THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

IN THE SHADOW OF THE CATHEDRAL: THE PRODUCTION OF URBAN

LANDSCAPES, HUMAN ENVIRONMENT INTERACTION, AND RUINATION IN

VELHA GOA DURING PORTUGUESE COLONIAL OCCUPATION

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO

THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY

BY

BRIAN CHRISTOPHER WILSON

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

AUGUST 2015
Copyright © by Brian Christopher Wilson

All Rights Reserved

 To Monica, Zoe, and Henry.

And to my grandparents Donald and Marie Matteson

for the inspiration.

 TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................................ v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................................... viii

INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1

CHAPTER 1 ................................................................................................................................. 27
History, Nature, and the City: Rethinking urbanism in Goa

CHAPTER 2 ................................................................................................................................. 56
Velha Goa as Object and Image: Cartography and spatial ideology in the capital of the Estado da
Índia

CHAPTER 3 ................................................................................................................................. 91
Velha Goa as Material: Archaeological survey data and the production and use of urban
landscapes

CHAPTER 4 ............................................................................................................................... 128

The City and the Country in Goa

CHAPTER 5 ............................................................................................................................... 170

Performing the City: The outer fortification wall of Velha Goa and South Asian urbanism

CHAPTER 6 ............................................................................................................................... 206

The Ruins of Empire? Reassessing the decline and ruination of Velha Goa

CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................... 253

APPENDIX A: Ceramic Analysis Methodology; Sample Artifact Analysis ............................. 263

APPENDIX B: Outer Fortification Wall: List of GPS Coordinates and Features ..................... 300

REFERENCES CITED ............................................................................................................... 306

iv
 LIST OF FIGURES

Figure
no. Description Page
Plan of the botanic garden in Padua, which divided the world into
1.1 four quarters. From Drayton (2000, 10) 41
Map Velha Goa by Jan Huygen van Linschoten first published in
2.1 1569 in his Itinerario. 66
Market scene by Jan Huygen van Linschoten first published in
2.2 1569 in his Itinerario 68
2.3 Oblique view maps of Velha Goa. 69
Bird’s eye view of Lisbon from Civitates Orbis Terrarum V
2.4 published in 1598 70
Detail of southwestern corner of Velha Goa depicting the
difference between civil, urban space and the surrounding ‘Mata
2.5 Vacas’ (cow forests) 72
Early mapping strategies versus to-scale spatial representation of
2.6 Velha Goa. 74
19th century map showing the contraction of urban space and
encroachment of agriculture and ‘wasteland’ into the urban core of
2.7 Velha Goa 78
2.8 Representative example of maps for the crown 80
Representative example of highly stylized maps of Old Goa with
2.9 outer fortification wall prominently depicted 82
Late 18th century maps produced for revitalization plans for Old
Goa. Both maps were produced by José de Morais Antas
2.10 Machada 85
1959 plan for revitalization of Old Goa produced by the Gracias
2.11 committee. 87
Example of survey grid (black) and several surveyed
3.1 compartments (white) 100
3.2 Left, Arch of our Lady of Conception 103
3.3 Modern street overlay of Old Goa 105
3.4 Basic urban structure of Velha Goa 107
3.5 Intensively surveyed residential areas 109
3.6 Comparison of modern and historic street patterns 110
3.7 Example of laterite pavers 112
3.8 Example of culvert 113
3.9 Detail of survey area D 114
3.10 Detail of survey area A 115

v
3.11 Nearly intact well in Locus 474_7 116
3.12 Keyhole-shaped well in survey area E 116
3.13 Remains of foundation (left) and roof drain fragment (right) 118
3.14 Niched construction (left) and sill (right) 118
3.15 Evidence of structures retained in compound wall 119
3.16 Additional evidence of structures in compound wall 119
3.17 Map and plan in survey area C of locus 474_2 120
Detail of 1775 map by Jose de Morais Machada with surveyed
3.18 structure circled 121
Plan view of locus 474_7 with table of ceramic counts and
3.19 weights for 1m x 1m surface collection units 122
3.20 Picture of Casa da Bula da Cruzada 123
4.1 Overhead view of Nossa Senhora da Graça 165
5.1 Outer fortification wall and surrounding region 175
5.2 Land survey maps showing sections of the outer fortification wall 180
5.3 Survey Areas A–G 182
Table of differences between construction phases of the outer
5.4 fortification wall 183
5.5 Extent of wall after building phases 1 and 2 184
5.6 Bastion types 185
5.7 Bays along fortification wall 185
5.8 Fortifications in Goa similar to European, trace italienne styles 186
Sections of wall built during the second phase of construction in
5.9 survey areas B, C, and the northernmost section of D 188
5.10 City of Antwerp c. 1572 189
Large gate in the outer fortification wall along Rajvhiti (royal
5.11 road) heading south towards the Zuari river 192
5.12 Walled city of Bijapur 193
Façade of the Augustinian Church (Our lady of Grace) just prior
6.1 to collapse in 1931 and in 2012 216
6.2 Pelourinho Novo in 1886 and in 2012 218
6.3 Plan of Locus 472_6 and example of associated ceramics 226
6.4 Plan view (top) and photo facing east (bottom) of locus 474_4 227
6.5 Plan view of locus 474_11 229
6.6 Photos of locus 474_11 230
6.7 Examples of cisterns encountered during survey 231
6.8 Examples of feni processing sites 234
Fragment of type-3 feni processing site (carved laterite basin or
6.9 trough) 235
6.10 Example of terrace systems in survey area B (top) and C (bottom) 237

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6.11 Example of terrace walls 238
6.12 Porcelain example from survey area D 240
6.13 Porcelain example from survey area D 240
6.14 Porcelain examples from survey area B 241
6.15 Example of ceramics still produced in Goa 242
6.16 Rim types from locus 474_11 243
6.17 Traditional feni distillation past and present 244
6.18 Plan view and photo of locus 542_3 245

vii
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Conducting archaeological fieldwork or writing a dissertation is never a singular

endeavor. As such, I owe a debt of gratitude to many colleagues, collaborators, and friends. It

would not have been possible to complete this work without their invaluable assistance, and I am

deeply grateful for all of your time and your talent.

First, I would like to thank my exceptional committee for guiding me through this

process. It almost goes without saying that this dissertation would not have been possible without

all of your help. Thank you to Kathleen Morrison, my chair, for first introducing me to South

Asian archaeology and the chance to participate in numerous field seasons as Kadebakele. Your

advice and critical eye have drastically improved this dissertation in so many ways. Thank you

to François Richard for long conversations about archaeological and historical theory, for

pushing me to improve my arguments, and for allowing me the use of your GPS equipment in

the field—not to mention my first taste of mafé. Thank you to Mark Lycett for helping to

develop both my theoretical and methodological engagements with my field site and for some

amazing meals and fieldwork experiences while in New Mexico. Shannon Lee Dawdy was

instrumental in shaping both the initial project proposal and the final product. Thank you for

your generous reading and comments on my work throughout my time in Chicago.

I would also like to thank the amazing support and friendship of my colleagues in India,

particularly those at the Archeological Survey of India, Goa Circle. Dr. S. V. Rao was an

invaluable sponsor and mentor while conducting my fieldwork. Abhijit Ambekar and Rohini

Pande provided amazing friendship and excellent advice on all things Goan archaeology, both in

the offices while sipping chai and struggling through the jungle recording the remains of the

outer fortification wall. Thank you also to the great efforts of Asaram who provided help during

viii
my survey. Various other colleagues also welcomed me into the intellectual community during

our stay in India. I would particularly like to thank Jason Fernandes, Timothy Walker, Mudit

Trivedi, Sidh Mendiratta, Romain Steinem, Dale Menezes, Tânia Casimiro, Mónica Esteves

Reis, and Luis Dias—all of whom helped with my work in Goa various ways. Also thank you to

the Fundação Oriente in Goa, which allowed me to present an early version of this work. I would

also like to thank the staff at the Historical Archives of Goa and the Central Library in Panajii,

especially Maria de Lourdes Bravo da Costa Rodrigues.

This dissertation was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No.

BCS-1156485. My time in India was additionally funded by a Fulbright, IIE fellowship. I

received various grants from the Marion R. and Adolph J. Lichtstern Fund to attend conferences,

and I received support for preliminary field research through a Leiffer Pre-Field Research

Fellowship. While writing my dissertation the Committee on South Asian Studies provided

additional financial support, and my last year of writing was funded by a William Rainey Harper

Dissertation-Year Fellowship.

Others also deserve thanks for their support. Carla Sinopoli, Greg Possehl, Andrew

Bauer, and Rebecca Graff all helped to hone my fieldwork skills allowing me to participate in

their field projects and offering excellent feedback on written work. Michael Dietler, Adam

Smith, and Jon Kelly among others also influenced my early engagements with colonialism,

archaeology, and South Asia. Finally, I must thank the amazing graduate students who helped

me immensely through their rigorous and stimulating critiques of my work and for many needed

social engagements over the years—one cannot overestimate the benefit of having such an

incredible group of graduate students in the department. I cannot possibly mention all of you,

but I would particularly like to thank my writing group Elizabeth Fagan, Maddie McLeester, and

ix
Maureen Marshall for the needed encouragement to finish and for amazing feedback on chapter

drafts.

Lastly, I send my greatest thanks to my family for their unfailing support and belief in

me, especially my wife Monica and our children Zoe and Henry.

x
 Introduction

“The proud capital of the Portuguese Eastern Empire was humbled to the dust. It was reduced to
a heap of ruins, and turned into a wilderness, infested by venomous snakes and reptiles. The spot
hallowed by the fame of Albuquerque and St. Francis Xavier, which had witnessed so many
triumphs of the sword and the Gospel, which had absorbed the wealth and commerce of the East,
and had attained an almost classic name, now presented a piteous spectacle of wide-spread
desolation and decay...the noble edifices both public and private, religious and secular, rivaling
in grandeur and beauty some of the best structures in Europe,—the palaces and churches and
convents with their lofty spires and turrets—these and other distinguishing features of a great
and flourishing city were gradually swept away...A few priests break the sepulchral silence
which reigns all around by the melodious hymns they chant; a few individuals occasionally
break in on the lonely scene to contemplate the noble remains of a fallen city.”
(da Fonseca 1878, 189–90)

Located midway down the coast of peninsular India in the modern state of Goa, the city

of Velha Goa quickly grew economically, demographically, and in prestige after the Portuguese

gained control of the port in 1510. Under their administration, the city of Goa soon became

known as one of the largest and wealthiest trading entrepôts in the Indian Ocean. Nearly all

historical accounts agree though, that the dramatic rise of the city was, however, followed by an

equally precipitous decline beginning sometime in the middle or late 17th century—even though

the Portuguese would continue to rule the small state until 1961 (Bethencourt and Curto 2007;

Boxer 1985; Correia 2006; Disney 2009; Pearson 1981; Souza 1990; Steensgaard 1985a). The

quote above, written by José Nicolau da Fonseca about Velha Goa as it appeared in the late 19th

century, reveals the common perception of European travelers when visiting the once

magnificent capital of the Portuguese Asian Empire (e.g. Burton 1851; Cottineau de Kloguen

1831).

Yet, Fonseca’s narrative does much more than simply describe and lend credence to the

historical decline of a once great city: It exposes an underlying conception of what constitutes

urban colonial space, of how cities are imagined to exist, and what defines them as such. His

1
evocative descriptions of a creeping, dangerous nature reducing the impressive built edifices of

the city to a ‘wilderness’ reveals an inherent understanding of a separation between

nature/culture, rural/urban, and uncivilized/civilized spaces. These binaries have a long history in

European thought, but they were particularly reinforced through colonial encounters during the

last 500 years. At the same time, Fonseca’s description also reveals the complex nature of the

Portuguese engagement with Goa by highlighting the often contentious duality of the secular and

ecclesiastical aims of the colonial enterprise (embodied in the quote above by Albuquerque and

St. Francis Xavier, the sword and the Gospel respectively), while it specifically ignores vast,

influential segments of the indigenous colonial population—tensions that would play out in the

governance of the colony and would have deep impacts on both the social and spatial landscapes

of the city. As I discuss in more detail below, it is the tensions inherent in colonial rule and the

differences between elite discourses and material practices that occur in colonial spaces that both

motivate and provide the questions that structure this dissertation.

At its most basic, this work examines the history of this former capital of colonial empire,

Velha Goa, through both material and archival data sets. Over the course of field research for

this project, I conducted a systematic archaeological survey of Velha Goa, surface collection and

analysis of artifacts, and archival research in the Historical Archives of Goa (HAG). This

research provided an archaeological perspective on the rise and decline of this city that has until

now, been almost completely lacking. The following introduction outlines the course of the

work by first providing the historical and geographic context for this research, then briefly

discussing the methodological approaches and major theoretical orientations that shaped the

interpretation of my results, before ending with an outline of each chapter and their major

arguments.

2
Historical and Geographical Context

Located midway down the western coast of India, Goa is perhaps best defined by its

proximity and relationship to the sea. The state of Goa occupies a total area within India of

approximately 3,701 sq. km, and lies within the narrow coastal zone between the Indian Ocean

and the Western Ghats mountain range with its widest point stretching only 60 km from west to

east. The topography of the region can be divided into three general areas: first, the steep

mountainous region in the east; second, an intermediate zone of foothills composed of broad

river valleys alternating with rolling highlands and plateaus; and third, the low lying coastal

plains. Occasionally the plateaus extend to the coast, creating important strategic headlands. The

composition of the soil in the region also varies, but lateritic soil—an iron rich, claylike soil

formed from weathering rocks—covers over two thirds of the region and provides an excellent

source of construction materials (Alexander and Cady 1962; Kamat 1990; Pendleton 1941). The

flora is quite diverse including evergreen forests in some higher elevations, coarse grass and

scrub, estuarine mangroves, and tropical forests. The typical cultigens in Goa are equally diverse

with a range of crops produced including rice, coconut, mango, and cashew. The combination of

Goa’s strategic position in the Indian Ocean, navigable rivers, proximity to spice producing

regions in the Ghats and south along the Malabar Coast, abundant natural resources, and

excellent harbors has made the area an important trading center for thousands of years (Souza

1990; da Fonseca 1878; Kamat 1990; Mitragotri 1999; G. A. Pereira 1973).

Within this small littoral region, the former capital city—known today as Velha Goa

(meaning ‘old’ Goa)—is located on the island of Tiswadi approximately 10 kilometers from the

current capital of the state, Panaji. The island of Tiswadi lies in the coastal zone between the two

3
principal inland waterways, the Mandovi and Zuari Rivers, and is separated from the mainland

by the relatively narrow Cumbarjua canal which connects these two rivers. Velha Goa is nestled

amongst several lateritic hills on the northern half of the island along the banks of the Mandovi

River. The exact date of the founding of the city is unknown. However, it most likely occurred

sometime in the 14th or 15th centuries after the older port town on Tiswadi, also confusingly

known as Goa Velha but located south of the current site, declined due to the silting of its harbor

on the Zuari River. After its establishment, the city of Velha Goa began to gain prominence

under the patronage of Adil Shah, ruler of the Deccan Sultanate of Bijapur, and most of the

wealthy traders relocated to the new, more accessible northern port.

The particularities of the early political history of the region remain contested and

obscure primarily due to lack of historical and archaeological evidence. The first reliable

historical evidence of Goa as an important trading center occurs in documents written by ancient

Greeks and Romans, primarily in the well-known Periplus of the Erythrean Sea written in the

early centuries C.E., and Goa’s involvement in the medieval trading networks of the Indian

Ocean is well documented (Souza 1990; da Fonseca 1878). The earliest known rulers of Goa

were the Bhojas. Evidence from copper plate inscriptions suggests that Goa was ruled by this

dynasty either outright or in vassalage from as early as the 3rd century B.C.E., and there is further

mention of Bhoja rule in Goa in the edicts of the Mauryan emperor Ashoka. The Bhojas were

succeeded by other dynasties and Goa was variously dominated by the Konkan Mauryas, the

Chalukyas, and Silaharas among others. The political situation of Goa stabilized somewhat from

the 10th to 14th centuries C.E when the region was ruled largely by the Kadamba dynasty (Souza

1990; da Fonseca 1878; Kamat 1990; Mitragotri 1999).

4
 In the first half of the 14th century Goa was invaded twice by the Delhi sultanate, first by

Malik Kafur and then in 1327 by Muhammad-bin-Tughlaq. These invasions marked the

beginning of Muslim political dominance in the region. With the weakening of political power

in Delhi later in the century and the rise of the Bahamani kingdom on the Deccan Plateau, Goa

came under the sway of the Bahamani sultans (Souza 1990; da Fonseca 1878). At the same time,

however, south of the Bahamani sultanate the kingdom of Vijayanagara consolidated its power

around its capital on the Tungabhadra River. These two kingdoms vied for power in the region

and Goa, with its excellent port and commercially lucrative trade, was sought after by both

powers. In particular, Goa was the primary port for the importation of horses from the Arabian

Peninsula, a trade critical to the military success of the kingdoms on the Deccan Plateau. By

1378, Vijayanagara consolidated its control of Goa and ruled the region until the 1470’s when

the Bahamani sultanate again regained control of the region. Due to internal dissent, the

Bahamani kingdom soon collapsed into five autonomous sultanates and the region fell under the

rule of the Adil Shahi dynasty of Bijapur in 1488 (Correia 2006; M. A. Cruz 1998; Kamat 1990;

Kulakarni and Nayeem 1996; G. A. Pereira 1973).

