Topass

Last updated

Topass (Topass, Topass Seaman or Topas) was a term used by the British Merchant Navy for the man who acted as an interpreter for a group or gang of Lascars or South Asian seamen on British vessels since at least the mid nineteenth century. Usually the topass came from the Luso-Asian communities, such as those from Goa and Bombay, and could speak English (and often Portuguese) to pass on instructions to a group of sailors and to report back or mediate between Lascars and the European crew. Topaze Indo-Portuguese was a term applied in India by the British East India Company in the eighteenth century to describe Luso-Asians - usually from the Portuguese territories in the Indian subcontinent, or formerly Portuguese territories such as Bombay. One of the first references to them is in the British Anti-piracy campaign of 1756 when 300 Topaze Indo-Portuguese on the British ships Kent, Kingfisher, and Tiger captured the fortress of Geriah on 14 February 1756.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Portuguese India</span> Portuguese colonies in South Asia (1505–1961)

The State of India, also referred as the Portuguese State of India or simply Portuguese India, was a state of the Portuguese Empire founded six years after the discovery of a sea route to the Indian subcontinent by Vasco da Gama, a subject of the Kingdom of Portugal. The capital of Portuguese India served as the governing centre of a string of military forts and trade posts scattered all over the Indian Ocean.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anglo-Indian people</span> Ethnic group or cultural group identification

Anglo-Indian people fall into two different groups: those with mixed Indian and British ancestry, and people of British descent born or residing in India. The latter sense is now mainly historical, but confusions can arise. The Oxford English Dictionary, for example, gives three possibilities: "Of mixed British and Indian parentage, of Indian descent but born or living in Britain or of English descent or birth but living or having lived long in India". People fitting the middle definition are more usually known as British Asian or British Indian. This article focuses primarily on the modern definition, a distinct minority community of mixed Eurasian ancestry, whose first language is English.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lascar</span> Sailor or militiaman from the Indian Subcontinent, Southeast Asia, and other territories

A lascar was a sailor or militiaman from the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, the Arab world, British Somaliland, or other land east of the Cape of Good Hope, who was employed on European ships from the 16th century until the middle of the 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">British Asian</span> British people of Asian descent

British Asians are British citizens of Asian descent. They constitute a significant and growing minority of the people living in the United Kingdom, with 6.9% of the population identifying as Asian/Asian British in the 2011 United Kingdom census. This represented a national demographic increase from a 4.4% share of UK population in 2001.

Norteiros were a historical people who lived in the former Portuguese exclaves in the western littoral parts of the northern Konkan region, in the present-day Greater Bombay Metropolitan Area and the union territory of Damaon, Diu& Silvassa.

Indo-Portuguese creoles are the several Portuguese creoles spoken in the erstwhile Portuguese Indian settlements, Cochin Portuguese Creole, Fort Bassein, Goa and Damaon, Portuguese Ceylon etc, in present-day India and Sri Lanka. These creoles are now mostly extinct or endangered, the creoles have substantial European Portuguese words in their grammars or lexicons:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mardijker people</span> Ethnic group in Indonesia

The Mardijker people refers to an ethnic community in the Dutch East Indies made up of descendants of freed slaves. They could be found at all major trading posts in the East Indies. They were mostly Christian, of various ethnicity from conquered Portuguese and Spanish territories, and some with European ancestry. They spoke a Portuguese patois, which has influenced the modern Indonesian language.

Goan Catholics are an ethno-religious community of Indian Christians following the Roman Rite of worship from the Goa state, in the southern part of the Konkan region along the west coast of India. They are Konkani people and speak the Konkani language.

Goans is the demonym used to describe the people native to Goa, India, who form an ethno-linguistic group resulting from the assimilation of Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Indo-Portuguese, and Austro-Asiatic ethnic and/or linguistic ancestries. They speak different dialects of Konkani language natively, collectively known as Goan Konkani. "Goanese" is an incorrect term for Goans.

<i>Mestiço</i> Mixed indigenous and European descendants in former Portuguese colonies

Mestiço is a Portuguese term that referred to persons born from a couple in which one was an aboriginal person and the other a European.

Topasses

Topasses were a group of people led by the two powerful families – Da Costa and Hornay – that resided in Oecussi and Flores. The Da Costa families were descendants of Portuguese Jewish merchants and Hornay were Dutch.

There is a small community of Indians in Brazil who are mainly immigrants and expatriates from India. There are currently about 9,200 people of Indian origin living in the country and a majority of them live in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. There are also a number of people of Indian origin who came to Brazil from both Britain's and Portugal's African colonies in the later half of the twentieth century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Luso-Indian</span> Indians of Portuguese birth or descent

Luso-Indians or Portuguese-Indian, is a subgroup of the larger multiracial ethnic creole people of Luso-Asians. Luso-Indians are people who have mixed varied Indian subcontinent and European Portuguese ancestry or people of Portuguese descent born or living or originating in former Portuguese Indian colonies, the most important of which were Goa and Damaon of the Konkan region in the present-day Republic of India, and their descendants/ diaspora around the world, the Anglosphere, Lusosphere, Portuguese East Indies etc. Luso-Asians of the Indian subcontinent are primarily from Velha Goa, Damaon, Dio district, St Mary's islands of Mangalore, Bombay (Mumbai), Korlai (Chaul), Vasai (Bassein), Silvassa, Cape Comorin, Fort Cochin etc. There are also a number of New Christian Brahmins and Christian Cxatrias with Portuguese surnames, but do not necessarily possess European ancestry, being named as such in the process of their religious conversion to Western Christianity by Portuguese missionaries in the sixteenth century. This was done to prevent Hindu caste based discrimination among the native converts. Nevertheless, they are in many cases indistinguishable from the wider Luso-Indian population.

South Asians in the United Kingdom have been present in the country since the 17th century, with significant migration occurring in the mid-20th century. They originate primarily from eight sovereign states in South Asia which are, in alphabetical order, the countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. There is also a history of migration of diasporic South Asians from Africa and Southeast Asia moving to, and settling in, the United Kingdom.

Luso-Asians are people whose ethnicity is partially or wholly Portuguese and ancestrally are based in or hail primarily from Portugal, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. They historically came under the cultural and multi-ethnic sway of the Portuguese Empire in the East and retain certain aspects of the Portuguese language, Roman Catholic faith, and Latin cultural practices, including internal and external architecture, art, and cuisine that reflect this contact. The term Luso comes from the Roman empire's province of Lusitania, it roughly corresponds to modern Portugal.

Rogério de Faria was a Luso-Goan businessman.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gallivat</span>

The gallivat was a small, armed boat, with sails and oars, used on the Malabar Coast in the 18th and 19th centuries. The word may derive from Portuguese "galeota"; alternatively, it may derive from Maratha "gal hat" - ship. Hobson-Jobson has an extensive discussion of the origins of the term and its usage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Portuguese language in Goa</span> Overview about the Portuguese language in Goa

The Portuguese controlled Goa until 1961, when India took over. Only a very small fraction of Goans speak Portuguese nowadays. Although an essential religious language, there were 1,500 students learning Portuguese in Goa in 2015; totaling a number of 10,000 – 12,000 Portuguese speakers in the state.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1878</span> Bilateral relations

The Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1878 was an economic agreement between Portugal and the United Kingdom regarding their trade and a railway between their colonies in India. This treaty was in keeping with the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance that dated back to the 14th century.

References