“To favor Christianity”

the initiatives of coercion to the conversion of orphans in Goa (1540-1606)

Abstract

Conquered in 1510 by Afonso de Albuquerque, Goa gradually became the capital of the State of India and a center of diffusion of the Catholicism in the Portuguese Empire to the east. The project of evangelization of the local populations constituted more than a moral obligation and aimed at guaranteeing the conservation of the Portuguese imperial power through the homogenization of subjects by religion. Based on these considerations, we seek to analyze the initiatives promoted by the Catholic Church and the Portuguese colonial administration in converting a specific category among the natives: the orphans "minors" of up to fourteen years of age.