The Monsoon project: digital perspectives of the Habsburg Estado da Índia

Abstract

MONSOON aims to study the internal dynamics of the Portuguese macro-region of Estado da Índia in its various dimensions in a holistic and complex way during the period in which Portugal was part of the Hispanic Monarchy (1580-1640). The challenge is to combine, at the same time and in the same instruments of analysis, the formal and informal presence of the Portuguese in the Asian seas since literature usually analysed the two perspectives separately [1] [2]. 8 MONSOON intends to test a different methodological approach to the study of regions that were part of European empires in the early modern period based upon massive narrative collection of sources. It expects to develop a flexible digital approach that could be applied to other European historical spaces and documentary sources. To achieve these goals the team will use a set of documents known as Livros das Monções. The information extracted from the sources will be analyzed according to three variables – agents, events, spaces – and using digital humanities tools: digital ontological semantics applying Natural Language Processing techniques, social network analysis and digital mapping.