The Portuguese in the East

"Vasco de Gama's voyage to India in the late fifteenth century opened up new economic and cultural horizons for the Portuguese. At the height of Portugal's maritime influence, it had created an oceanic state ranging from the Cape of Good Hope to China. While Portugal's direct political influence in Asia was comparative short-lived, its linguistic influence remains. Here Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya charts the influences of the Portuguese in more than fifty Asian tongues, illustrating the extent of Lusitanian links. Luso-Asian influence became engrained in eastern cultures in more subtle ways than other European empires which followed, such as the Portuguese oral traditions in folk literature, now embedded in postcolonial Asian music and song." "Through her research Jayasuriya finds that eastern peoples are often unaware of their Lusitanian legacy. She draws on first-hand knowledge and experience, linguistic analyses, existing historical accounts, unpublished manuscripts and her own musical arrangements, to demonstrate how important cultural contact was between the Portuguese and indigenous populations. The Portuguese language became the lingua franca, the bridging tongue between not one, but several colonial regimes along the coasts of Africa and Asia, from the Cape Verde Islands to Canton and the Moluccas. Jayasuriya shows us the lasting impact of the Portuguese oral traditions in folk literature, which have survived to be translated into postcolonial Asian music and song in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Indonesia."--Jacket.