'The unquiet religious backdrop to European East Indies trade: Christian polemical literature and the first Portuguese translation of the Bible, 1642-1694' (with Luis Henrique Menezes Fernandes)

The first systematic translation of the Bible into Portuguese was prepared over the second half of the seventeenth century in the Dutch East Indies by the Portuguese Calvinist João Ferreira A. dAlmeida. Existent historiography tracing the context of its production has been limited either to biographical analyses or typographical surveys of its several editions. Primary sources that correspond to the obstinate Catholic versus Calvinist confrontation underlying its elaboration have been overlooked. We thus assume that only from a deeper analysis of polemical works written within this doctrinal clash is it possible to better understand the historical significance of that unique biblical translation

Gasparo Contarini’s Relazione of November 1525 to the Venetian Senate on the divergent dynamics of the Spanish and Portuguese world empires

This contribution seeks to both present Gasparo Contarini’s diplomatic report (Relazione), made following three years in Venetian service in Spain between 1522-25 to unfamiliar readers, and elucidate its contents. It was a time when ground-breaking reports of the first global circumnavigation by Magellan/Elcano and conquests in the New World undertaken by Hernan Cortes were filtering back to the Spanish ruler, Charles V. Projects for the colonization of Brazil in neighbouring Portugal were afoot, as were attempts by other parties to reach the contested Spiceries by new routes. International juries were being constituted to decide upon the division of the world’s spaces, culminating in the Treaty of Saragossa, and controversial maps were being composed both to make sense of potentially new continents like the Americas, and to plead different cases at the upcoming tribunals. It is asked why such a polarized picture of successful Spanish and unsuccessful Portuguese imperial fortunes is provided by Contarini, at a time of great rivalry between Spain and Portugal, and it is suggested that Contarini – who did not personally travel to Portugal - may be simply following a rhetorical precedent fashioned by previous diplomats like Ca’Masser, Vincenzo Quirini and Pietro Pasqualigo. Historical, personal and documentary context (Contarini’s 400 dispacci, for example) is provided, and comparisons to other contemporary observers like the Polish diplomat Jan Dantyszek and his letters and reports from the Spanish court, as well as contemporary travelers and businessmen on the Asian scene, drawn

British participation in the quincentenary commemorations of the death of Prince Henry ‘the Navigator’ (1960)

This issue will focus not only on the Portuguese context, but also on the ways in which these commemorations were interpreted in other national contexts, especially Brazil, Angola, São Tomé and Príncipe, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Goa, Macau, and East Timor. Suggested topics include:- Institutional public or privately-organized commemorative programs;- Political and activist discourses;- Journalistic discourses and media representations;- Editorial initiatives in or outside academia;- Cultural and artistic productions (including cinema, music, plastic and performative arts);- Historiography about the Portuguese expansion overseas and works from other social sciences and humanities;- Historiographical and memorialist debates;- Architectural and urbanistic interventions and heritagization of spaces;- Teaching and children’s and young adult literature

"‘Siam is the best place in the Indies’. Father Nicola Cima O.E.S.A. and his memorandum of 1709 for renewed East Indies trade"

Nicola Agustin Cima’s Relatione Distinta delli Regni di Siam, China, Tunchino e Cocincina, a 66 page manuscript completed around 1707, submitted for the consideration of the Venetian Senate, and today kept in the Marciana Library, Venice under the classification Ital Cl. VI. 76 (6036) is both a prescriptive document for the reinvigoration of Venetian long-distance maritime commerce put forward for deliberation by the Venetian Senate, and a tour d’horizon of the commercial and political possibilities offered in the Orient. One of the underlying themes therein is that Siam, by which Cima meant Ayutthaya, was the best place for conducting trade (luogo) in the East, and it is with these ideas in mind – with problems of their own - that I present this text to readers of the Anais de Historia de Alem Mar accompanied by a critical commentar

A MODEL FOR ASSESSING THE LEVEL OF AUTOMATION OF A MAINTENANCE DEPARTMENT USING ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORK

With regard to adapting enterprise to the Industry 4.0 concept, the first element should be the implementation and use of an information system within a manufacturing company. This article proposes a model, the use of which will allow the level of automation of a maintenance department to be forecast, depending on the effectivity of the use of the Manufacturing Executions System (MES) within a company. The model was built on the basis of the actual times of business processes completed which were supported by MES in the maintenance departments of two manufacturing enterprises using artificial neural network. As a result of research experiments, it was confirmed that the longer the time taken to complete business processes supported by MES, the higher is the degree of automation in a mainte-nance department