BARROS, JOAO DE (I496-I570), called the Portuguese Livy, born at Vizeu, may be said to have been the first great historian of his country. Educated in the palace of King Manoel, he composed, at the age of 20, a romance of chivalry, the Chronicle of the Emperor Clarimundo, in which he is said to have had the assistance of Prince John, afterwards King John III., who gave him various important posts. In 1532 the king appointed Barros factor of the India and Mina House—positions of great responsibility and importance at a time when Lisbon was the European emporium for the trade of the East. Barros proved a good administrator, displaying great industry and disinterested ness. He made but little money where his predecessors had amassed fortunes.
At this time, John III., wishful to attract settlers to Brazil, divided it up into captaincies and gave that of Maranhao to Barros, who, associating two partners in the enterprise with him self, prepared an armada of ten vessels, carrying goo men, which set sail in 1539. Owing to the ignorance of the pilots, the whole fleet suffered shipwreck, which entailed serious financial loss on Barros; yet not content with meeting his own obligations, he paid the debts of those who had perished in the expedition. During all these busy years he had continued his studies in his leisure hours, and shortly after the Brazilian disaster he offered to write a history of the Portuguese in India, which the king accepted. The first of the Decades of his Asia appeared in 1552, the Second Decade came out in 1553 and the Third in 1563, but the Fourth and final one was not published until 1615, long after the author's death (Oct. 20, 1570).
As an historian and a stylist Barros deserves the high fame he has always enjoyed. His Decades contain the early history of the Portuguese exploration and government in Asia, and is still con sulted by students. Though, on the whole, impartial, Barros is the narrator and apologist of the great deeds of his countrymen, and lacks the critical spirit and intellectual acumen of Damiao de Goes. Diogo do Couto continued the Decades, adding nine more. A modern Da Asia de Joao de Barros, dos feitos que os Portuguezes fizeram no descubrimento e conquista dos mares e terras do Oriente (Lisbon 1778-88) includes a life of Barros by the historian, Manoel Severim de Faria, and a copious index of all the Decades. The Decades were translated both into Italian and German.