The first Portuguese ships arrived in India at Calicut in 1498 under the command of

Vasco da Gama, inaugurating a more than 450 year presence in the Indian Ocean. In the final

months of 1510, Afonso de Albuquerque conquered the city of Velha Goa decisively defeating

the forces of the Adil Shah. As governor of the newly established Estado da Índia (the

Portuguese state in India), Albuquerque focused on establishing an extensive network of

permanent naval bases in Asia, and his military successes would serve to define the Portuguese

presence in the region as a largely maritime enterprise with limited land holdings—an enterprise

that controlled the sea through superior naval power and the possession of strategic access points

5
in the Asian trading networks (Boxer 1985; Boxer 1991; Brockey 2008; Disney 2009). When

the city was conquered in 1510, one author suggests that it was only three fourths of a mile in

length and a quarter mile in breadth (Cottineau de Kloguen 1831). The city was surrounded by a

low wall with a water filled moat but had various nearby villages in close proximity. After the

conquest of Goa by the Portuguese, the city grew rapidly in wealth, population, and size soon

becoming the capital of the Portuguese Asian Empire, seat of the viceroy of the Estado da Índia,

head of the Catholic Church in Asia, and one of the major trading entrepôts in the region.

Recognizing the rather precarious military and political situation of the Portuguese in

South Asia, Albuquerque’s initial strategy was to create a stable population base while

establishing profitable trade. He largely protected Hindu temples and religious practice,

although not the Muslim population, and encouraged the intermarriage of his soldiers with local

women (albeit after they converted to Christianity). However, changing political circumstances

in Europe, the Counter-Reformation, and the close association of the Portuguese crown and

nobility with the Catholic Church led to a later colonial strategy much more concerned with

producing proper, Christian, colonial subjects. By the 1560’s the Inquisition was established in

Goa along with attempts at mass conversions of local peoples (Alden 1996a; Boxer 1985; Disney

2009; Frykenberg 2008; Pearson 1987).

Coinciding with these socio-political changes were further modifications of the physical

landscape in an attempt to reflect Portuguese political and religious dominance through a

campaign of temple breaking and the construction of massive Catholic churches in the urban

center of Velha Goa (Axelrod and Fuerch 1996; Azevedo 1956; Malekandathil 2009a; J. Pereira

2002). The physical dimensions of the city during the height of Portuguese power in the early to

mid-16th century grew considerably. The moat surrounding the old city walls was filled and the

6
city quickly expanded beyond these early fortifications. For greater protection from the

landward side, a new fortification wall was built beginning in the far north-eastern portion of the

island and extending some distance south before turning west and ending at a battery on a hill

behind the now ruined Augustinian church, thus incorporating many of the former suburbs

within a largely continuous urban landscape (Burton 1851; Cottineau de Kloguen 1831; da

Fonseca 1878).

By the end of the 16th century, the political and economic fortunes of the Esatdo da Índia

began to wane due to declining trade brought on by Dutch and then English inroads into the

Indian Ocean trading networks, attacks by regional kingdoms, emigration, and epidemics.

Nearly all of the historical literature examining Velha Goa during this period speaks of decline,

poverty, and general stagnation in the city (Boxer 1991; Burton 1851; Correia 2006; Cottineau

de Kloguen 1831; Souza 2009; Disney 2009; Pearson 1990; Steensgaard 1985a). By the late

17th century, it is argued that the city was largely abandoned and empty. The expulsion of all

religious orders from the colony in 1835 and the official transfer of the colonial administration to

Panaji in 1843 supposedly caused the final ruination of the city, as described by Fonseca in the

opening quote above.

However, several large, well-preserved Catholic churches do remain in the area today as

do other material traces that speak to these processes of expansion and ultimate ruination in the

city. The unique architectural style of many of the churches in Velha Goa, known commonly as

Indo-Portuguese, garnered a designation as a world heritage site by UNESCO, and it is these

monumental vestiges of empire that still drive numerous tourists to Velha Goa. Today the site is

a small village with an active Catholic diocese, surrounded by coconut and mango plantations,

other small scale farming operations, and forest. The Archaeological Survey of India manages

7
the UNESCO site currently, but many of the archaeological remains (in fact the majority of the

historic city) lie outside the protected UNESCO buffer zones.

Methodological Approaches, Theoretical Orientations

The historical works referenced above create a rather singular narrative, a narrative of

Portuguese economic and political expansion and dominance followed by one of decline and

stagnation after the marginalization of Portugal primarily by the Dutch and English. The details

and exact time frames of these fluctuating colonial fortunes vary somewhat (e.g. Pinto 1990), but

in general the story remains consistent: by the end of the 18th century after the Portuguese were

marginalized in Indian Ocean trade, the city of Velha Goa was largely abandoned and overgrown

with the buildings reduced to rubble and only a ‘few priests’ to break the silence. One has only

to reference the ruined cityscape of Velha Goa today to provide an obvious spatial correlate to

this common historical narrative. What this research intends to provide, however, is much more

in depth analysis of the material and spatial developments of the city in conjunction with these

historical accounts.

As mentioned, in Velha Goa numerous large Catholic churches have been well

maintained and documented in the city’s urban core since the proposed abandonment of the city

in the late 17th century. However, the rest of the city is almost completely undocumented but

remains in a relatively good state of preservation with many standing walls, foundations, and

other archaeological features visible on the surface. In particular, many of the residential areas

of Velha Goa fall outside the official protected zones established by the Archaeological Survey

of India (ASI) and the UNESCO World Heritage committee. This project, therefore, focused on

these residential and commercial zones that lay outside the axis of state and ecclesiastical power

8
located in the city center. These peripheral areas are both underrepresented in historical

documentation and are often not the subject of preservation efforts—leaving archaeology as one

of the only means by which to access and preserve data about these places.

The remains of the city falling within an outer fortification wall provided a bounded

physical and temporal framework within which to conduct the archaeological research. To

assess the material remains of the city, I conducted a systematic archaeological survey, which

consisted of the following: walking transects within predefined, judgmentally selected survey

compartments and recording all historic material remains including extensive photography of

features. The material remains included structures, walls, foundations, brick alignments, artifact

scatters, agricultural features and other evidence of occupation. While surveying, I also made

surface collections and analyzed all recovered artifacts. In addition to the archaeological

investigation, I conducted archival research in the Historical Archives of Goa (HAG), which

contain the bulk of the records from the colonial administration and the city council of Goa

(Camara). I also researched various on-line, digitized archival material and other published

transcripts of archival material. The historical research focused specifically on documents and

correspondence that pertained to the use and governance of city space (for a full discussion of

methods see Chapter 3).

The site itself presents a rare opportunity to investigate the social and spatial production

of an urban environment in South Asia during the European colonial period because the majority

of other colonial era cities in the country have been continuously occupied and remain densely

populated to this day, precluding extensive archaeological work. This well preserved colonial

landscape with its rich historical record, therefore, provided an ideal location to explore the

9
production and decline of urban colonial space and the material dimensions of the earliest

European colonial power in South Asia.

While scholars have cogently studied colonialism in many contexts, the specifics of

Portuguese colonialism have received comparatively little attention in contrast to the later and

shorter lived British colonial occupation, especially from anthropological and archaeological

perspectives. As the first European power in Asia, the Portuguese opened the door to European

socio-economic expansion in the region, and their rule of these areas effectively inaugurated the

modern colonial era. Therefore, knowledge of this initial colonial venture is critical to increasing

our understanding of the broader processes that have shaped the last 500 years of global history.

However, today the growth and decline of Velha Goa are understood almost solely through

documentary and architectural histories (for examples of archival based histories of Goa see

Boxer 1980; Penrose 1960; Priolkar 1961; Souza 2009; P. D. Xavier 1993; for architecturally

influenced histories see Carita 1999b; Gomes 2011; Hugo-Brunt 1968; J. Pereira 1995; Rossa

1995; Rossa 1997) .

Yet, as they so often do, the colonial archives largely ignore vast segments of the

population, in particular non-elite social actors. Architectural and other histories of Goa, on the

other hand, predominantly focus on larger, monumental structures and formally constructed

edifices (in the case of Goa most often the Catholic churches) or on urban design as a whole.

Only rarely do they engage with vernacular, non-elite homes because of their often ephemeral

nature and subsequent lack of preservation. Thus, the data used most often by historians of Goa

rarely speak to the quotidian aspects of non-elite groups—groups that typically make up the

majority of any urban population—because of the biases in the various “archives” currently

available. These statements are not meant in any way as a critique of the historical works

10
discussed above. To the contrary, this work provides a consistent and detailed understanding of

the functioning of colonial society, the economics of empire, and overall urban form. Moreover,

in any colonial situation where there is unequal access to political economies and hierarchical

power relationships—as there were in Goa—the discourses and ideologies of elite groups are by

and large the most influential in shaping colonial encounters and spaces. However, by

specifically focusing on non-elite spaces and habitation zones in Velha Goa, my archaeological

research revealed tensions and inconsistencies between colonial discourses and material practices

(cf. Hall 1999; Stoler 2009; Wylie 2002). My research thus works to expand and complicate our

understanding of Portuguese colonialism by juxtaposing historical and material data sets and

paying attention to the silences and inconsistencies in both.

A wealth of studies has already demonstrated the significant contributions that a text-

aided archaeological perspective can make towards understanding colonial processes (e.g.

Andrén 1998; Beaudry 1988; Chakrabarti 2003; Deetz 1977; Dawdy 2008; Funari, Hall, and

Jones 1999; Hall and Silliman 2006; Hicks and Beaudry 2006b; Leone and Potter 1999;

Lightfoot 2006; Morrison and Lycett 1997; M. Lycett 2005). As these works make evident, this

perspective has the ability to bring together multiple lines of evidence that not only supplements

and enriches the historical record, but also significantly provides critical, otherwise unavailable

insight into the material and spatial processes of daily life—especially for those social groups not

mentioned or over looked in written documentation. However, the majority of the extant

archaeological research concerned with the last 500 years of European colonial expansion has

focused on the Anglo-American and Atlantic world—although several exceptions exist ( e.g.

Allen 1998; Brooks et al. 2015; Chakrabarti 2003; Chowdhury 2003; Floore and Jayasena 2010;

Jayasena 2006; Morrison 2006; Oka and Kusimba 2008; Proust 1993; Seetah et al., n.d.; Wilson,

11
Ambekar, and Pande 2013; Yazdi 2013) . Other than the few works noted here, the very

different colonial projects and strategies occurring in South Asia more generally, and in

Portuguese Goa specifically, remain almost completely unexamined through historical

archaeological research.

Beyond my critical engagement with Portuguese colonialism in South Asia, my research

site, Velha Goa, is defined by its urban landscape, and I particularly focus on the processes of

urban spatial production and practice implicated in both the rise and ultimate decline of the city.

As a case study, Velha Goa has much to contribute to understandings of early modern urbanism

and the development of common conceptions of urban space held today. As places of

improvisation and experiment, colonial cities in the early modern period were arguably the direct

precursors to modern forms of urbanism (Dawdy 2008). As more than half the world’s

population now resides in cities today, it is crucial that we understand the long term historical

processes that have led to both their conceptualization and their material manifestation. In other

words, we must understand how cities are thought and how they are made, and both of these

interrelated processes have deep historical roots (Mrozowski 1988; Rosen and Tarr 1994).

Yet, it has long been known that any engagement with the history of urban development

cannot only focus on the urban space itself. Rather, it must also take into account the situated

nature of a city within larger social and natural landscapes (Adams 2005; Alcock 1993; Williams

1975). Therefore, to fully understand the production of urban space we must consider the history

of both the political and the ecological aspects of any urban environment (Cronon 1991; Heynen,

Kaika, and Swyngedouw 2006; Melosi 1993).

Following Henri Lefebvre (Lefebvre 1991), these two aspects of space—political and

ecological—could be said to represent the conceptual (or conceived) spaces and the physical

12
spaces of the city respectively (also Soja 1996). Conceived space is the way that space is

imagined or conceptualized, it is a society’s “representations of space” (Lefebvre 1991, 38–9).

These representations are entangled with a society’s particular social formations and are often

constituted through the control and production of spatial knowledge, symbols, and discourse

(Soja 1996). Physical space is space which is actually measurable and directly sensible. It is the

built environment, the buildings, streets, infrastructure and organization of a place; it is the

spatial practice of a society that is manifest in the physical world. Of course as Lefebvre and

Soja (Lefebvre 1991; Soja 1996) argue these aspects of space are not discrete in any way: They

are always influencing the constitution of the other in a dialectical movement, with new spatial

imaginaries arising from the experience of physical space, which in turn works to produce new

physical materialities (cf. A. T. Smith 2003, 73). Thus, to fully understand the way in which

Velha Goa comes to be formed, lived in, and ultimately ruined, I analyze not only the changing

physical parameters of the space, but also the changing socio-political forces at play in Velha

Goa.

This focus on not just the politics of urban space but its physical nature, forces a deep

consideration of the natural world or environment—a perspective often overlooked when

considering urban space because common sense understandings suggest that cities are removed

from nature (Melosi 2010). The separation of nature/culture, rural /urban, and

uncivilized/civilized has a long history in Western thought, and, as suggested in the beginning of

this introduction in reference to Fonseca’s quote, they are certainly prevalent in Goa. As I

discuss in subsequent chapters, these binary perceptions of space are reinforced through colonial

encounters often becoming points of ideological tension, and these tensions are crucial to

understanding the production and eventual destruction of this colonial capital of empire.

13
 One of the more effective means by which to perceive these tensions is through the

analysis of colonial governance in Velha Goa. I particularly focus on underlying elite claims

about how urban space is (or should be) constituted (both physically and socially) through an

examination of various colonial laws and ordinances. Using analytics developed by Michel

Foucault (Foucault 2007; Foucault 1977), I reveal particular mechanisms of colonial governance

that indicate how the urban landscape was defined, conceptualized, and managed in various,

changing ways during Portuguese rule. Foucault’s understanding of governance suggests that

different mechanisms of control (e.g. disciplinary mechanisms and mechanisms of security) have

very specific spatial correlates that are directly related to and visible in the production of urban

landscapes, and these are directly bound to changing understandings of the natural world and the

nature of human populations (Foucault 2007, 16–27). However, Foucault places the

development of modern forms of governance (particularly the use of mechanisms of security)

and related forms of urbanism firmly within 18th century Europe and without a consideration of

the great effect of European colonialism. I therefore complicate his understanding of the

development of modern urbanism and government by showing the tensions and working out of

many of these issues in a much earlier colonial setting. Regardless of these complications

though, Foucault’s work provides a useful lens through which to view and understand the

development of urban space in Velha Goa. But, rather than anachronistically trying to apply a

“model” of urbanism developed by Foucault for 18th century France, I am instead using his

analytic to assess the relationship between governance, developing forms of colonial knowledge,

and the production of urban space in this particular historical and geographical context.

To conclude, this dissertation is in many ways built on the aforementioned Lefebvrian

understating of space. That is, I am concerned with the interrelated processes of colonial

14
encounter and governance, the production of historical knowledge and discourses, and the

physical development and decline of an urban environment. In this way, my project addresses

both the conceptual and the physical aspects of colonial space through a comparison of historical

archives and material remains recorded during archaeological field work. Although they most

easily expose the dominant, ideological understandings of space, the historical archives allow an

understanding of conceptual spaces and resulting forms of governance. Archaeological data, on

the other hand offers material evidence for the history of the physical spaces of the city. As

archaeological remains are typically the discarded, left, or ruined aspects of space, they represent

a much more democratic medium, giving access to a range of spatial practices, including those of

the non-elite populations.

As I will discuss in more detail in the context of each chapter below, this approach

reveals the tensions between underlying elite conceptions of space and actual spatial practices. It

shows that in Velha Goa the preconceived, largely European notions of urban space as civilized,

formally constructed, and separated from rural/natural spaces are challenged by the colonial

encounter in Goa, and in particular, the resistance of the physical urban landscape to these

colonial ideals. I argue that that in the course of attempting to make the city conform to colonial

understandings of what should constitute such a symbolically important space as the capital of

empire, the representations of space produced by the colonial government developed an

articulated, ideological content, and thus became open to counter ideologies and political

struggle (cf. J. Comaroff and Comaroff 1991a). These struggles and the perception of failure and

ruination of the colonial city—so well encapsulated by the quote of Fonseca above—ultimately

reveal the historical development and continuities with modern and increasingly global

understandings of urbanism. I suggest that similar spatial ideologies and struggles continue to

15
motivate contemporary processes of urbanization, urban decline, and revitalization; that we need

to continue to reassess common place understandings of urban space as separated from the

natural world.

