Between colonialisms: Burton's Goa in Goa and the Blue Mountains

Abstract

This paper examines Portuguese Goa as an object of enquiry in Richard F. Burton's first travelogue, Goa and the Blue Mountains (1851). Burton's stay in Goa was slightly longer than a month, and many of his ideas about the place were shaped not just by what he saw firsthand. This needs to be kept in mind, and it explains Burton's stylistic strategies and the presentation of a self-indulgent Portuguese Goa. Taking Burton to be a representative figure of British colonial discourse during the mid-nineteenth century, this paper focuses on the rhetorical construction of Portuguese Goa that operated in the service of the British Empire. Even though Goa was not a colony of the British Empire, it is in Burton's imperial discourse that the roots of British anxieties about their self-image and empire can be found - a reaction against what was happening in Britain and India at the time.