José Vicente Barbosa du Bocage

Who was José Vicente Barbosa du Bocage?

José Vicente Barbosa du Bocage was a Portuguese zoologist and politician. He was the curator of Zoology at the Museu Nacional de Lisboa in Lisbon. He published numerous works on mammals, birds, and fishes. In the 1880s he became the Minister of the Navy and later the Minister for Foreign Affairs for Portugal. The zoology collection at the Lisbon Museum is called the Bocage Museum in his honor.

Bocage studied at the University of Coimbra from 1839 to 1846. He became lecturer of the chair of Zoology at the Polytechnic School, Lisbon in 1851, where he taught for more than 30 years. In 1858, he became also the scientific director and curator of Zoology of the Natural History Museum of the Polytechnic School. which was established as a support for the chair.

His work at the Museum consisted in acquiring, describing and coordinating collections, many of which arrived from the Portuguese colonies in Africa, such as Angola, Mozambique, etc., sent by noted naturalists such as José Alberto de Oliveira Anchieta. For this purpose, Bocage standardized the procedures for collecting, preparing and sending specimens to the Museum in his book “Instrucções Practicas sobre o Modo de Colligir, Preparar e Remetter Productos Zoológicos para o Museu de Lisboa”. In 1860 he succeeded in getting back some collections which were removed from the Museum during the Napoleonic invasion of Portugal, by the French naturalist Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, which included precious specimens collected by Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira in Brazil.