Chapter Outline:

Chapter 1

The first chapter lays the theoretical groundwork for pushing our interpretation of urban

landscapes beyond simple binaries that separate nature from culture and the urban from the rural,

developing an explicitly urban political ecology. It examines the historical development of the

concept of nature in European and South Asian contexts and how European colonialism

reinforced these binary ontological and ideological engagements with the world—what Philippe

Descola (Descola 2013) calls ontological naturalism. The chapter demonstrates how the

discursive formations and perceptions of the natural world directly influenced the imagination

and later exploitation of particular colonial environments and people, and indeed, worked to

constitute nature as an object in the first place. The literatures on historical ecology and the

history of science and medicine further reveal that these new imaginaries were influencing

Portuguese thought and the functioning of various colonial institutions from the beginning of

their expansion into South Asia—that as part of long-term European and Portuguese

advancements in navigation technologies, botany, and other burgeoning sciences, nature was

reconfigured as an object that is rational, quantifiable, and knowable and thus ultimately open to

control and exploitation by colonial elites. Moreover, typically included within these ‘natural’

landscapes were the peoples/cultures occupying these ‘new’ lands.

16
 These processes of cataloging and categorizing were at once deeply spatialized as

colonists were often initially concentrated in colonial settlements on the coasts, which were

surrounded by vast unexplored, wild and ‘uncivilized’ natural landscapes. Portuguese

colonization of various ports along the west coast of India, and later throughout the Indian

Ocean, exemplified this nodal strategy of occupation. Ideas about the separation of nature and

culture were expressed physically through the very process of creating these colonial capitals and

centers of administration. Thus, ideas about the separation of rural hinterlands and urban

colonial centers, between nature and culture, and uncivilized and civilized were greatly

reinforced when colonial capitals like Velha Goa became centers of political and ideological

control as well as physical manifestations of (in this case) Portuguese dominance and later

decline.

The chapter concludes by engaging with the theories of Michel Foucault in order to

understand how these developing world views are potentially incorporated into political action,

which included the direct relationship of changing forms of governance to the expansion of

urban spaces. However, the final discussion argues that archaeological research when examined

in conjunction with historical data can reveal the tensions between various colonial discourses

regarding urban form and the actual, physical production and use of these spaces. That is, while

there may be a relatively consistent discourse concerning what is (or should be) the proper form

and function of Velha Goa as an urban capital of empire, archaeological data reveals that in

practice these urban landscapes both conformed to and resisted these elite imaginaries.

Chapter 2

17
 Chapter 2 provides critical examples of these ideas, again, focusing on how the city itself

came to be understood as an object that existed separate from its rural hinterland. The chapter

opens with an expanded discussion of spatial ideologies, the history of cartography in Europe,

and the use of maps as colonial tools of domination. Next, I turn to the specific discussion of the

elite colonial discourse encapsulated by the series of maps produced of Velha Goa from the 16th

to 20th century and expose the underlying spatial imaginaries consistently promulgated by these

maps. These maps represent a particularly salient example of what Henri Lefebvre (Lefebvre

1991, 38–39) calls “representations of space” that relate to particular dominant ideological

conceptions of space held by the colonial administration in Goa. The history of mapping Velha

Goa is, of course, highly effective at revealing these underlying and changing conceptions of the

urban landscape because of their obvious, direct correlation to spatial imaginaries of the elite

population. The imaginaries that these maps demonstrate both the developing technologies of

map making and the geopolitical concerns of elite administrators, but at the same time, they

show an understanding of their colonial capital of empire as a place set aside from the

surrounding countryside. The maps reveal a conceptualization of urban space as an object that

consists of a civilized place of ecclesiastical and administrative power symbolically embodied in

monumental edifices, formally built stone homes, particular architectural styles, an organized

and rational street pattern, and which ultimately took Lisbon as its primary point of reference and

socio-spatial model. The maps produced particularly after the decline of the city are all in some

way involved with the reform or revitalization of a city perceived as ruined, and thus the spatial

imaginaries of the earlier maps shift into a more articulated ideology of what should constitute

urban space and colonial capital.

18
Chapter 3

Chapter 3 analyzes the archaeological data obtained from my systematic archaeological

survey of portions of the city, including a detailed discussion of archaeological field methods. In

addition, various historical references are examined for more detailed descriptions of the

cityscape. First though, I contextualize this data through an examination of past archaeological

engagements with the relationship between ideology and material culture, and a discussion of

how Velha Goa’s urban landscape fits into scholarly understandings of the development of

Portuguese urbanism specifically, especially in their global colonial empire. The analysis of the

archeological data here focuses more on the general form, layout, and over all structure of the

city, and the data indicate that the urban space in Goa only partially conformed to the elite

colonial ideals encapsulated by the previous chapter’s analysis of colonial era maps. However,

much of what was depicted in the various maps of the city was found to be quite accurate in

many respects. For example, the organization of city infrastructure and streets and their partial

abandonment over the course of the 16th and 17th centuries were verified by my archaeological

findings. In addition, formally constructed homes—some quite large—built of laterite brick

masonry and lime mortar did line most of the streets as shown in the previous chapter’s analysis

of maps. These row house-like configurations, busy markets, and the many monumental edifices

constructed during the 16th and 17th centuries—especially the Catholic churches—would have

created a street-side perception of a densely built Europeanized urban landscape.

Yet, survey also documented the tracts of land located directly behind these large

formally constructed residences. These areas were productive agricultural spaces, going beyond

their characterization as gardens, and they likely consisted of larger scale plantations created for

profit. The result of this urban agricultural system was a much more dispersed from of urban

19
occupation that in part resembled a conglomeration of country estates. I argue that reassessing

the historical record supports this interpretation and points to the high probability that this

created a much less organized urban space—especially considering the likely integration of non-

elite agricultural and other laborers’ homes into the urban fabric (described by European

travelers as huts or hovels). These data thus begin to question the elite conception of the

formally built, metropolis and begin to show tensions between the supposed urban/rural divide.

Chapter 4

Chapter 4 expands the analysis of the city itself to include its position in the larger region,

with a specific focus on the rural, village hinterlands surrounding the city and directly governed

by the Portuguese. In particular, I juxtapose the different forms of governance between the ‘city

and the country’ and their underlying mechanisms of control, exposing how the enactment of

differing laws reveals very different conceptions between these two spaces held by the colonial

administration. At the same time, I expose the complicated, complex, and changing nature of

colonial rule in Velha Goa. As is never the case, neither the ‘elite’ or ‘non-elite’ population is

monolithic or homogenous, nor are the various competing factions within colonial society often

working towards the same or even similar objectives. Nevertheless, there does appear to be a

shared ideological separation between the rural agricultural hinterland and the urban colonial

capital by the elite population, broadly conceived. However, the expression of this understanding

of space by the colonial elite is, complex and fraught with tensions between these various

colonial factions. The Catholic Church, the Crown, Portuguese and indigenous merchants, and

other groups had at times very diverse goals for governing the colony.

20
 More specifically, the rural hinterland is analyzed through one of the most well-known

and influential documents concerning village life in India: the Foral de usos e costumes dos

gauncares e lavradores (the Charter of customs and practices of the gauncares and farmers).

This document is the earliest colonial exposition on village life in the subcontinent, and it would

serve as the basis for village governance for the duration of Portuguese colonial occupation. It

includes information on both the structure of village social life and the management of land. The

city in turn is examined through the enactment of a range of sumptuary laws and spatial

ordinances as well as the very different structure of city government. In the end, I argue that

there are two very distinct forms of governance that reflect the underlying conceptualization of

the separation of what was imagined as the Christian, civilized, formally built city from the

pagan and rural village hinterland—even though there are clear attempts to reform the hinterland

as well. However, especially in the city where the colonial administration had the ability to more

readily enforce its mandates, the laws were aimed more specifically at producing both proper

forms of colonial space and proper colonial subjects. I argue that the need to pass so many laws

and their increasingly draconian nature is indicative of a great insecurity felt by the colonial

administration; it suggests that these proper forms of socio-spatial production and action were

often transgressed by the urban population.

Included in this discussion, I also argue that the changing forms of governance by the

colonial administration are as often as not a highly pragmatic reaction to physical realties (e.g.

limited numbers of Portuguese natives or soldiers to enforce laws and the intractable and difficult

rural landscape, which limited movement and communication). This pragmatism and

improvisation necessarily produced changes in spatial practice, exposing tensions between

21
assumed or taken for granted aspects of colonial spaces and their lived realties, in part forcing

the greater articulation of specific spatial ideologies.

Chapter 5

The fifth chapter turns to the analysis of more archaeological data, specifically looking at

one of the more dramatic material manifestations of the separation of city and country: the

construction of a huge, 22km long outer fortification wall around the city of Velha Goa.

Through an examination of the history of the wall’s construction and changing construction

techniques, I argue that the wall is much more than an outward looking system of defense.

Rather, it is a dramatic expression of the spatial ideology that holds the rural and the urban

separate, and it is a substantiation of the insecurity of the colonial administration discussed in the

previous chapter. It is, therefore, a particular performance of sovereignty. That is, it is meant to

convey a sense of control and domination over the landscape and the people within it. I argue

that ultimately the wall’s continued construction was not completely in response to territorial

encroachment by geopolitical rivals, but rather was more important for controlling and

disciplining the colonies own subjects and controlling circulations between the city and its

village hinterland.

However, the construction of the wall within this region—and the fact that it is equally a

statement to neighboring kingdoms regarding control over a territory—does elicit questions as to

its legibility to Goa’s geopolitical rivals. While the form the wall takes decidedly follows

European advancements in fortification design and military technology, a walled city also

represents a very South Asian form of city building. Therefore, the chapter concludes with an

assessment of the millennia long history of South Asian forms of urbanism, albeit with a focus

22
on urban locales largely contemporaneous with Portuguese Goa. In addition, I consider more

local, settlement patterns of the Konkan and southwest coastal areas of peninsular India. I argue

that both of these somewhat opposing forms of settlement—that is the South Asian traditions of

agglomerated and dense urban settlement and the dispersed Konkan pattern—both likely had

great influences on the production of urban space in Goa and its eventual decline. More

specifically, there are numerous parallels between South Asian urban forms and Velha Goa. I

argue that two cities with many economic and social connections to Velha Goa exhibit particular

similarities: Vijayanagar (the Portuguese’s closest regional trading partner) and Surat (a similarly

located, littoral trading entrepôt controlled by the Gujarati Sultans and later by the Mughal

Empire in Delhi). On the other hand, the more dispersed Konkan settlement pattern—while

exerting influences in the city throughout its existence—becomes much more prevalent during

and after the cities supposed decline and abandonment, which is the subject of the final chapter.

Chapter 6

Chapter 6 examines historical and archaeological data relating specifically to the period

of decline, abandonment, and ruination of Velha Goa. I argue that the characterization of the

city as a ruin both in the past colonial period and today is implicated in further forms of spatial

domination and control. I first discuss the developing scholarship on ruins and ruination and

how these processes create particular understandings of the urban space of Goa while eliding,

and at worst criminalizing, certain forms of non-elite spatial production and practice in the city.

Then I move onto a discussion of the complementary images of Velha Goa as the ‘Rome of the

East’ and Golden Goa (Goa Dourada) that were propagated by the colonial government and the

many European travelers to visit the city, especially during the period of decline. These images

23
were bound up in calls to revitalize and/or preserve this ruined landscape beginning in the late

18th century and lasting until the 20th and even 21st century. No longer was the city a thriving

trading entrepôt, but it was envisioned as having had a ‘golden’ past representative of the past

glories of the expansive Portuguese Empire in the East, and enshrined in the slowly moldering,

monumental Catholic edifices still standing amongst the palm groves, wasteland, and ruins. I

then compare these romantic images to the archeological evidence. This material data suggests

that there was on going non-elite occupation in the city amongst the agricultural and ruined

buildings of colonial empire. I argue that there was indeed a decline and ruination in the city

during the 18th century, but it was specifically the European and Europeanized population and

their formally built stone structures that were ruined. A more spatially ephemeral agricultural

and laboring community persisted in the colonial capital despite the many travelers’ accounts

that suggest that the city was abandoned and dead. Again, a closer reading of various historical

documents provides additional support for this supposition.

In the end, this dissertation works to examine particularly the social and material lives of

non-elite segments of society. Following Stahl (Stahl 2001b, 25) who is drawing on the work of

Michel Rolph Trouillot, she asks, “How effectively did documentary sources capture the

sometimes traumatic imposition of colonial rule . . . How do the precolonial baselines so

constructed silence the historicity of societies with which travelers, traders, missionaries, and

colonial officials came into contact?” Of course as Stahl notes, the archaeological data also

contain silences, and they must be examined with the same critical gaze as the archive.

However, by using these data as “supplemental” sources that can speak to different sorts of

questions and concerns, we can gain a much fuller understanding of the changes wrought by

24
colonial rule. The silences in the historical record thus oblige us to ask questions of the

archeological data that speak directly to those people and forms of spatial production that go

unmentioned in the archives. In turn, new insights gained from archaeological resources

generate new ways of interpreting extant colonial histories—in this way tacking back and forth

between independent data sets—as I do in this dissertation (Wylie 2002).

This research speaks not only to the failures of Portuguese colonialism but also to the

reasons why they persisted so long as a colonial power in India; why Jawaharlal Nehru had to

order the new nation state of India to eventually invade Goa and finally rid the subcontinent of

the last vestiges of colonial rule. It also examines the development of modern urbanism and

governance. It exposes the long historical processes that culminate in our modern forms of urban

spatial production and practice. At the same time, it exposes the sometimes very similar past

spatial ideologies that are deployed today regarding urban revitalization projects, which are built

upon understandings of what constitutes our contemporary notions of urban blight, decay and

ruination.

These modern conceptions of space are often based on similar notions of the separation

of nature/culture and uncivilized/civilized spaces, and in turn, they similarly affect the way these

spaces are governed, produced, and lived in. In this way, I also complicate Lefebvrian and

Foucaultian arguments regarding both the trajectory and ruptures that resulted from modern

forms of urbanism and governance. That is, I show in a much earlier colonial setting some the

same underlying conceptions of urban space and related forms of governance that still exist

today, including the tensions and resistances of these spaces to top down planning. Following a

path blazed by Michel Rolph Trouillot (Trouillot 1995), Dipesh Chakrabarty (Chakrabarty 2000)

and more recently Shannon Dawdy, I argue that rather than seeing the failure of both Velha Goa

25
as a city—and the Portuguese Empire more generally—as a “dead end branch” of the grand

historical narrative resulting in spatial and political modernity, we need to instead reconsider

these failed places/enterprises as critical sites to the production of our modern world (Dawdy

2008, 33–4). Velha Goa was not merely passed over or ruined because it did not adapt to the

growing dominance of more capitalist minded geopolitical rivals. Rather, sites like Velha Goa

were instrumental to and laid the foundation for these later socio-political and spatial systems.

And, going further, the analysis of Velha Goa shows that many of the seemingly modern

concerns of heavily industrialized, capitalist urbanscapes today—which are now commonly seen

as problematically separated from and destructive of nature—have very deep historical roots not

just in Europe but equally in South Asia among other locales.

26
 Chapter 1

History, Nature, and the City: Rethinking urbanism in Goa

“These Indians will know that we are come to stay, because they see our men planting trees,
building houses of stone and lime, and breeding sons and daughters.” 1

The historical and archaeological investigation of colonial Goa poignantly demonstrates

the tensions that result from conflicting perceptions and lived, physical realities inherent in

colonial locales. In particular, the divide between nature/culture and urban/rural was well

established in Portuguese thought very early in their occupation of Goa, but I argue that it was

never a lived reality within the city. For example, these conceptual dichotomies are visible in the

different legislative and management regimes operating in the villages and agricultural space that

existed outside of the city versus those targeting spaces considered internal to the capital.

However, the city of Velha Goa never truly resembled European and Portuguese conceptions of

what constitutes (or should constitute) politically significant urban space, and the decline of the

urban landscape ultimately reveals the failure of Portuguese systems to adequately deal with this

complex, polysemous environment. Regardless of historical evidence that suggests otherwise,

archaeological survey demonstrates that the city never truly resembled or functioned within the

colonial ideal for a capital of empire. This dichotomous nature of Velha Goa thus engenders the

question of how to reconcile the idea of the ‘Rome of the East’ and the historical understanding

of Goa as one of the most important, cosmopolitan and rich trading entrepôts with archaeological

and historical data that suggest other simultaneous interpretations. In addition and perhaps more

1
This statement was part of correspondence sent to Manuel I, King of Portugal in 1514. It was written by Afonso
de Albuquerque after he conquered Goa in 1510 and established the Goa municipality along the same lines as
Lisbon (as quoted in Souza 2009, 109).

27
importantly, these data ask how a reconceptualization of Velha Goa in light of these issues can

help us to understand the processes of colonialism and the very nature of urban decline that have

been so important not only to the history and sociality of Goa, but also continue to be pressing

and increasingly visible concerns of the contemporary world.

This study is deeply concerned with understanding both social and natural systems,

including the politics surrounding their creation, perception, and use. In this sense, it could be

said to fall within the general gestalt of political ecology. However, because it examines the

history of the rise and fall of an urban landscape, I engage with a space and time period

overlooked by many political ecology studies. And, it goes further than more recent, specifically

urban political ecology literature in which “little attention has been paid so far to the urban as a

process of socioecological change” (Swyngedouw and Heynen 2003, 899). My investigation of

Velha Goa further complicates the perceived divide between urban and rural space—a divide

which often includes a sense of the urban as removed or separate from nature because received

wisdom suggests that it is a wholly cultural, constructed human space.

