Welcome to TEFAF
The heightened instability gripping the world over the past two years leads us to believe in São Roque’s project growing relevance and urgency. The convergence of diverse peoples, cultures, and religions, the ‘fusion’ we’ve extensively discussed and shared, is increasingly necessary. We hope that our approach to the world, emphasizing equality and globalization, can contribute to a profound reflection. All different, but all equal! Every community has contributed to making the world what it is today, each in their own distinctive way. Let us promote, exalt, the tribute given by all throughout the centuries by uniting instead of destroying!
On arriving in Africa and the Far East, the Portuguese, focused on developing a complex network of diplomatic and trading relations, as well as a system of commercial outposts, that would ensure global control and promote the development of scientific, cultural, aesthetic, and artistic synergies, that remain highly relevant in our 21st century. Europe was suddenly flooded, for the first time in History, by fascinating products, and by remote and mutually unknown peoples’ that could see, touch, and communicate directly with each other. In its conviction, 16th century Portugal pioneered countless civilizational interactions of unimaginable magnitude, it introduced firearms to Japan and astrolabes and green beans to China, engaged in the abhorrent Atlantic slave trade, took tea to England and pepper to the New World, and brought Chinese silks, spices, and Indian medicines to Europe.
In this book, we also look over its role in crossing worldwide plant species and in blending dietary practices, which would revolutionize flora, medicine, and global gastronomy. By linking the four continents, Portugal defined the characteristics of modern- day eating habits, altered global botanic and the planet’s landscapes, and contributed unequivocally for the evolution of modern medical science. And lastly, considering the contribution that all peoples have made to the contemporary Portuguese language and how Portuguese is embedded in the languages of all the countries we have travelled.
Lisbon, February 3rd 1524 + 500
Mário Roque & A. A. Lima