Criminality and legitimization in seawaters: a study on the pirates of Malabar during the age of european commercial expansion (1500-1800)

The maritime piracy included a wide variety of associated criminal activities including attack and confiscation of vessels and merchandise, imprisonment or torturing of merchants and rulers in sea-space in return for ransom money, attack and raiding of coastal trading centers and villages, creation of fear and terror in chief channels of navigation and attacking commercial competitors as a strategy to weaken the trading ability and the wealth-mobilizing ability of their rivals. All this applied to coastal south west India during the period under study. The merchant chiefs of Cannanore like Mamale Marakkar and later under Poca Amame (Pokar Ahamad) and Pocarallee (Pokar Ali) were some of the better known protagonists that the Portuguese had to deal with. But the Malabar corsairs had their corresponding English and Sicilian corsairs in the Mediterranean.

To think museology today

In the present text we intend to analyse 5 basic documents that translate the Museological Thinking in our century and that, chiefly, have led professionals of the area to apply this “science” in a less hermetic way and to understand its practice. The option to study and analyse the documents results from the fact that they influence present day museological practice and thinking. It is impossible to speak of museology nowadays without referring to one of these documents, not to mention a few nations that have even modified and/or created specific laws for the management of their preservationist cultural policy. Anyway, we are aware that this text intends only to carry out a preliminary approach to the documents, in the sense that the wealth of its content would allow us to slowx over an infinity of issues that they raise. I specifically refer to the documents produced at UNESCO Regional Seminar on the Role of Museums in Education, which took place in Rio de Janeiro in 1958; at the Santiago Round Table in 1972, in Chile; at the 1rst New Museology International Workshop, in Quebec, Canada, 1984; at the Oaxtepec Meeting, in Mexico 1984; and at the Caracas Meeting in 1992. These are documents elaborated within the ICOM –International Council of Museums. These documents are the result of a joint reflection by professionals who seek the evolution of ideas within their areas of action, recognising that in order to do so it is necessary to leave the cocoon of the museological institutions and try to discuss their conceptual advances with professionals of related areas. It is important to be capacitated to reuse these advances in their areas of action. This is the recognition of the importance of interdisciplinarity for the museological context.

Museu da Abolição, “The Museum That We Want”

Museu da Abolição [Abolition Museum] was inaugurated in 1983 in the city of Recife, one of the largest cities of north-eastern Brazil, located in the state of Pernambuco. This state has a special place in the history of the country: it dates back to the colonization efforts, to the first interactions between Europeans and native peoples and the exploration of sugar cane production. Today, the region embodies not only Brazilian cultural wealth and diversity, but also the great social challenges of contemporary Brazil. The name of the museum is a reference to the Abolition of black slavery in Brazil at the end of the 19th century. A museum addressing abolition means more than addressing a historic fact. It means dealing with ideas on slavery, freedom, resistance, injustice. There are no museums isolated from society, whatever their social function. For a museum such as this one, which was created with the responsibility for a theme that echoes so strongly in the lives of men and women, the challenge of finding its place in the world has always been present.