My argument is not to suggest that cities are not conceived by those who study them as

complicated, contested and contradictory spaces thoroughly involved with large-scale landscape

transformations and political power (e.g. Adams 2005; Childe 1950; Eisenstadt and Shachar

1987; Engels 1993; Gandy 2005; Harvey 2009; Lefebvre 1996; Kipfer 2002; Mumford 2011;

Rosen and Tarr 1994) Rather, it is to add to the burgeoning literature on urban political ecology

and urban environmental history, which exhibits a deep concern for understanding the socio-

natural processes that occur in and because of urban space, and it goes beyond the strict

anthropogenic focus of most studies concerned with understanding modern cities (cf. Gandy

2003; Keil 2005; Melosi 1993; Soper 2005; Rosen and Tarr 1994; Swyngedouw 1997;

28
Swyngedouw and Heynen 2003). For example, Rosen and Tarr note the great concern that urban

environmental historians have for understanding the interaction between the built environment

and the natural world:

The history of the built environment, the human-made environment, is intimately related
to the history of the nonhuman natural world…the natural and built environments
evolved in dialectical interdependence and tension. The former influenced the
technologies, materials, and locations chosen to construct the latter, with the built
environment, in turn, modifying the land, climate, water cycles, and biological
ecosystems of nature in an ongoing process of mutual interaction. Rather than peripheral
to the concerns of environmental historians, the built environment is central. (Rosen and
Tarr 1994, 306–7)

Scholars have thus begun to engage with the relationship between the natural environment, built

space, and human action as integral parts of the physical world in which society evolves.

Yet, as Melosi argues, regardless of the explicit focus on what he terms the “nature/built

environment nexus,” this work on urban locales still largely propagates a divide between the city

and nature. He argues that they often study “nature in cities—urban nature—or questions related

quite narrowly to urban metabolism” (Melosi 2010, 11). Scholars have continued to perpetuate

this divide due to a widespread focus on a ‘declensionist’ narrative, which suggests that cities as

human constructs are “inherently destroyers of nature, and by implication, inferior to nature”

(Melosi 2010, 6).

A sustained focus on the ‘declension’ of urban space misses the ways in which the

interstitial, underserviced, and non-elite spaces are a part of urban environments from their

inception, and are often precursors to more formal urban expansion or redevelopment. These

spaces are certainly not always indicative of a city in decline. Rather, narratives and definitions

of decline are already situated in dominant, top-down understandings of how urban space should

appear and function, and they presuppose what services urban space should provide and how

29
they should be provided. The declensionist narrative often characterizes urban spaces that do not

have the same access to particular resources and infrastructure as ruined or declined or as a slum

or ghetto. However, a reconfiguration of these spaces to facilitate a more equitable access to

services merely extends the underlying systems that created these inequalities in the first place.

Development in this sense literally paves over the social and cultural efficacy of these ‘ruined’

places, especially as they so often exist and function outside the dominant socio-political and

natural systems of the urban elite (Dawdy 2010; Peet and Watts 2004; Sowards 2013).

Furthermore, studies in urban environmental history and political ecology almost entirely

focus on urban space of the last two hundred years and on industrial or post-industrial cities.

Most studies look at urban development when capitalist forms of exploitation/expansion and

their related industries have already taken root. Various review articles and special editions of

journals such as the Journal of Urban History demonstrate this trend, with most titles designating

a specific focus on late 19th and 20th century cities (e.g. Massard-Guilbaud and Thorsheim 2007;

McGurty 2011; Keyes 2000). Although excellent exceptions certainly exist that look at longer

term processes (Colten 2000; Cronon 1991; Gandy 2003; Hurley 1997; Wennersten 2008), what

is largely missing are more case studies that examine the transformations that actually lead to

these more contemporary urban realities. What is needed are case studies that push the

traditional temporal boundaries of these fields and account for the contingent historical

trajectories that make urbanization and de-urbanization possible in the modern world in the first

place. Equally striking in this literature is the lack of engagement with the numerous

archaeological studies examining the long term impacts of human-environment interaction and

urbanization. In the context of my work, I will show that the now commonplace, binary

conceptions of nature/culture, urban/rural existed and were critical aspects of governance and

30
spatial production much earlier than the majority of urban political ecology studies suggest.

Additionally, my focus on the late medieval/early modern period through to late 19th century will

provide a link between the specific time periods typically examined by urban environmental

historians and political ecologists and those periods that have received more attention from

archaeologists and historians in other sub-disciplines.

Taking the theoretical position of political ecology as a starting point, however, it is

possible to conceptualize the tensions prevalent in competing binary conceptions of Velha Goa.

Recent work in political ecology attempts to understand this unity by unraveling the complex

socio-natural systems in which we humans have always lived. Coming out of Marxist traditions

and a critique of cultural ecology during the 1970’s, a primary motivation of early political

ecology was to combine a concern with ecology and the natural world with a serious engagement

with political economy (Biersack 1999; Blaikie and Brookfield 1987; Peet and Watts 1996;

Watts 1983; Wolf 1972). Later, building on the works of authors such as Eric Wolf (Wolf

1972), Roy Rappaport (Rappaport 1979; Rappaport 1984) and Bruno Latour (Latour 1993;

Latour 2004) the field of political ecology developed to eschew the separation of nature and

culture. My data fits within this literature by unraveling the contradictory binary oppositions that

inhere in Velha Goa, through an understanding the natural world—or more precisely what we

typically define as ‘natural’—as socially constructed and historically contingent.

With these new understandings of ‘nature,’ scholars increasingly challenged essentialist

notions of what constitutes the natural or physical environment (Biersack 2006). The

constructivist stance in political ecology in particular incorporates major claims stemming from

post-structuralist and post-modern theories, which suggest that what we perceive as ‘reality’ is in

fact the result of particular, culturally specific discursive formations—formations that have their

31
own histories and are themselves open to critical analysis. No longer can we argue for a

‘pristine’ nature untouched by human intervention, but neither is nature simply a product of the

historical conjunction of a society’s particular social, political, and economic relationships. As

Escobar (Escobar 1999): 3) states, “It is necessary to strive for a more balanced position that

acknowledges both the constructedness of nature in human contexts—the fact that much of what

ecologists refer to as natural is indeed also a product of culture—and nature in the realist sense,

that is, the existence of an independent order of nature, including a biological body, the

representations of which constructivists can legitimately query in terms of their history.”

Considering Goa through the lens of political ecology, we therefore understand that the

physical environment provided (and provides) certain parameters within which humans must

operate. These parameters include specific climatic fluctuation, the particular composition of

soils and their capacities to support agriculture, rates of erosion, availability of construction

materials, etc. However, the perception or imagination of this natural world and its actual use by

human actors—something gleaned from the historical and archaeological record—demonstrates

that the concept of what was available or considered viable for exploitation was socially

constructed in each particular landscape. These socially produced and historically contingent

understandings of the natural environment provided as much of a set of parameters within which

human action could occur as the physical and climatic properties of the land itself.

Yet, these encompassing concerns are situated within a study of a bounded colonial

locale and urban space, and they are particularly salient when examining the Portuguese colonial

period of Goa. Colonialism is deeply enmeshed with relationships of power but power that is

often directly involved with the extraction and/or controlled production of specific natural

32
resources—extraction/production that nearly always leads to significant changes in the social and

natural landscape.

Colonialism though, is never a static or homogenous political enterprise but one that is

greatly influenced by specific geographical settings, diverse material conditions, as well as

particular historical developments in both colony and metropole. Many earlier historical studies,

however, often gave primacy to the politically dominant forces within the colonial world and

largely disregard the long historical trajectories of the colonies prior to European intervention.

For example, the overarching and over-determined nature of colonial expansion championed by

authors that work within the paradigm of world systems, most fully expounded by Wallerstein

(Frank 1998; Frank and Gills 1996; Wallerstein 1974), forcefully center any dynamism within

the various colonial metropoles. They often argue for the monolithic expansion of capitalism

and/or capitalist forms of exchange coinciding with European colonial expansion. The resulting

Eurocentric historical perspectives engaging with world systems (especially from the 16th

century onward for Wallerstein) largely evacuates any agency or dynamism from the colonies,

and it understands the force of social and natural changes in the colonies as originating from

elsewhere. As Frank has reminded scholars, however, these world systems were in place long

before European colonial dominance occurred (Frank 1998; Frank and Gills 1996). Yet, no

matter the time period addressed in these studies, change and dynamism still originates in the

expanding centers, and local contributions are often erased under the great weight and historical

visibility of politically and economically dominant powers (Algaze 2001). As such, the natural

world in these settings is often characterized as pristine or in a harmonious equilibrium with its

‘native’ inhabitants before colonists arrive.

33
 Studies of this type, especially those of more recent periods that engage with

transnational flows of goods and the continuing penetration of global capitalism into the remotest

environments, continue to be produced and remain highly influential. While the expansion of a

capitalist world system is certainly an important aspect of many colonial encounters and often

directly involves the exploitation of the physical world, a sustained critique of these particular

theoretical orientations and a wealth of recent scholarship demonstrates the very situated,

contingent, and often improvisational nature of colonial expansion and the exceptionally diverse

socio-economic and political systems that arise in particular colonial locales (e.g. Chakrabarty

2000; J. L. Comaroff and Comaroff 1992a; J. Comaroff and Comaroff 1997; Cooper and Stoler

1997; Dawdy 2008; Dirks 1987; Dirks 2001; Given 2004; Hall 1999; Laclau 1971; M. Lycett

2005; Morrison 2002; Richard n.d.; G. J. Stein 2002; Stern 1988; Trouillot 1995). These studies

remind scholars that there was nothing predetermined about European expansion, rather in each

particular locale contingent historical events and a series of choices, accidents or unthinking

decisions, and their unintended consequences lead to each specific colonial situation.

Similarly, while older ecological models relied on static systems of adaptation in

equilibrium within a particular environment, newer models recognize the continuing change,

variability, and issues of scale inherent in any such ecological system (Scoones 1999)—issues

that also exist in the world systems approach mentioned above. A political ecology informed

study of a colonial enclave must, therefore, also have a significant engagement with both local

and global historical processes that affect the changing trajectories of a specific, situated colonial

landscape. Historical change, locality, and global articulations are thus all critical components to

any scholarship involving the environment, politics, and colonialism.

34
 Finally, the majority of extent historical literature on Velha Goa focuses largely on top-

down, elite perspectives or broad economic concerns. However, to produce a political ecology

informed analysis, the historical examination must go beyond the typical economic and/or

administrative histories that emerge as a result of the types of documents which dominate the

archives. As a perspective that engages equally with ecology and politics, it must also engage

with material landscapes. These landscapes contain the residues of both elite and non-elite

practices, thus representing a true democratic media upon which traces of all social groups that

shape colonial history can be found. As Stahl argues, to go beyond top down perspectives,

scholars will necessarily need to turn to a variety of archival sources—ethnographic,

documentary, oral, archaeological—while being cognizant of the potential destabilizations

comparing different data sources may produce (Stahl 2001a). Stahl states that it is indeed these

destabilizations or contradictions that can especially reveal unique insights into colonialism, and

I argue this includes insights into the development of contemporary and historical understandings

of the environment and urban space.

What follows will, therefore, combine various literatures in order to provide a broad

theoretical framework through which to interpret the archaeological and historical evidence of

Velha Goa’s growth and decline. In particular, I will briefly consider the effects of European

colonial expansion during the last 500 years; the resulting changes in ontologies and

epistemologies that largely resulted from these colonial encounters; and finally the direct effects

of these changes on the development of specific forms governance and spatial production in

Velha Goa. More specifically, I will draw from studies in historical ecology and the history of

modern science and medicine to reveal the changing discursive formations related to the natural

35
world while using the writings of Michel Foucault to orient both this literature and my

archaeological data towards politics, power and the production of urban space.

Discursive formations, institutionalization, and governance in historical context

Historical ecology and the historical study of modern science and medicine are particular

areas of research that largely focus on what today has become perhaps the quintessential icon of

the natural world: plants. And, as historical studies based on archival research, they also

necessarily examine the changing discursive formations surrounding them. During the early

period of colonial expansion, the nascent field of botany in particular led to significant shifts in

conceptualization of the natural world and took full advantage of new technologies being

developed to describe, quantify, control, and exploit it. As European colonial expansion

progressed and consolidated its holdings, other developing fields such as agriculture, forestry,

and anthropology also contributed to these changes, but all of these disciplines are still largely

involved with (if not solely focused on) the construction of new forms of knowledge vis-à-vis the

natural world (Grove 1995; Raj 2000).

Historical ecology and the history of modern science all engage with ontological and

epistemological changes that have become commonplace and universally held in most of the

world today, and these concepts inhere in the aforementioned binary oppositions of

nature/culture, urban/rural, etc. They are particularly useful—following Biersack and Escobar—

for investigating the changing perceptions of the physical world and the development of new

discursive formations around these perceptions. It is possible to track the development of these

new forms of knowledge as they relate to the Portuguese, and by thus tracing the conceptual

36
limitations imposed by these shifts, one can then examine their subsequent influence on

expressions of political power and governance, including the production of particular forms of

space in the city of Velha Goa.

Specifically, the various scientific and medical disciplines developed to think of nature as

something that is rational, universal, quantifiable, and thus knowable, yet it was also seen as

separate from the socio-cultural world. Especially as a result of the Scientific Revolution in

Europe, nature was constructed, according Descola, “as an autonomous ontological domain, a

field of inquiry and scientific experimentation, an object to be exploited and improved; and very

few thought to question this” (Descola 2013, 69) In a similar vein, historical ecology largely

studies the development of the concept of the ‘environment.’ It reveals how the concept of the

natural world became a particular field of discourse that created a sense of both global and local

‘environments’ as something that could be classified, organized, and managed—typically with

an eye towards profit and/or improvement (Arnold 1996; Arnold 2005; Drayton 2000; Bonneuil

2000; Cronon 2003; Grove 1990; Grove 1997; Peet and Watts 2004; Sangwan 1998)

The very nascent stages in the development of modern science actually coincide with the

first European seaborne expeditions, which were initially made possible by early advances in the

nautical sciences made by the Portuguese. Historians often note the early advantage given to the

Portuguese through their development of new technologies such as navigation techniques, ship-

building, and cartography (Boxer 1991; P. F. da Costa and Leitão 2009; Disney 2009), however,

only a few scholars have examined the direct connection between developing “scientific”

thought and the Portuguese “discoveries” (e.g. L. de Albuquerque 1983, 122; Hooykaas 1979).

In the past, the contributions of the Portuguese and Spanish to the development of these fields

were considered episodic and marginal, and the vast majority of scholarship focuses on French,

37
German, and English influences (Bleichmar, De Vos, and Huffine 2009; Domingues 2007;

Pimentel 2000).

The discovery of the sea route to India and the vast expansion of geographic knowledge

facilitated by Portuguese maritime activity, however, lead directly to a challenge of the classical

Greek and Roman masters’ knowledge of the world. Consequently, there was a shift from

ancient, received wisdom to a focus on empirical knowledge and experience. Domingues

(Domingues 2007, 462) argues that some of the earliest evidence of these conceptual shifts arose

during the Renaissance through the writings of Portuguese navigators, and he notes the impact of

this could be “applied independently to the fields of medicine and botany.” This shift included a

critical assessment of the interaction between theory and practice as well as the development of a

method of knowledge acquisition firmly based on direct observation, experience, and

experimentation (O. Almeida 2009; O. Almeida 1995; Domingues 2007). Almeida argues that

the Portuguese sources provide somewhat of a ‘missing link’ in the historiography concerning

the scientific revolution in Europe, especially the commonplace “grand narratives that usually

jump from the Islamic developments of science to the English contribution,” and he goes on to

claim that their advancements directly influenced such towering figures in the development of

the modern sciences as Sir Francis Bacon (O. Almeida 2009, 78). These early shifts to an

experiential and empirical epistemology correlated directly with vast reconfigurations of spatial

and geographical knowledge, and they helped to foreground the modern scientific notions of an

objective, universal, rationally ordered, and quantifiable natural world. For many authors, the

exemplar for formulating this “‘new’ theory of knowledge” is Dom João de Castro—a naval

commander who would, significantly, go on to become viceroy of the Portuguese Asian empire,

ruling from their capital in Velha Goa (O. Almeida 2009, 81). It is clear that these evolving

38
perceptions would have direct connections to the colonial administration of Velha Goa through

such figures as de Castro.

