Cosmopolitismes de la Mer d’Arabie: Les chrétiens de saint Thomas face à l’expansion Portugaise en Inde

This study presents on a number of case studies a structural situation of trade and communication across the Arabian Sea, which had given the raison d’être and the frame for the life of the indigenous Christians of India and also determined the conditions of their encounter with the first European colonisation. Although this situation does not exhaust the criteria of a “cosmopolitan universalism”, as they were formulated during the Enlightenment, yet, it has produced relations between communities and individuals that have extended far beyond the birth, linguistic, political and religious communities, and which, per consequence, can be called “cosmopolitan”, even if only in a limited sense. The present essay shows that this traditional subjacent frame rendered the early encounter of the Indian Christians with the Portuguese colonisers and missionaries one between two powerful elites, who were profoundly interested in each other. The question examined here is to know to which extent the European (re-) discovery of India has provided the opportunity for the local elite to acquire knowledge on Europe and on the European sciences and to which extent these new elements had become integrated into the local epistemological structure.