Article

Gaspar Correa and Malacca

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Gaspar Correa and Malacca

I.A. MacGregor’s 1955 article in the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society corrects a long-standing misidentification in Portuguese historiography: the murder of a “Gaspar Correa” at Malacca, recorded in an undated petition from the Lisbon National Archives, was wrongly attributed to the famous chronicler of the Lendas da India by earlier scholars. MacGregor demonstrates through documentary evidence that the victim was a different man bearing the same name, killed during the captaincy of dom Estevao da Gama in the 1530s, not in 1563–64 as previously supposed.

Summary

The article addresses a historiographical error that had persisted since 1891, when Dr. Antonio Maria de Freitas discovered an undated petition in the Lisbon archives in which a widow, Anna Vaz, complained of the “causeless, wrongful and unjust death” of her husband Gaspar Correa at Malacca, naming Henrique Mendes as the chief murderer and dom Estevao as the protecting Captain. Freitas assumed the victim was the chronicler Gaspar Correa and dated the murder to 1563 or 1564, when dom Estevao da Gama (great-grandson of Vasco da Gama) was in Malacca. This identification was subsequently accepted by K. G. Jaynes, Theophilo Braga, and Aubrey Bell, the last of whom by 1953 had stated definitively that the chronicler “was murdered at Malacca at the age of seventy.”

MacGregor dismantles this chain of assumption by producing a letter from Pero de Faria to the King of Portugal, dated 22 November 1540 from Malacca, in which Faria explicitly mentions receiving a petition “concerning Gaspar Correa who was killed here one night” during the handover of the Captaincy from dom Estevao da Gama (son of Vasco da Gama, who held the post 1534–39). The petition was to be revoked to Portugal because dom Estevao had just become Governor of Portuguese India in April 1540. MacGregor identifies the Henrique Mendes of the petition as Henrique Mendes de Vasconcellos, a well-documented figure who served under dom Estevao da Gama at Malacca in the 1530s, was wounded in multiple engagements, and was highly praised by both dom Estevao and his brother dom Cristovao da Gama in letters of November 1540.

The decisive argument is chronological: the chronicler Gaspar Correa was still revising his Lendas da India as late as 1561 and 1563, making it impossible for him to have been killed in the 1530s. MacGregor concludes that Anna Vaz’s husband was one of several other men named “Gaspar Correa” serving in the Portuguese establishment at the time, possibly the one who went to the Moluccas in 1528.

Key Findings

  • The undated petition (Lisbon, Arq. Nac. da Torre do Tombo, Cartas Missivas, Maço 3, no. 365) names Henrique Mendes as “chief murderer” and dom Estevao as the Captain who protected the killers (p. 163).
  • Pero de Faria’s letter of 22 November 1540 (Gavetas Antigas, 15-15-23) confirms the petition was presented during the Captaincy handover and was to be revoked to Portugal because dom Estevao da Gama had become Governor of India in April 1540 (p. 164).
  • Dom Estevao da Gama (son of Vasco da Gama) held the Captaincy of Malacca from 1534 to 1539; Pero de Faria arrived in June 1539 and the handover was not completed until November of that year (p. 164).
  • Henrique Mendes de Vasconcellos, son of Lopo de Vasconcellos, came to the East in 1524, served in Malabar campaigns, was present at the Muar river fight in 1534, commanded a lanchara in the Johore River expedition of 1535, went to Banda as commander of the Portuguese trading vessel, and was wounded fighting pirates at Patani (pp. 164–165).
  • The chronicler Gaspar Correa was still adding to his Lendas da India in 1561 and 1563, which is incompatible with a murder in the 1530s (p. 163).
  • Dom Estevao da Gama’s letter of 11 November 1540 from Goa praises Mendes’s services at Malacca and recommends him for “one of the good fortresses of India” (p. 165).

Conclusion

MacGregor’s definitive takeaway is that the conflation of two men named Gaspar Correa—produced by Freitas’s initial assumption and perpetuated by three subsequent scholars—must be abandoned. The chronicler of the Lendas da India was not murdered at Malacca; the victim was an otherwise obscure namesake killed during the turbulent captaincy of dom Estevao da Gama in the 1530s, a case that was suppressed by the outgoing Captain’s elevation to the Governorship of India.

Context

  • The article draws exclusively on manuscript sources in the Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Lisbon (Corpo Cronologico, Gavetas Antigas, Cartas Missivas), supplemented by printed Portuguese chronicles (Barros, Castanheda, Andrade) and secondary literature (Bell, Jaynes).
  • The study contributes a methodological correction to Portuguese colonial historiography, demonstrating how an undated document can be securely dated through cross-referencing with contemporaneous official correspondence, and how name ambiguity in early modern Portuguese records can produce persistent historiographical errors.

References