Beyond the fields of geography and nautical science, the direct and increasingly sustained

encounters between vastly different peoples, cultures, and flora/fauna equally challenged

previously held assumptions about the constitution and diversity of the natural world. These new

spaces and objects resisted the classificatory systems used by Europeans in similar ways as the

expansion of geographical knowledge. This encounter resulted in significant epistemological

and methodological changes in the emerging fields of natural history and medicine, which

included a redefinition of the ‘natural’ world that was more often than not set in juxtaposition to

European, civilized cultural modalities. Underlying these changes was the positioning of

Europeans as outside observers, and especially in colonial situations, this natural world included

the primitive ‘others’ who inhabited it—creating an underlying “ideology of European

colonialism” (Morris 2011, 155) also (Driver and Martins 2005; Scott 1998; Trouillot 2003;

Oslund 2011; Wear 2011). Additionally, Arnold following Mary Louise Pratt and Foucault

deftly argues that the ‘gaze’ of Europeans, positioned as outside observers, was in no sense

passive. He states that “it should be recognized that ‘seeing’ or (hardly less literally) ‘reading’ a

landscape in a certain way was commonly the prelude to, or necessary precondition for, the

physical transformation of the Indian countryside” ”…and that “critical to this was “the

pervasive belief in ‘improvement’” (Arnold 2005, 6) also (Drayton 2000; Grove 1995). In this

way, the changes in the production of new forms of knowledge, its scope, its object and the

related shifts in underlying European ontologies, which positioned them as outside of the natural

world, were the foundation upon which colonial projects were built and made possible.

39
 The descriptions of the natural world resulting from the European ‘gaze’ differed in

various and sometimes contradictory ways. Tropical settings were especially subject to

conflicting accounts (Arnold 2005; Driver and Martins 2005). For example, the tropics were

envisioned as a Garden of Eden blessed with a great natural fecundity seen in the riot of tropical

plant growth (Grove 1995). Yet, they were also seen as landscapes of death and ill health

generally unfit for European constitutions and epitomized by the many European deaths due to

tropical illness (Arnold 2005; Wear 2011). Contradictory accounts of this nature are equally

available for Velha Goa. Traveler’s invoke either a Garden of Eden motif describing a rich

bustling, cosmopolitan city filled with exotic goods and overflowing with wealth, or conversely,

a landscape of death due to the impact of tropical diseases, unruly inhabitants, general

lasciviousness, lack of sanitation, ect. Sometimes, these contradictory themes occur in a single

account (e.g. van Linschoten 1598).

Regardless of the perception of the various landscapes, a common theme running

throughout these writings is the underlying desire or need to exert some form of control over

these places, and as a precursor to control and governance, they had to be systematically

described, classified, and quantified. There was an explicit attempt to civilize and colonize them;

taming a wild, unproductive, natural environment, and making it more European or more cultural

and productive. The endeavor to make these places ‘unnatural’ and civilized reveals an already

extent, underlying ontology that holds nature separate from culture (at least European culture),

and this is quite often visible in the differences between the descriptions of the ordered,

disciplined, and typically urban colonial centers versus the wild, untamed indigenous landscapes

that existed outside of them, and this is seen quite clearly in depictions of Velha Goa and its

surrounding hinterland as discussed fully in Chapter 2.

40
 Closely related to the changing discourses regarding the natural world and the European

desire to exploit it was the development of the printing press, experimental gardens, universities,

and other powerful institutional structures. The printing press of course allowed for a much

larger scale production of written works relating to all aspects of these emerging discourses, and

the various gardens created both in Europe and in the colonies were physical manifestations of

the changing epistemologies and ontologies exemplified by these written works. The actual

creation of the gardens objectified nature

in significant ways: They demonstrated an

underlying understanding of the natural

world as something that is knowable, as

something that can be rationally organized,

and as a controlled object in which the

cultured, educated observer is necessarily

separate and removed (Fig. 1.1). The act

of creation of these spaces was predicated

upon notions of experimentation,

measurement, and management of the

Figure 1.1 Plan of the botanic garden in Padua, natural world. Furthermore, they reveal a
which divided the world into four quarters. From
Drayton (2000, 10) view of nature as something that is

ultimately open to exploitation since much of what was grown in these gardens had a

commercial application, and these gardens were full of economically useful plants from spices

and exotic fruits to medicinal herbs. (Drayton 2000; Grove 1995). While at the same time, the

management of these gardens; their sustained, long term relationship to the colonial enterprise;

41
the increasing professionalization of natural history, the botanical, and the medical sciences; and

the related expansion of universities all lead to an institutionalization of these emergent

epistemological and ontological positions. All of these factors taken together expose the

underlying ontological and epistemological shifts occurring in the European imagination. They

further demonstrate the beginnings of new forms of spatial production related to these shifts and

exemplified especially by the form of gardens themselves, which reveal these new ideologies and

perspectives in there layout and organization (Leone 1996). In addition, institutions such as

universities combined with the printing press facilitated the standardization and wide circulation

of this knowledge throughout Europe and its colonies (Grove 1998; Harris 2005; McClellan and

Regourd 2000; Radkau 2008; Soares and de Lacerda 1993).

Moreover, the Portuguese again lead the way for these advances in Europe as the first

European colonizers in Asia. The first printing press in Asia was installed in Old Goa in 1556,

and the initial printing of one of the more influential and widely disseminated botanical and

medical texts produced during this time—Garcia da Orta’s Colóquios dos simples e drogas e

cousas mediçinais da India (Conversations on the simples, drugs and medicinal substances of

India )—occurred there in 1563 (Primrose 1939). Overall, da Orta’s work engages with the

classification of new plants and their specific uses for the health and well-being of colonial

subjects in Goa. As a longtime resident of Velha Goa, da Orta was very familiar with the effects

of the tropical environment on the European population. Zupanov stresses the importance for

da Orta of personal experience, observation, collection, and production of these plants, and

suggests that he demonstrates a developed sense of scientific rigor. She argues that he is directly

involved with “transforming ‘real’ objects into ‘learnt’ objects of science” (Zupanov 2002, 6).

Da Orta’s work, therefore, demonstrates an early attempt to rationally organize the natural world

42
through direct observation and experimentation. His endeavors, consequently, lead directly to

the commodification and exploitation of many of these substances by the Portuguese. There was

a great desire by colonial governors to use this new knowledge to mitigate the effects of the large

number of annual deaths in the Portuguese population and the recurrent problem of wide spread

epidemics such as cholera and plague within Velha Goa itself. Thus, through this deep concern

and engagement with medical and scientific knowledge we begin to see emergent links between

colonial science and political power (cf. Zupanov and Xavier 2014, 523–7).

Soon after its conquest and helped by da Orta’s work, Velha Goa became both the hub

and origin of the transportation of large quantities of South Asian medicinal plants as well as the

dissemination of the knowledge about their uses. The Portuguese transferred this knowledge and

material throughout their Asian empire and to Europe (Walker 2010). One of the most important

medical installations in all of Portuguese Asia, the Hospital Real Militar (Royal Military

Hospital), was established in Velha Goa by 1520, and Walker (Walker 2011, 24) suggests that by

the early 17th century “some European travelers considered the Hospital … one of the finest and

best equipped healing facilities anywhere in the world.” Adjacent to this hospital and other

hospitals in Goa were important medical gardens used for supplying their apothecaries, and

Walker notes that these gardens possibly grew directly from da Orta’s own early experimental

gardens. Institutions such as the Hospital Real with its attached gardens further suggest a

connection between the developing European understandings of the natural world, the production

of particular forms of space, and political power—not only from a broad Portuguese perspective,

but also specifically within the context of the city of Velha Goa.

It is important to note, however, that colonial histories are not just the result of top down,

political action and global forces. The contingent, historical conjunctions and the contributions

43
of local knowledge must be given equal consideration. The majority of authors currently writing

within historical ecology and the history of science go to great lengths to elucidate the

polycentric nature of the development of the sciences (Chambers 1993; Chambers and Gillespie

2000; Grove 1995; Harrison 2005; Raj 2000). When examining the specific trajectory of da

Orta’s work for instance, the connections and manifold contributions from a range of sources are

apparent. His work is obviously the result of collaboration with multiple South Asian medical

practitioners all along the western coast of India and he was at one point a personal physician to

the Nizam Shah. These connections gave him access to a range of non-European sources of

knowledge that were highly influential on his work. The non-European contributions to the

development of scientific epistemology and botanical knowledge were such that Grove suggests

that, “the division between European and Asian botanical systems is anyway an arbitrary one. A

more logical division might be between Arabic and Hindu/local botanical systems” (Grove 1995,

80).

Yet reciprocity in the production of knowledge should not be read as somehow mitigating

the exploitative, damaging, and certainly hierarchical relationships of power that developed in

these colonial contexts. Rather, it is important to understand the contribution of local knowledge

systems in forming the colonial administrators’ understandings of and policy towards socio-

natural worlds which include the separation of nature/culture and urban/rural. However, the new

forms of management of both space and people resulting from this knowledge did not typically

result in a harmonious collaboration of indigenous and foreign practitioners; but rather it often

resulted in more effective, wide ranging, and/or severe forms of colonial exploitation of both the

natural world and the people in it. The above discussion of the developing discourses

surrounding the natural world and the history of certain institutions such as colonial gardens and

44
medical facilities reveal some connections between emergent epistemological and ontological

positions, the production of urban socio-natural space, and political power. However, what

remains is to make these connections explicit.

Nature, Space, Power, and Foucault

This discussion above exposes the discursive formations and perceptions of the natural

world that directly influenced the initial imagination and later exploitation of particular colonial

environments and people. As Peet and Watts note, “Rather, the environment itself is an active

constituent of imagination, and the discourses themselves assume regional forms that are, as it

were, thematically organized by natural contexts. In other words, there is not an imaginary made

in some separate ‘social’ realm, but an environmental imaginary, or rather whole complexes of

imaginaries, with which people think, discuss, and contend threats to their livelihoods…” (Peet

and Watts 1996). With its focus on the natural world, the literatures on historical ecology and

the history of science and medicine just discussed demonstrate that these new imaginaries were

already influencing Portuguese thought and the functioning of various institutions. Ideas about

the separation between rural hinterlands and urban, colonial centers, between nature and culture,

were already active in the colonial imagination.

Most accounts of Velha Goa’s rise and decline derive these ‘complexes of imaginaries’

from European travelers’ accounts to the region. As David Arnold notes, India has a long history

of being defined by travel. This travel includes both regional travel (as Arnold states the

“restless movement of its kings, courts, and armies…sanyasis, saints, or the periodic or enforced

migrations of pastoralists, laborers, religious refugees” etc.) and interregional travel (including

45
the long history of voyages ranging from fourth century BC Greeks to Chinese Buddhist monks

to European merchants, missionaries, and other travelers of the last few hundred years) (Arnold

2005, 11). It is primarily the traveler’s gaze and the power relationships implied by observer and

observed that configured much of the European perception and definition of the environment of

Goa and the resultant colonial policy created to manage it. 2 Of course these perceptions

changed over time as did colonial policy, and on the ground realities always influenced and

shaped any discourse and action creating what Dawdy characterizes as an always present

improvisation by colonial authorities and local inhabitants (Dawdy 2008).

Concerning the changing perceptions of the natural world, the question that arises is how

exactly does this translate into political action? Or, stated another way, what aspects of these

new understandings of nature become important to and incorporated within colonial policy and

administration and why? Michel Foucault provides a useful framework that orients the new

concerns of government that resulted from these modes of thinking, but argues that they arose in

direct conjunction with and largely as a result of new, particularly urban spatial formations.

He takes as a starting point his understanding of “bio-power” or “the set of mechanisms

through which the basic biological features of the human species became the object of a political

strategy, of a general strategy of power, or, in other words, how modern western societies took

on board the fundamental biological fact that human beings are a species.” (Foucault 2007, 16).

This understanding that humans are a species is directly related to, and arguably completely

reliant on, the developments occurring simultaneously in the fields of science and medicine

2
The influence of travelers’ accounts on contemporary historical scholarship of Velha Goa’s urban landscape is vast
because it represents some of the only source material available. Specific texts that concern medicine/medicinal or
scientific texts about botany, such as the famous Colóquios dos simples e drogas da India published by Garcia da
Orta in 1563, have often been discussed in scholarship concerning the history of science and medicine. However,
these types of texts have not as of yet been extensively examined for their particular influence on larger concerns of
colonial administration, social life, and the production and management of particular forms of colonial space in
Velha Goa (although see (Zupanov 2002).

46
during this time. These changes result in the perception of humans as a population and a need to

know population level dynamics.

With these new understandings of human beings, the focus of the government changes

from a concern with governing a territory to a concern with governing the population. Foucault’s

goal is to document this change in focus by revealing the development of mechanisms of power

and new forms of governance that are directly related to population control. The mechanisms

that he discusses are those associated with security. He argues that indeed there is a direct

correlation between the development of the idea of humans existing as populations—vis-à-vis

their categorization as a species—and the rise of mechanisms of security that have as their object

populations.

Rulers create population security by first considering probable events that will adversely

affect society, examining the cost associated with dealing with these events, and then

establishing an acceptable rate of occurrence, whereby it guarantees the security of the people

through maintenance of these norms. Foucault suggests that these security based mechanisms

become dominant only in 18th-century Europe.

To illustrate his point, Foucault compares three types of governmental regulations or

mechanisms that work to control outbreaks of disease—issues that have particular salience to

Velha Goa and its continual problem with plague, cholera, and other health issues. He makes

these comparisons to show how the focus of these mechanisms changes over time. He begins

with the control of leprosy, which involves the regulation of specific individuals with the disease

that establishes a binary between those with the disease and those without. These types of

regulations are what Foucault terms juridical-legal mechanisms. The second example involves

regulations that were meant to stop the spread of plague. These regulations segregated whole

47
sections of town and worked to establish rules of action and surveillance of those from infected

areas. These types of regulations involve the disciplinary mechanism (for a fuller discussion see

(Foucault 1977). The third example concerns outbreaks of smallpox and the development of

inoculation practices in the 18th century. It is here that Foucault argues for the dominance of

mechanisms of security. The issues surrounding inoculation differ from either practices of

exclusion or segregation as in the former two examples. Inoculation involves calculations of

infection rates and mortality, risks of inoculation, cost of administration, outbreak management,

after effects, etc. A critical difference between penal and disciplinary mechanisms and

mechanisms of security is that the latter is not a form of governance based on prohibition.

Rather, governing through mechanisms of security acknowledges and accepts that various issues

will occur, such as smallpox, but aims to keep rates of occurrence within acceptable norms.

Establishing security from smallpox, therefore, involves an assessment of the population as a

whole and an understanding of population level dynamics (Foucault 2007, 24).

However, this rather Eurocentric focus ignores the ontological and epistemological shifts

that were made possible through European colonial encounters. In the colonies, the control of

populations and their security were always dominant issues for colonial administrators. This was

especially true in Velha Goa, which always suffered (according to a colonial administrative point

of view) from a lack of a Portuguese native population and resulted in a rather precarious

political situation and very minimal territorial holdings. For example, Afonso de Albuquerque

demonstrates an early concern with population security through his strategy to quickly create a

stable population base (one that was both Catholic and loyal to the crown) by giving financial

incentives for his soldiers to marry local brides and settle down in Velha Goa. This strategy

48
resulted in the powerful urban class of casados in Velha Goa and a growing number of so called

mestiços.

An equally critical issue though, is not only the change in focus of these mechanisms of

power (i.e. on the shift to governing a population), but also a great concern with the type of

space in which they are understood to work. Foucault suggests that the development and

expansion of the town was the primary locale and reason for the shift to mechanisms of security.

He states, “Broadly speaking, what was at issue in the eighteenth century was the question of the

spatial, juridical, administrative, and economic opening up of the town: resituating the town in a

space of circulation” (Foucault 2007, 27). The two interrelated issues of urban expansion and

circulation that arise in these discussions are vital to thinking through the changing urban

landscape of Velha Goa.

First, as towns expanded and were no longer neatly contained by their early fortification

walls, and as they became critical centers for the economies in their regions, governments began

to experience significant problems defining, demarcating, and administering them. The issue of

both what constituted the urban space of Velha Goa and how to maintain security—or govern it

more generally—were deeply concerning to Portuguese administrators. The town almost

immediately expanded beyond the original fortification walls built by the Adil shahi regime, and

it always contained a highly diverse and hard to classify population. This concern reveals itself

in a series of sumptuary laws passed during this period that attempt to force the population into

adhering to specific norms of dress, behavior, and action with the city—laws aimed at

inculcating the population into a Portuguese conception of proper colonial subjects set within a

well ordered urban space.

49
 Second, circulations—between town and countryside as well as internationally for

trade—become critical to the survival of the towns and increasingly the nation. The circulation

of goods, people, and knowledge was always an encompassing issue in Goa. Circulation in the

context of increasing global trade and colonialism is arguably the central motive for Portuguese

military intervention in Velha Goa and the entire reason for the city’s large initial growth, its

continued existence, and its later decline. For example, the concern with both circulation and

security in Velha Goa reveals itself through the great anxiety expressed in the historic record

over the Dutch blockade of the city’s port, which occurred first in 1604 and again later from

1636-1639 and produced significant economic losses (Alden 1996a; Boxer 1991).

Additionally—and more spectacularly—there was an epic long term project to encircle Velha

Goa and much of its hinterland in a huge, new fortification wall. This wall was completed

around the same time as the Dutch blockade and is one of the longest fortification walls in all of

Asia. The extensive distance covered by the wall combined with a lack of military personal to

effectively man it though, largely negated its strategic importance. In addition, the enormous

financial resources required for its construction and maintenance was a huge burden on the

already economically challenged colonial government. Santos and Mendiratta (Santos and

Mendiratta 2009), therefore, note that from a military engineering standpoint the construction of

the outer fortification wall was a disaster. However, as a means of controlling circulations

between the town and the surrounding countryside the wall was actually quite effective, and the

tolls charged at the major gates became a notable source of revenue as well as an opportunity to

increase surveillance of both people and goods.

