Nos primórdios da antropologia moderna: a Ásia de João de Barros

Abstract

Traditionally regarded as one of the supreme exponents of “openness to the Other” brought about by Portuguese Humanism, João de Barros’ Ásia is today a work in dire need of reinterpretation. This article seeks to shed new light upon this text, focusing upon the passages pertaining to ethnography and Oriental history with a view to identifying underlying anthropological and historical concepts. In this context, the discovery of the Other should be viewed as an acceptance of the unfamiliar as being essentially the same. Thanks to the assumption of a global cultural continuity rooted in a biblical and classical conception of history that conferred a very limited potential for diversity on mankind, through João de Barros’ quill, these African and Oriental cultures entered the orbit of a unitarian anthropology that would constitute the basis of the great taxonomic systems of modern times.