Goa, since printing was prohibited in overseas territories, and since the previous century Goa no longer became the exception. Apart from the Brazilian case due to the migration of the Portuguese Royalty and its Court to the country in 1808, the situation continued until the liberal revolution. The new power in India decided to break with this state of affairs, linking the new liberal order to the existence of a public opinion informed by the press. This was fifteen years ahead of the 7 December 1836 decree by the central government, ordering the local governments of the colonies to install official printing presses and bulletins.

The government’s intentions were well expressed in the 12 December 1821 by-law, which determined the creation of “a weekly Gazette, to publish the official decisions of the Government, national and foreign news, the monthly register of the Treasury, the Senate, and the Misericordia”, and also establishing that “Any Citizen may command the publication of his observations, by signing and paying the cost” (Gazeta de Goa, 1, 22 December 1822, our translation). The writer of the gazette was also to become the head of the press office.

The new periodical has as its first editor António José de Lima Leitão (Lagos, 1787-Lisbon, 1856), a doctor, politician, polymath and Freemason, who had achieved his doctorate after joining the Napoleonic army, and had been heading the Health Services of the Estado da Índia. Lima Leitão only held the position until issue 7 of the Gazeta (2 March 1822), as soon after he departed to Lisbon (4 March) as an elected deputy to the Constitutional Courts. He was accompanied by other two MPs, the Goans Bernardo Peres da Silva, ideologue of local liberalism, and Constâncio Roque da Costa whose descendants would install private press in Goa.

He was substituted by Luís Prates de Almeida e Albuquerque (Angola, ? - Goa, 1822) since the next issue published on 9 March 1822. This military, writer and translator, with roots in Pernambuco (Brazil) was born and lived part of his life in Angola. Being also known for his liberal convictions, he was exiled to Goa for his connections to the Pernambuco Revolution of 1817. When taking the charge of the Gazeta, differently from Lima Leitão, Luís Prates changed its profile to a model closer to that of a political newspaper and revealed to be particularly opinionated and polemic. He took on the role of “periodista” [writer of periodicals], an adjective that, according to him, was still waiting for its “naturalization certificate” in dictionaries. Disclosing his difference as a writer coming from the colonies, he introduced in the frontispiece of the Gazeta a quote of Camões, with focus on the Indian population: “Know, that ye look on Inde wherein extendeth/ a world of nations, rich and fortunate” (Os Lusíadas, Canto VII, 30, trad. Richard Burton 1880, v. II, 265). Prates gathered quite a few enemies and ended being murdered on 15 July 1822 in an ambience of counterrevolutionary military tumults. The situation owed much to dissatisfaction with the subversion of colonial hierarchies, resulting from the central role played during the revolution days by the Goan Catholic elite, as became evident in the electoral results.

He was thereafter substituted by the lieutenant José Aniceto da Silva (Sintra, 1788-Pangim, 1847) who, when taking his charge on number 28, 27 July 1822. The political ambiance had started changing, in Goa sooner than in Portugal, where the new liberal order only had a real setback by mid-1823. Signalling the new political moment, Silva changed the frontispiece of the Gazeta for another quotation from Camões which, differently from the former, emphasised the fearful respect that Portuguese qualities inspired in Eastern lands: “since from their hearts ne moil ne toil hath driven / Portingall-excellence, abounding still / leal valour and obedient will.” (Canto V, 72, Burton, v. I, 203). That change spoke volumes about the political rupture, counterrevolutionary and restorative of colonial hierarchies, which hereafter guided the gazette’s editorial line. It was in such mood that thereafter the Gazeta accompanied the political changes started in mid-1823 that put an end to the first Portuguese liberal experience. Coincidently, that was also the year when Silva released the only pamphlet published by the governmental press, a critical analysis of the revolutionary period (Xavier, 1876, p. 67).

 The Gazeta was closed by the end of September 1826. In 1922, in a volume of tribute to the centenary of the independence of Brazil, the Goan journalist António Maria da Cunha recalled the archbishop of Goa Manuel de São Galdino, temporarily heading the Government of the Estado da Índia, who justified the abolition with a declaration that became famous in the history of local press: “the government always lived without the press and without a Gazette until the unfortunate time of the revolution, and on those disastrous times only produced evils.” (apud Cunha, 1923, p. 508). 

The Gazeta de Goa is a very rare periodical. On occasion of the Bicentenary of the 1822 Constitution National Library of Portugal has digitised its collection to be included in this repository. Although very incomplete, it is nonetheless particularly valuable to the history of this period.

Presentation and bibliographic record: Sandra Ataíde Lobo

Bibliography 

Camões, Luís de, Os Lusíadas (The Lusiads) englished by Richard Burton (edited by his wife Isabel Burton). London: Bernard Quaritch, 1880. 2 vols. https://www.burtoniana.org/books/1880-Os%20lusiadas/index.htm

Cunha, António Maria da, “A evolução do jornalismo na Índia Portuguesa” in A Índia Portuguesa: memórias escritas a convite do Governo Geral do Estado da Índia. Nova Goa: Imprensa Nacional, 1923, v. II, p. 501-594

José Aniceto da Silva [dados genealógicos].  Person Page

Lobo, Sandra Ataíde, “LEITÃO, António José de Lima (1787-1856)” in Zilia Osório de CASTRO (dir), Dicionário do Vintismo e do primeiro Cartismo (1821.1823 e 1826-1828). Lisboa, Assembleia da República; Afrontamento, 2002, v. I, p. 774-787
Lobo, Sandra Ataíde, O desassossego goês. Cultura e política em Goa do liberalismo ao Acto Colonial. Tese de doutoramento em Teoria e História das Ideias. Lisboa: NOVA-FSCH, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10362/10822 

Oliveira, Luís Cabral de, “Sementes da revolta liberal: Luís Prates no Brasil, em Angola em Angola, e em Goa”, Seminário no âmbito da Cátedra Eduardo Lourenço da Universidade de Aix-Marseille, 2022. https://youtu.be/BAwNQNCc6aQ?si=OO5VAYXDgSQ7bxqX

Oliveira, Luís Cabral de. A consagração dos naturais: Constituição, direito(s) e perismo na Goa oitocentista. Tese de Doutoramento em História do Direito. Lisboa; NOVA-FD, 2015. 
http://hdl.handle.net/10362/16336

Pinto, Celsa, The idea of constitutional liberalism in Goa: Understanding Bernardo Peres da Silva’s Diálogo. Saligão: Goa 1556, 2022

Xavier, Francisco João, Breve notícia da Imprensa Nacional de Goa, seguida de um catálogo das obras e escriptos publicados pela mesma imprensa desde a sua fundação. Nova-Goa, Na Imprensa Nacional, 1876