The rethinking of urban space worked concurrently with understandings about health and

the rationalization of space made possible through modern science. It included the opening up of

50
crowded, enclosed spaces and streets for better ventilation, improving infrastructure, ensuring

movement within towns and between town and countryside through coherent road networks, and

new mechanisms for surveillance of the movement of people (Foucault 2007, 33) It is in the

context of governing these new urban areas that issues of the probability of events, costs, and the

maintenance of norms become spatialized—in short what results are spaces of security. This

new understanding of space is what Foucault calls the “milieu” (Foucault 2007, 35).

He states, “The milieu is a set of natural givens – rivers, marshes, hills – and a set of

artificial givens – an agglomeration of individuals, of houses, etcetera. The milieu is a certain

number of combined, overall effects bearing on all who live in it. It is an element in which a

circular link is produced between effects and causes, since an effect from one point of view will

be a cause from another (Foucault 2007, 36). The concept of the milieu provides a field of

intervention for mechanisms of security because it does not affect individuals as legal subjects or

as groups of bodies to be disciplined but as a population. Foucault notes, “What one tries to

reach through this milieu, is precisely the conjunction of a series of events produced by these

individuals, populations, and groups, and quasi natural events which occur around them”

(Foucault 2007, 37). The milieu and the circulations that occur within in it between people and

the natural world is thus a relational concept. What he is actually referring to by developing the

concept of the milieu is an ecological model. By showing how the milieu relates to populations

and how populations become the concern of government (again the notion of bio-power),

Foucault provides the link between the development of science and medicine, the

reconceptualization of both the human species and space within these ontological and

epistemological frameworks, and finally the very real changes in the application of power that

result from these changing ideologies.

51
 What is critical in Foucault’s notion of the milieu is not only that it links the changing

understanding of the natural world to issues of political power and governance, but that it does so

in a way that highlights the spatial aspects of this process as well. His argument is immersed in

the particular material conditions of existence and the new perceptions of that material world.

However, it is inextricably linked specifically to the production of urban spatial forms and their

increased importance as centers of circulation. It is these two factors, urban expansion and

circulation, that cause the need for new types of town planning, population management, and

governance. Furthermore, Foucault argues that in the field of natural history/biology among

others, it is the developing understanding of the population that actually provides the link

between the milieu and governance (Foucault 2007, 109). The body politic is conceived, not as

made of a group of individual wills existing within a territory and subject to rule (as in previous

–or parallel—understandings of sovereignty), but rather as a population that is considered a

natural/biological object effected by a series of variables and processes. These include the

everything from juridical-legal processes, religious ideas, social norms, climate, topography, and

“above all, of course, with the condition of means of subsistence,” i.e. the milieu (Foucault 2007,

99). Thus, it is these series of variables or the milieu that must be governed and not the

population directly. With this changing perception of governance vis-à-vis the place of humans

in the world as a population, the efficacy of prohibitive, disciplinary laws wanes and the need

arises for a greater focus on managing space and the environment in general in order to

effectively govern the population. These new objects of governance are directly related to the

developing fields of science, medicine, and natural history—discussed in pervious sections—

because it is these fields that made these objects visible to colonial administrators in the first

place and opened up the possibilities of power and control over them.

52
Conclusion

While Foucault provides a link between conceptualizations of people/populations,

landscapes, and governance, these formulations revolve around the use of primarily archival data

to articulate these understandings. Although they represent sometimes the only historical

resources, using colonial travelers’ accounts; scientific, botanical, or medicinal texts; or

administrative documents in colonial contexts can be highly problematic. Reconstructing the

discursive formations that concern the natural world and related management regimes enacted by

colonial administrators using only historical resources constructed by the colonial elite, runs the

risk of recapitulating the very Eurocentric, colonial viewpoints that went into creating them in

the first place. For this reason, archaeological and environmental data about the construction of

these landscapes is crucial to broadening our datasets and thus widening our understanding of

these places (Brumfiel 2003; Deetz 1977; Funari 1999; Hall 1999; Hicks and Beaudry 2006a;

Lawrence and Shepherd 2006; Wylie 1999). As Lycett forcibly notes in the context of Spanish

colonial mission in the American Southwest:

Even absent a fully articulated capitalist nature regime, forms of colonial governance act
to define and value crucial resources, regulate their rights of access and tenure, and
govern their disposition through consumption, circulation, or preservation. Nevertheless,
colonial institutions and imperatives were re-constituted locally in the process of colonial
incorporation, where local regimes of value and moral economies contested the claims of
these external logics and negotiated the conditions of their enactment. The mission, then,
appears not as a complete meta-historical structure imposed on passive subject
populations, but as diverse and variable array of strategies, practices, and relations
articulated by many agents in divergent contexts over long periods of time...It was in
these settings that colonial nature regimes and their associated strategies of subjugation,
governance, and commodification played out in the production of both colonial and
indigenous landscapes. (M. Lycett 2014)

Lycett is underlining the issues encountered in colonial environments and how top down

mandates are always negotiated, changeable, and often subverted or reconfigured entirely in

practice. These processes of “re-constitution” are not always visible in the historical record

53
alone. Foucault provides a useful way to understand the relationship between political power,

space, and the developing understanding of the natural world (and the place of humans in it), but

his strict focus on governance and top-down political power runs the risk of over-determining the

efficacy of this power and its associated institutions.

In fact my archaeological data coupled with a rereading of various historical sources

(explored more fully in subsequent chapters) show that often these processes resulted in failure

and that these dominant narratives erased and ‘silenced’ the successes of alternative forms of

existence (Trouillot 1995). Hence the perceived need for what was a series of ultimately

unsuccessful attempts to revitalize Velha Goa beginning in the late 1700’s and lasting until

1959—plans that perpetuated a still dominant historical narrative that this place became an

abandoned urban ruin where the natural world had reasserted its dominance over the cultural and

urban successes of ages past. However, my survey reveals that this colonial urbanscape was

from its inception an integrated agricultural landscape with a continuous, vibrant occupation both

during and after the period of decline—an occupation that in many cases resembled the more

typical spatial practices occurring outside of the city.

While providing a rich theoretical terrain to explore, Foucault bases his arguments largely

on 18th century Europe. But, this research reveals that these processes were occurring much

earlier in the colonies. Velha Goa can thus be thought of as a place where the very first

experiments of what are considered to be modern thinking and urban production were enacted.

That is, Velha Goa’s urban form and governance is a kind of transitional urban landscape in

which the colonial administration was concerned with population, security, and circulation all set

with a specific environmental ‘milieu,’ but, still holding on to notions that hold rural and urban

landscapes as completely separate and accentuating the difference between natural/uncivilized

54
and urban/cultural space. Indeed, without the colonial experience and the contribution of non-

European understandings and spatial practice the later developments seen in European urbanism

and governance explored by Foucault may not have even been possible. Importantly, however,

Velha Goa shows, that regardless of the shift to a more ecological mode of thinking, the

continued presence of nature/culture binaries fails to adequately conceptualize urban spaces—

especially those in tropical locales—and resulted in the ultimate failure of colonial attempts to

revitalize the city of Velha Goa.

55
 Chapter 2

Velha Goa as Object and Image: Cartography and spatial ideology in the capital of the
Estado da Índia

And then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the
scale of a mile to the mile!
“Have you used it much?” I enquired.
“It has never been spread out, yet,” said Mein Herr: “the farmers objected: they said it
would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight! So we now use the country
itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well.”
(Carroll 1893, 163)

Introduction

The levity of Lewis Carroll aside, the quote from above drives home one the most

important features of maps. They are in their simplest definition a representation of space, and

thus imbued with a set of symbolic conventions that are always and necessarily a particular

perspective on a supposed physical spatial reality. Following Henri Lefebvre (Lefebvre 1991,

38–9), “representations of space” are not merely passive forms, however. They reveal the way

space is conceived, thought about, and understood (cf. Soja 1996) because they are “shot through

with knowledge (savior)—i.e. a mixture of understanding (connaissance) and ideology—which

is always relative and in the process of change” (Lefebvre 1991, 41). Maps as representations of

space par excellence are thus implicated in not just how space is thought about as an abstraction,

but also how it will likely be physically produced/constructed and governed. Therefore, the

historical production of maps for a singular urban locale, such as Velha Goa, represents a

particularly salient data set that can begin to reveal the changing conceptions of urban space held

by those who produce and consume these cartographic representations—in the examples studied

here primarily the colonial and administrative elite populations.

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 In this chapter, I will focus on the production of the maps that specifically depict the city

of Goa (known today as Velha or Old Goa) over the course of its more than 450 years of colonial

occupation. As a whole, the maps of the city largely mirror the development of European

cartography from the Renaissance into the modern period, and they reveal similar shifts in

technological advancements, orientations, and other visual registers. Using the maps of Goa as a

thematic anchoring point, I argue that even though the maps generally change in form and

content over time they also indicate several startlingly consistent colonial conceptions of urban

space (or representations of space in Lefebvre’s terms) between 1595 and 1959—dates which

correspond to the earliest and latest maps produced of Portuguese colonial Goa. These

consistencies center on the concept of the city as a coherent object that can be produced and

manipulated and that imagines it as completely separate from the surrounding landscape. They

reveal an underlying notion of urban space as categorically different from the rural, agricultural,

indigenous and, uncivilized spaces exterior to it, and they often celebrate (or in some cases

mourn the decay) of Goa’s symbolic role as a capital of colonial empire.

To demonstrate these trends in the maps of the city of Goa, I have arbitrarily divided

them into three general thematic categories that in large part reflect stylistic similarities but that

also suggest the intended audience for each set of maps. These groups are specifically labeled

oblique city views (maps for the public), military cartography (maps for the crown), and

engineering plans (maps for revitalization). Grouping the maps in this way helps to reveal how

the changes in map forms were linked to the changing political and economic concerns of the

Portuguese administration at the same time that they support a particular colonial narrative of the

rise and decline of the city. These groups should not be taken as discrete categories; rather, this

division provides a useful heuristic that allows for a better understanding of the visible trends in

57
the maps, which includes a consideration of the likely intended audience and the underlying

motivations for their content. Most importantly, these categories help reveal the role of these

maps as documents that convey commonly held understandings about urban space.

Yet, a focus on maps—a singular from of spatial representation—cannot claim to

adequately or completely inform an analysis of urban space. However, because of their

underlying, consistent representations of urban form, which includes the city’s place in the

surrounding landscape, the maps provide a compelling argument for something approaching a

generally held spatial ideology, or as I will discuss, what develops into a spatial ideology as the

realities of the colonial encounter unfold. Maps are thus a starting point from which I build an

argument for particular spatial ideologies in subsequent chapters. Here, I therefore largely work

to set the stage for the following chapters—chapters that engage with the physical materiality of

these places (as captured through archaeological survey) as well as the governance and politics

of space (as viewed from the colonial archive), and that work together to more fully explicate the

processes of urban spatial production and decline.

Theoretical concerns

Speaking of an ideology—spatial or otherwise—remains a difficult task. As Lefebvre

himself notes, the concept has been used in various and oft time contradictory ways that greatly

obscure its meaning. However, he makes the salient point that an ideology in any form cannot

exist without “the space to which it refers, a space which it describes,...and whose code it

embodies”, suggesting that ideology might best be described as a “discourse upon social space,”

and thus separate from “culture” and “values” to the extent that it remains separate from

knowledge of space (Lefebvre 1991, 44). In other words, ideology in this sense is an articulation

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of space, a more agentive and considered viewpoint, that is more or less conscious in the minds

of those who produce it—typically the dominant members of society.

However, representations of space (or in this case maps specifically) are obviously more

complex. They are clearly not always meant to be conscious ideological statements or tools of

colonial domination. Maps are created to play various roles ranging from simple functionality to

overt political statements to works of art. Yet, the form of the map and the ability for it to be

perceived as a representation of a physical space by its audience can also reveal underlying, less

conscious beliefs about the constitution of space, regardless of the intent of the map maker to

convey particular messages. John and Jean Comaroff (J. Comaroff and Comaroff 1991b; J. L.

Comaroff and Comaroff 1992b) provide an expanded discussion of ideology that explicates the

potential range or continuum between overt, conscious aspects of ideology and the underlying,

unconscious understandings held by a particular political community (what Lefebvre might term

‘culture’). It is their formulation that is most effective in unpacking the intersection between

maps (as representations of space) and the actual production of Goa’s urban landscape during

colonial rule. Considering the dominant, elite understandings of colonial urban space

encapsulated by the maps thus provides a foundation upon which to begin to interrogate the

processes of domination and resistance inherent in any colonial encounter.

More specifically, Comaroff and Comaroff introduce the concept of hegemony

(following Antonio Gramsci). Hegemony, in their formulation, consists of the order of signs and

material practices that are axiomatic, taken for granted, and naturalized (J. L. Comaroff and

Comaroff 1992b, 28–9; J. Comaroff and Comaroff 1991a). As such, hegemonic practices or

understandings permeate outside the world of the political, and as naturalized beliefs they are

rarely questioned. These systems of meaning can include a range of social phenomenon such as

59
social hierarchies, or of most import here, spatial hierarchies and form. However, when these

taken for granted systems of values are recognized as part of a social and political order—in

short when they become open to negotiation—hegemony shades into ideology. That is, ideology

(similar to Lefebvre’s discussion), is an agentive expression of the way society should be

organized; it is in this respect often a discourse regarding a system of values, meanings, and

symbols. But, as an articulated, overt statement, ideology is open to contestation and the

development of counter ideologies (J. Comaroff and Comaroff 1991a, 23–4).

The expression of ideology or hegemony is of course not straightforward and represents

rather a range of possibilities along a continuum:

Ideology may, of course, take many guises, narrative and nonnarrative, realistic or
whimsical; it may be heavily symbolic, deeply coded; but at root its messages
must be communicable. Hegemony, as we have said, represents itself everywhere
in its saturating silences or its ritual repetitions. It is on the middle ground
between such silences and repetitions that human beings often seek new ways to
test out and give voice to their evolving perceptions of, and dispositions toward,
the world. The analytic implication is both clear and complex: modes of
representation, and the diverse forms they take, are part of culture and
consciousness, hegemony and ideology, not merely their vehicles. (J. Comaroff
and Comaroff 1991a, 30)

What is critical in this formulation though, is the centrality of power. As Comaroff and

Comaroff argue, power is an intrinsic, constitutive aspect of the social and the cultural (J. L.

Comaroff and Comaroff 1992b, 28). In effect, this power manifests itself in the ability of

hegemony and ideology to influence and shape human action in the world. Following Lefebvre,

David Harvey (Harvey 1991, 226) argues that the control of space itself is perhaps the most

crucial and pervasive form of social control (cf. Fagan 2015; A. T. Smith 2003). Thus, in a

colonial setting such as Velha Goa, an analysis of the production of urban space, the form it

takes, and the way it is used or functions is critical to understanding the power relationships

between colonized and colonizer and the development of colonial society more generally.

60
 But, as Marshal Sahlins (M. D. Sahlins 1985) reminds us power, control, and domination

(and its implied corollary resistance) are not the only factors at play in colonial encounters. Of

course power is more often than not the central concern, but what appears to be domination can

actually be mutual appropriation. People who look disenfranchised are often very active in the

production of their own history, and at times similar ideologies may be articulated that are,

however, deployed for various purposes by different social groups. To have any effect, these

ideologies are necessarily dependent on shared hegemonic beliefs (that is, underlying, unspoken,

and commonly held notions about social and spatial realities) (J. Comaroff and Comaroff 1991a,

25). Stated another way, similar ideologies may be deployed to not merely resist the power of the

colonizer but to purposely wrest it away as new cultural modalities are established—implying a

more active from of struggle that goes beyond simple resistance.

I argue that the maps of the city of Goa provide an initial foray into some of these issues,

exposing some of the commonly held conceptions about colonial urban space held particularly

by the colonial administration and its associated elite political actors. As representations of

space, the early maps especially reveal assumptions about how the colonial landscape appeared

and functioned. However, with the very pragmatic operation of colonial rule and changing

socio-political realities over time, these assumptions were often challenged. As I argue below,

we see in the later maps of Goa—especially those for revitalization—a shift to a more overt

spatial ideology that reveals the uncertainties and anxieties of colonial governance (Stoler 2009).

That is, they reveal a more articulated understanding of what colonial space should be and how it

should function. In the following chapters, this shift becomes even clearer as the material

evidence at times supports the image of Velha Goa represented by the maps of the city but also

complicates these imaginaries. It is these complications and tensions that, I suggest, caused the

61
development of more articulated ideological formulations concerning urban space. These

articulations, which include the maps of Goa, are reflected in spatial production and practice as

well as its governance to varying degrees of success. Yet, as the maps are almost universally

produced and consumed by the colonial elite population, the maps are not necessarily stories that

the colonial elite told those that they dominated, but rather they are stories that they told each

other. In a very real way they reinforce their own beliefs about the constitution of their colonial

capital—a colonial bedtime story of sorts told to reassure themselves of their political, social,

and spatial control, particularly in the city that was the heart of the empire.

As I discuss, the ultimate authors of these maps, could not be said to fall within a single

racial, ethnic, or class group other than being in some way part of the colonial administration,

and the maps themselves were produced over the course of hundreds of years of colonial rule.

Thus, it would be somewhat absurd to suggest that any ideology expressed by them is a

completely explicit or consistent, top down tool of colonial domination, rather, they function

more so from the perspective of today and viewed as a corpus. Nevertheless, the ideology

expressed by these maps is constructed through and rooted in a common lived experience of the

colonial city. Hence, they also reveal aspects of urban spatial form and spatial practice that

certainly did exist in the city even if they not tell the whole story.

History of cartography and European spatial ontologies

With these theoretical concerns in mind, it is important to analyze maps as documents in

and of themselves that have a particular historical trajectory often directly implicated in

European colonial expansion. As in historical anthropology and archaeology, the ideological and

political motivations behind the production of maps as historical documents has increasingly

62
been a focus of scholars at least since the work of Brian Harley in the 1980’s and 90’s (e.g.

Harley and Woodward 1987; Harley 2001). Historians of cartography have moved away from a

simple positivist analysis of maps and map making. They have gone beyond an understanding of

the history of maps as a progression of more and more accurate, rational, and scientific

depictions of space. Rather, scholars now routinely engage with maps as semiotic systems, and

they are analyzed as products of particular historical, political, and social configurations within

which their authors are inextricably enmeshed. As Jacob (Jacob 1996, 194) states following

Harley:

The map is a semiological trap and a frightening ideological weapon; it gives an

objective and natural appearance to what is mostly a cultural and social
construction. It presents a seemingly objective and irrefutable appearance of
factual and topographical information (the world as it is), but beyond this facade
lies an elaborate rhetoric of power which organises the iconography, the social
filtering and construction of the territory and the discourse of place names.

In this way, maps both reveal and reinforce underlying beliefs about the way space should be

configured and how it should be understood. As discussed previously, they are what Henri

Lefebvre (Lefebvre 1991, 39) refers to as “representations of space.” Maps in effect become

strategies in discourses of power that literally create the spaces within which humans can act.

They do so by suggesting that their boundaries, administrative divisions, racial stereotypes, and

even the natural world all have an objective, permanent, and knowable existences, which the

maps claim to accurately depict (Crampton 2001, 243; Jacob 1996, 194–5).

The post-colonial critique has taken this understanding of maps and gone further to show

how maps—while attempting to discipline both people and space—reveal instabilities in spatial

ideologies from the very moment of their creation (Tickell 2004, 21; Huggan 1989, 119). A

map’s coherence relies on a particular viewpoint—that of the mapmaker—and this viewpoint is

of course subjective and determined by a wide range of cultural influences. As a culturally

63
constructed, contingent point of view it is therefore inherently unstable, and so too is the

structure that the map portends to authoritatively depict. Maps thus “play an exemplary role not

only in the demonstration of the empowering strategies of colonialist rhetoric but in the

unwitting exposure of the deficiencies of these strategies” (Huggan 1989, 119).

In the late medieval and early modern period in Europe, it became necessary for

mapmakers to establish the efficacy and legitimacy of a map through the use of a specific set of

rhetorical devices. These devices included affixing royal seals and coats of arms, attaining and

displaying copy rights, listing the credentials of the mapmaker, and they frequently made an

appeal to the burgeoning tenants of modern science. These appeals came through associated

texts and images that made claims regarding the production of the map through direct experience

and observation and often included pictures of local inhabitants in local dress to stress this point.

Regardless of these devices however, the authority of the map ultimately derived from its

adherence to a standard mode of representation or “pictorial tradition” that would make it both

comprehensible to its viewers and place it within an accepted visual canons (Ballon and

Friedman 2007, 691)—a necessity that still exists for mapmakers today. For example, one of the

more obvious examples of the adherence to a pictorial tradition seen today is the often taken for

granted and arbitrary placement of north at the top of a map. Yet, the necessity for mapmakers to

establish their maps’ legitimacy, to authorize its claims, simultaneously exposes the potential

existence of other spatial understandings. It reveals the attempt to stabilize an inherently

contingent viewpoint (e.g. the dominant, ‘top’ position of the global north in maps today) at the

same time that the map itself purports to be an accurate and truthful depiction of space.

Acknowledging the instability of European spatial ontologies becomes critical to

understanding the successes and failures of the Portuguese colonial enterprise, and the potential

64
for the existence of alternative understandings of space and spatial practice is markedly relevant

in analyzing the nature of the decline and eventual abandonment of Velha Goa. Colonial power

relations, or any asymmetrical power relationships, result in discourses that typically silence

alternative modes of being, and maps can be particularly salient examples of these processes

(Trouillot 1995). Maps often elide specific non-elite conceptions and uses of space; they literally

map over alternative modes of existence that do not conform to colonial elite norms. Edney

argues that especially in colonial contexts “the knowledge generated was more a representation

of the power relations between the conquerors and the conquered than of some topographical

reality” (Edney 1997, 25; Tickell 2004, 22). Therefore, maps should be analyzed not only for the

ways in which they discipline a space and reveal elite spatial ideologies, but also for those

aspects of spatial practice they do not address (Crampton 2001, 243). That is, as much attention

should be paid to the content within a map as is paid to what is specifically left out of the images

the mapmakers produce.

Hence, my understanding of the maps of Velha Goa is informed by both the content of

the maps and by what they intentionally ignore or repress (as discussed above Comaroff and

Comaroff indicate that it is often in these silences were one can recognize underlying

assumptions of the ruling elite (J. Comaroff and Comaroff 1991a, 30). The content of the maps

of Goa produce a colonial discourse of domination, and they are largely limited to elite

conceptions about the use and production of urban space. In general, they reinforce an ideal of

urbanism, which as I argue, was likely well established in Goa at the time of the earliest

surviving map’s production.

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Maps, Ideologies and Interpretation in the context of Velha Goa

Fig. 2.1: Map of Velha Goa by Jan Huygen van Linschoten first published in 1596 in his
Itinerario.

It is at the very end of the 16th century, at the apogee of Portuguese political and

economic success in the Indian Ocean, that the first images and maps of the city of are produced.

During this period the city of Velha Goa—then known simply as the city of Goa—achieved its

greatest urban extent and contained its highest population. Therefore, the maps that were

produced beginning in 1596 are representative of an entrenched Portuguese colonial

administration that had an already well-established understanding and experience with the

production of urban space in this environment. The design of the city shown by these maps

reveals both the planned modifications to existing infrastructure (including the continued deep

66
influence of older urban forms on contemporary urban structures like the circular and radiating

street patterns) and the unplanned, newer organic growth of a fast expanding and cosmopolitan

trading entrepôt.

One of the earliest known maps of the city of Goa was sketched by Jan Huygen van

Linschoten, a Dutch immigrant, and published in his well-known Itinerario (Fig. 2.1) 1. The map

was a result of Linschoten’s detailed observations of his travels to India and his stay in Goa

working as an accountant for the archbishop. He published his Itinerario in Holland in 1596

upon his return from the East Indies, and as mentioned, the map thus represents a depiction of

Goa at the apogee of Portuguese political and economic power in the Indian Ocean.

The descriptions and images accompanying Linschoten’s map often focused on both the wealth

contained in the city but also include the decadence and indolence of the Portuguese. Thus, the

publication of this text immediately before the Dutch began their voyages to the East at the

beginning of the 17th century is no small matter. Arun, Saldanha (A. Saldanha 2011, 150)

strongly makes the case that the Itinerario greatly expanded the European geographical

imagination and provided such a leap of knowledge for the Dutch that it “inaugurated a new

struggle for the Indian Ocean and a new phase of globalization.” A critical passage in

Linschoten’s text is his possibly overstated, yet striking descriptions and associated sketch of

Goa’s bustling, cosmopolitan market place—a market place that would eventually cease to be so

bustling due to a highly effective Dutch blockade of Goa in 1604 and later seasonal blockades

beginning in in 1636 (Alden 1996b, 175–6) (Fig. 2.2). This brief account of one of the earliest

depictions of the city provides not only the background for one of the most influential maps of

1
All historic maps produced of Velha Goa are oriented the opposite of standard maps produced today, i.e. all
historic maps are drawn with south at the top of the map and north at the bottom.

67
Goa but also indicates the now well-known potential maps have as political tools and ideological

statements.

Fig. 2.2: Market scene by Jan Huygen van Linschoten first published in 1569 in his Itinerario

Oblique city views (maps for the public):

The oblique city views are best defined by the previously mentioned Lindschoten map

(Fig. 2.1) published in 1596, and Saldanha (A. Saldanha 2011, 155) suggests that this was the

most detailed and comprehensive map of Goa ever produced. Its influence was such that it

provided the basic template for the majority of the maps produced of the city before its decline

and ruination—and indeed many subsequent maps were merely slight alterations of Linschoten’s

original (Silveira 1955, 362). All of the maps of this type look almost identical, with great

stylistic similarities and only minor modification to the urban fabric. These maps generally

depict the city during the apogee of Portuguese power and influence in the India Ocean when the

city would have achieved its greatest spatial extent and population—and this remains true

regardless of whether the maps were produced after the city had substantially declined.

The majority of these maps were published in books meant for general consumption, for

example, works such as Linschoten’s Itinerario or other travel logs like Philip Baldaeus's work,

A true and exact description of the most celebrated East-India coasts of Malabar and

68
Coromandel and also of the Isle of Ceylon, published in Amsterdam in 1672 (for two additional

examples see Fig. 2.3). Therefore, the maps in this category were produced largely by

Fig. 2.3: Oblique view maps of Velha Goa.

Right: Map from Mallet, Alain Manesson.

1683. Description de L'Univers. Paris.

Left: Map executed by Jacques-Nicolas Bellin

c. 1750 and contained in l’Abbé Antoine
François Prévost’s 15 volume work Histoire
générale des Voyages.

Europeans who were in some way involved with colonialism and European expansion, or as in

the case of Linschoten, were employed by the colonial administration itself. It is also clear that

the intended audience for the maps was the general European public as they were typically

published as part of travel logs or in general histories, both of which were popular and widely

read literary genera. Moreover, these maps all show the city in a way that is congruent with other

European maps produced during this era such that they reflect the wide changes in map making

that occurred during the European Renaissance. Thus, they would have been legible to this

general, mostly European audience and fit within established traditions of spatial representation

(Fig. 2.4).

69
 Fig. 2.4: Bird’s eye view of Lisbon from Civitates Orbis Terrarum V published in 1598

Scholars have argued that perhaps the quintessential change in European map making

during this period was the decline in the overtly symbolic mappaemundi and the rise of

Ptolemaic based rationalized and proportionally structured maps. Mappaemundi are of course not

necessarily meant to be accurate depictions of physical space that can be used for navigation

over land. Rather, they are meant to help navigate the soul. They are often moral, allegorical

statements about the organization of the world and of space, many times depicting Jerusalem or

Rome at their center (Woodward 1987). The change in map form away from mappaemundi is

closely related to underlying changes in world views occurring during the Renaissance in part

70
due to the great expansion of geographical knowledge occurring because of Iberian exploration.

During this time, space itself was reconceived to be isotropic and uniform (Woodward 2007,

3:12). Combined with new scientific methods of survey and measurement, the

reconceptualization of space allowed for the visual objectification of specific places within a

landscape. These changes are what Woodward (Woodward 2007, 3:12) calls a “general

reorientation toward spatial analogies and the culture of objects.” In terms of the depiction of

cities, these new spatial ideologies result in a new and increasingly common form of map.

These new maps, like the Linschoten map and its progeny, depict the city from an

oblique, bird’s eye vantage point high above the ground—a thoroughly impossible view for any

human during the Renaissance or Early Modern period. Often based on survey and direct

measurement, these increasingly accurate views were an integral part of the changes being

wrought by the new focus on experience and observation in the burgeoning scientific fields. This

bird’s eye view of the city reinforced an imagination of urban space as a singular object, as

something that was measurable, contained and quantifiable with distinct boundaries. Woodward

(Woodward 2007, 3:18) argues that through the creation of maps people began to see that they

no longer had to passively accept what was given or ordained by God; mapmakers were literally

creating worlds through their images. Thus, these new modes of envisioning urban space,

allowed rulers to conceive of the city (and the world) not as a simple received object to govern

but as an object they could actually produce according to particular ideals.

Especially in Europe, cities were quickly expanding and becoming the center of political

and economic life for territorial states, but the early medieval form of cities completely

surrounded by fortification walls created a sense of enclosure that was critical to early urban

identity (Ballon and Friedman 2007). As Ballon and Friedman (Ballon and Friedman 2007, 691)

71
state about city maps, “This boundary line, which helped to establish the visual coherence of the

city, was essential to the rhetoric of the image.” However, as Foucault (Foucault 2007, 27)

points out, rulers were in reality having increasing problems defining and demarcating cities as

they spilled out and beyond their early medieval fortification walls. The bird’s eye view maps

with their clear boundaries neatly elide these resistances to governmental authority and create

sharp distinctions between urban and rural space that did not in many cases exist (Fig. 2.5).

Fig. 2.5: Detail of southwestern

corner of Velha Goa depicting
the difference between civil,
urban space and the surrounding
‘Mata Vacas’ (cow forests);
image from Linschoten’s 1596
Itinerario.

These changes in map making, consequently, reveal a conceptualization of urban space

and its occupants in certain ways. It argues for an already quite ingrained spatial ontology that

suggests a separation of nature-culture, urban-rural, and civilized from uncivilized or native. In

fact, the very act of producing a map or the ability to conceive of the city in terms that allow for

an outside, removed, and overhead vantage already reveals an ideology that holds the observer

separate from the observed subject. This understanding of urban space is particularly mirrored in

maps and other images of colonial centers by the separation of the civilized, well-ordered city

from the wild and often unoccupied surrounding country side, or conversely, in the case of later

maps of Goa as I discuss below, the unacceptable encroachment of this wild, native space into

the center of Portuguese civil, ecclesiastical and, administrative power.

72
 These early colonial maps especially support the idea argued by Maier (Maier 2012) that

depictions of cities during the Renaissance shared a nomenclature and developed along similar

lines as portraits of prominent people. They were both supposed to “convey concrete physical

form along with the intangible nature of identity…and…were meant not just to record a person’s

appearance, but also to show that single individual as the embodiment of a social ideal” (Maier

2012, 713–14).

In the sense of embodying a ‘social ideal’ of a single individual or object, colonial maps

of cities in general, and of Goa in particular, are thus every bit as allegorical and moral

statements about the world as the earlier mappaemundi, especially as they depict the city as the

civilized, moral centers of colonial space surrounded by an unmapped or wild landscape. Yet, the

new way of depicting space should not be confused with the already existent deep concern for

one’s place—meaning one’s place in the world as an individual or member of a social hierarchy,

religious group, city, or nation. The continued preoccupation with place in this respect is made

clear in these maps through their striking depictions of center and periphery urban/rural and

nature/culture. They allow for a double play in which a moral, civilized center is coupled with a

new framing of physical space such that rulers are now able to conceive of the city as an object

that can be produced and manipulated—and they ignore spatial practices that do not conform to

their ideals.

Considering these types of maps of Goa, some scholars have argued that their content and

form is primarily the result of the direct concern of the Portuguese with maritime trading

networks (Alegria et al. 2007, 1010–11). The early strategy of the Portuguese in the Indian

Ocean was certainly to establish secure bases at specific points of access into the India Ocean

trading network, and from these bases control maritime activity.

73
Fig. 2.6: Early mapping strategies versus to-scale spatial representation of Velha Goa.

74
 Fig. 2.6: Early mapping strategies versus to-scale spatial representation of Velha Goa.

Top: Map depicts the island of Tiswadi with the spatial footprint of Velha Goa drastically
enlarged. Image from Linschoten (1596) Itinerario.

Bottom: To-scale Google earth image showing a similar view as the Linschoten map with the
island of Tiswadi (outlined in yellow) and the spatial footprint of Velha Goa (outlined in red).
They were much more concerned with the control of trade than with controlling the production

of commodities on land (Boxer 1985; Boxer 1991; Brockey 2008; Disney 2009; Subrahmanyam

2007, 1367). From a very pragmatic point of view, it therefore makes sense that these maps

focus only on the city rather than any surrounding areas of production because coastal cities

represent the critical node in the trading networks where Europeans were allowed access.

In addition, due to the developing notion of isotropic and uniform space, it became

necessary to choose an arbitrary frame for each spatial subject. The conventional form of city

maps during this period often created this frame by detailing the urban area and leaving the

exterior blank or by exaggerating surrounding natural features (e.g. Santos and Mendiratta 2011).

Again from a very pragmatic standpoint, these stylistic trends in framing spatial subjects may

explain why in the maps of Goa the city is detailed and the surrounding countryside is thus, not

actually mapped.

While this may be true in part, it does not explain the entirety of the stylistic choices

made by various map makers. For example, the city and the physical space it is purported to

occupy on the island of Tiswadi are dramatically enlarged (Fig. 2.6—also see Santos and

Mendiratta’s (2011) comparative analysis of the city views of Velha Goa by Pedro Resende).

This choice to enlarge the capital to such an extent clearly demonstrates the great symbolic

importance of the city, the way that it literally looms large in European imaginations. Its size

shows the imagined dominance that the urban colonial capital exerts over the largely indigenous

rural landscape, even though Portuguese control over the space outside of the city was in many

75
respects far from absolute. Leaving outside areas blank also creates a discourse that justifies the

acquisition of this otherwise ‘unoccupied’ or unproductive land (Arnold 2005; Edney 1997).

The idea of the city as something inherently removed from nature and as the center of

civilized life is certainly nothing new. Specifically in the European tradition Cécile Formont

(Fromont 2006, 55) notes the importance of the city to Greek life as the place where man can

fulfill his telos and the later all-encompassing role of Rome as the center of Empire. She argues

that from these understandings the city developed as the center of culture and civilization such

that during the colonial era:

The dichotomy between civilized/European versus non-civilized/African took a

central role in the definition of African colonial city. For example, the material
used in the construction became in the colonial context a visual marker of racial
discrimination; for one group stone and mortar, symbols of civilization and
strength, for other groups ephemeral material, standing for the superficiality of
their society. (Fromont 2006, 55)

In a similar way, cities in South Asia have never conformed to the developing western ideal of

planned, built, urban space that is wholly removed from rural and/or more unstructured spatial

practice.

In particular, even today in such notoriously urbanized landscapes of New Delhi or

Mumbai, the ubiquitous presence of slums built amongst the more formal planned urban

infrastructure continually challenge an understanding (or more appropriately the ideology) of the

city as a planned, structured urban space of formally produced architectural elements, which are

representative of state and civil power. These spaces in both Western and South Asian contexts

are glossed as slums or urban blight in need of reform or revitalization—especially as their

growing populations can become vital political constituents and powerful voting blocs. This

continued argument for a more formalized, structured and non-rural urban space is reinforced

through the discourse and legal documents of the modern nation state. This is evidenced for

76
example by the enforcement of immigration and customs forms in the United States that ask

travelers returning from places like Mumbai if they have been on a farm or had any close contact

with livestock. Yet, any visitor to a modern city in South Asia will undoubtedly have had close

contact with cattle or other ‘rural,’ agricultural denizens, and these same questions are not found

on Indian immigration forms.

In addition, the modern legal system perpetuates the idea of the formal occupation of land

through the continued production of titles, deeds of sale and the necessity of governmental

control and oversight in any land transactions. The various historical archives in Goa are

similarly full of official land transfers, titles, deeds of sale, and land survey records produced by

the state. Indeed the majority of people visiting the Historical Archives of Goa today, which

contain the bulk of colonial era records, are local citizens who are attempting to trace land title as

far back into the past as possible. Their recourse to historical legal records is often an attempt to

reinforce or make claims to particular plots of land that are currently being occupied and/or used

by informal, unsanctioned, and often non-elite inhabitants today. Therefore, modern spatial

production exhibits trends that mirror those in the past; that is, there is a great tension between

the attempt to control the production and use of space through top down, state level regulations

that only sanction particular types of space and ownership on the one hand, and on the other, an

always present informal and often more vernacular spatial practice.

The general trends of representing and idealizing the formal, ‘concrete’ aspects of urban

form are distinctly present in the maps of Goa during the colonial period. They emphasize the

built, stone structures and the monumental architecture of colonial elites as well as any adjacent

formally organized agricultural fields without any indication of other possible structures on non-

elite spatial practice. However, as soon as the larger stone homes of the colonial elite disappear,

77
these areas are no longer depicted in the maps of the city as having any sort of residential

occupation (Fig. 2.7), even though archaeological evidence suggests that the more vernacular

settlement patterns continued unabated as discussed in detail in chapter 6.

Fig. 2.7: 19th century map

showing the contraction of
urban space and
encroachment of
agriculture and ‘wasteland’
into the urban core of
Velha Goa, from Fonseca,
José Nicolau da. 1878. An
Historical and
Archaeological Sketch of
the City of Goa. Image
and translation provided by
Archaeological Survey of
India, Goa Circle.

Military Cartography/Maps for the Crown:

While oblique view maps of Goa continue to be produced in various travel and history

books into the 17th century and beyond, we see a general shift in the form and content of certain

maps produced during the 1600’s. The vast majority of these maps were produced during the

decline of Portuguese dominance in the Indian Ocean, which occurred from the early to mid-17th

century, and this change may reflect the geopolitical situation in which the Portuguese find

themselves embroiled. The unification of the Iberian crown occurred in 1580 and resulted in the

inclusion of the Portuguese in the maritime rivalry between England and Spain (Alegria et al.

2007, 1019). The strains on Portuguese dominance were further exacerbated by serious Dutch

78
incursions into the Indian Ocean at the beginning of the 17th century, and this was coupled with

the continued pressure on Goa from various kingdoms in South Asia such as the Mughals and

Marathas. These geopolitical concerns result in a large amount of maps of Goa that focus on

access to maritime trading facilities and military defense. In this way, they reflect the

preoccupation of the Iberian state with economic pressures and the encroachment of foreign

powers. Alegria et al (Alegria et al. 2007, 997) note that more than 70% of the Portuguese maps

produced in the Indian Ocean region after 1580 fall within this category. Furthermore, nearly all

of the maps of Goa were produced and/or collected by a small number of men—namely Manuel

Godinho de Erédia, António Bocarro, António de Maris Carneiro, and Pedro Barreto Resende—

all of whom worked directly for the colonial administration, drafted these maps themselves, or

collected them from others under direct order of the crown.

All of the above map makers or compilers were thus colonial agents producing work that

would have reflected elite, colonial concerns and were produced specifically for the colonial

administration and/or the Crown. For example, one of the best known collection of maps comes

from António Bocarro’s Livro das Plantas de todas as fortalezas, cidades e povoaçoens do

Estado da Índia Oriental (Book of all the forts, cities, and settlements of the eastern State of

India). This work was directly commissioned by King Filipe III of Portugal in 1632, and it was

assigned to Bocarro—as the chief archivist and official chronicler of the Estado da India—by the

current viceroy, D. Fernando de Noronha. The collection that he was responsible for producing

was presented directly to the crown upon completion (although the maps themselves were likely

drawn by Pedro Barreto Resende, who was the secretary of the viceroy) (Cortesão and da Mota

1960). Other authors of maps in this category were also similarly related to the crown, such as

António de Maris Carneiro, who was named the chief cosmographer of Portugal in 1631.

79
Therefore, the maps in this category cohere because, for the most part, they were produced by

the colonial or royal administration for their own consumption. Thus, they speak directly to their

own internal concerns and understandings regarding Velha Goa’s urban landscape.

Fig. 2.8: Representative example of maps for the crown.

Several maps of this type exist by various authors, which depict the coast line and the region
more generally. (Image from Portugaliae Monumenta Cartographica, vol. 5, attributed to
Manuel Godinho de Erédia.)
The maps of this type generally tell us little about urban form; they forego a detailed depiction of

the city and the specifics of buildings or other urban infrastructure. If details of the city are

shown at all, it is generally to mark the location of churches, to provide a simple layout of the

streets, and/or to mark the location of the port and quay. Instead, the maps prominently feature

the large outer fortification wall constructed between 1566 and finished sometime in the mid-17th

century (Wilson, Ambekar, and Pande 2013) In addition, these maps often contain a more

80
accurate depiction of the surrounding coast line and nearby forts (Fig 2.8). The simple plan of

major streets, the location of fortifications, and the port are all obviously important from a

military and economic perspective, which was arguably the primary concern of the crown.

While some maps from these map makers do contain a more detailed view of the city,

these images are so stylized as to clearly be meant for conveying the most general impression of

the space as opposed to an accurate representation of the city (cf. (Rossa and Trindade 2006, 93),

and they clearly fall within the previous category of oblique city views. Indeed the compiler of

one of the more famous collections of maps in this category, António Bocarro, in 1635 states of

the oblique views that “…the great labor which it cost me was not sufficient to perform it in the

manner which I intended and desired, with the plans oriented and measured out, and drawn to

scale, which was not possible for the great lack of persons skilled in these arts within this

State…no more is to be expected from the Plans of the Fortresses and Cities than their form and

figure…” (as quoted in Cortesão and da Mota 1960, 5:60; translation by author). However, these

images again also often prominently feature the outer fortification wall of the city and other forts

and could thus be considered a sort of intermediary form between my heuristic categories (e.g.

Fig 2.9).

A full discussion of the fascinating piece of military engineering that is Goa’s outer

fortification wall occurs in Chapter 5. However, its prominence in many of these maps reveals

ideological consistencies with the oblique view maps—discussed previously—at the same time

that it reveals significant shifts in colonial policy. The wall itself covered more than 20km

enclosing a huge space that was much larger than the actual urban footprint of Goa, and it

represented an enormous investment in resources by the crown and local government. The wall

reveals a deep underlying concern for isolating the urban space of the colonial capital from an

81
increasingly dangerous, non-Christian hinterland.

Fig 2.9: Representative example of highly stylized maps of Old Goa with outer fortification
wall prominently depicted. Several nearly identical images of this type exist by other authors.
(Image by António de Mariz Carneiro in 1639 and contained in his Descrição da Fortaleza
de Sofala e das mais da Índia.)
It also conveniently allowed for a much greater surveillance of the population moving in and out

of the city, which had to pass through one of several closely guarded gates along its perimeter. In

addition, the construction of the wall coincided with the establishment of the inquisition in Goa

in 1560 and the passage of sumptuary laws between 1567 and 1606 that all worked to

homogenize and discipline both the space and population within the city. This process of

homogenization and increased attempts at conversion represent a definite change in colonial

policy from the somewhat less stringent and more conciliatory policies previously instituted by

Albuquerque (Malekandathil 2009b, 26).

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 The maps detailing the city that were produced during the 17th century contained in the

collections by Eredia, Resende, and Boccaro, thus reflect the administration’s growing concern

with non-European and non-Christian practices within its colonial capital—a challenge to their

assumptions about how the colonial space exists. In this way, they could be considered more

ideological statements about how the urban landscape should appear, especially as it is the

capital city and seat of power for the Portuguese in the East. For example, the more stylized

oblique depictions of the city (e.g. Fig. 2.9) completely remove any suggestion of agricultural or

rural space within the borders of the city, and they give the impression of a densely built, stone

and mortar urbanscape with numerous Catholic churches—despite that fact that agricultural

spaces and less formal constructions were always present as they are in most cities. These maps

also expand the footprint of the city to entirely fill the area encompassed by the outer

fortification wall, prominently depict and enlarge the wall relative to other structures, and

continue the older trend of vastly overstating the total area covered by the wall and the city on

the island of Tiswadi (cf. Santos and Mendiratta 2011 work on the maps of Resende).

Taking into account the contingent geopolitical events and concurrent shifts in colonial

policy, all of the maps from this period taken together—both the specific oblique city views from

the early 17th century and the more general maps of the fortifications—demonstrate a growing

sense of insecurity within the colonial administration and the crown. This insecurity is

physically manifested by the construction of the outer fortification wall surrounding the city

during the same period. However, these maps also indicate a general continuity in terms of the

underlying spatial ideologies that motivated the colonial administrators. Along with the

construction of the outer fortification wall, they maps reveal the consolidation and entrenchment

83
of the symbolic importance of the city of Goa and its role as a civilized, Christian center separate

from the surrounding indigenous landscape.

Engineering plans (maps for revitalization):

Maps of this type were all produced after the economic and political marginalization of

the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean trading network. By the 18th century, the eastern empire was

in serious economic and political decline, and the focus of the crown had already shifted in many

respects towards its possessions in the Atlantic world and a consolidation of its holdings in the

east—what Sanjay Subrahmanyam characterizes as “staying on” in the eastern empire

(Subrahmanyam 1993, 191). According to nearly all accounts concerning what was to become

known as Velha Goa or Old Goa, the city was virtually abandoned by the late 1700’s due to

several episodes of plague and the migration of much of the elite population to country estates.

In addition, both religious and secular houses were falling into ruin after being abandoned. At

this time, the de facto ruler of Portugal the Marquis of Pombal launched several plans beginning

in 1774 to restore the capital (A. B. de B. Pereira 1931, 164).

It is from these ultimately failed revitalization plans that the next group of maps

coalesces. These maps are also ordered by the crown, commissioned by the colonial governor,

and completed by colonial functionaries. In the case of the late 18th century, maps included in

this category (Fig 2.10)., they are all drawn by the same person, José de Morais Antas Machada,

who is the chief infantry sergeant serving as engineer in Goa (Rossa 1997, 108–9). Thus, this

corpus of maps is also highly indicative of elite ideological concerns as both the authors and

intended audience for these plans are again the colonial administration and the crown, and the

same holds true for the later revitalization plan produced in 1959 discussed below. Significantly,

84
all of the maps in this corpus show the city in ruins and the encroachment of wild jungle and

agriculture fields into the city center, with much of the former urban space simply labeled as

wasteland (e.g. Fig 2.7, Fig 2.10). They also reveal the dominance of the plan view of the city

over the formerly standard, oblique bird’s eye view.

Fig 2.10: Late 18th century maps produced for revitalization plans for Old Goa. Both maps
were produced by José de Morais Antas Machada (Images from Rossa 1997).

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 The plan view with its very systematic and rational depiction of space fits within general

Enlightenment ideals prevalent especially during the Pombaline era in Portugal. As mentioned

the Marquis was the driving force behind the need to revitalize the colonial capital, and the maps

produced of Velha Goa clearly represent these ideals as well. They depict the space as it existed

during the time with an overlay of a planned gridded street patter. The revitalization plans

themselves call for the opening up of space and the creation of squares, the widening of streets,

the demolition of particular buildings, and a general rational, coherent reorganization of space.

However, certain elements of buildings and various facades were to be preserved for their

symbolic importance. The plans also call for the clearance of vegetation and overgrowth and the

construction of new specifically stone homes by colonial elites who had previously moved out of

the city. However, due to financial constraints and political contingencies these plans would

never be completed (C. A. D. da Costa 1931).

Ultimately the failure of the 18th century plans to revitalize the city and mounting

political pressure from factions within the colonial administration result in the official move of

administrative power several kilometers away to the more salubrious and spatially malleable

town of Panaji in 1843. Coupled with the suppression of the religious orders in Goa in 1834, the

city supposedly completed its fall into ruin, at least according to colonial and European traveler’s

accounts. For example Denis Cottineau de Kloguen (Cottineau de Kloguen 1831) writes in the

early 1800’s: “The bazaar, built in the form of a cloister, in the centre of town, is very mean…the

buildings are become the retreat of beggars, thieves, and the few native travelers that pass

through Goa,” and the maps would seem to corroborate his descriptions.

At the end of 19th century, there was a renewed interest in the revitalization of the

architectural and archaeological history of Old Goa, which was entangled with the growing

86
popularity of the Catholic festival for Saint Francis Xavier and included the reinstitution of the

exposition of his mortal remains (Mendiratta 2011). With end of WWII and Indian independence

from British rule, the festival and the revitalization of Old Goa became more politically charged

as Portugal attempted to maintain its overseas colonies. The interest in the city continued to

center on its symbolic importance to the Portuguese colonial enterprise seeing Old Goa as

representative of the illustrious history of the Portuguese people as explorers, innovators and

pioneers and was thus embedded within nationalist projects of the state. These various

revitalization attempts culminated in the colonial government’s 1959 plan created by the Gracias

committee only two years prior to Goan independence (Fig. 2.11).

Fig. 2.11: 1959 plan for revitalization of Old Goa produced by the Gracias committee.

87
 These revitalization plans were never fully completed, although some buildings were

demolished and other changes to infrastructure were made which give the city its current

configuration today. All of these plans, however, do reveal the continued importance of the city

to the Portuguese crown and especially to the Catholic Church who still maintained numerous

houses of worship and other installations in the city. The specific mention of preserving facades

for their ‘symbolic’ importance for example obviously speaks to the continuing status of the

capital in the Portuguese imagination.

These maps, regardless of their plan view and great accuracy, reveal a much more

articulated spatial ideology that does, however, express similar understandings about urban space

as the Linschoten map from the earlier period of occupation and those that represent a more

military and economic focus. What is seen in these maps and their associated plans for

revitalization is a city transformed. It is a city that does not, but should, conform to colonial ideas

of properly civilized, urban, and built space. The encroachment of agricultural and wild

landscapes into the symbolic heart of the Portuguese eastern empire and the ruination of the

formally built, stone edifices is unacceptable to the colonial elite population, the church, and the

crown. The condition of this once prominent capital and trading entrepôt coupled with its

symbolic resonance, thus, engenders the perceived need for revitalization in the first place, and it

points toward some of the potential underlying reasons for resisting the official move of the

capital to another location.

The colonial rhetoric surrounding these plans wants to reshape the space into something

that appropriately reflects Portuguese ideals for a properly managed urban place that is

representative of a capital of colonial empire. However, as previously shown, the colonial maps

and official documents completely elide the existence of any alternative forms of spatial practice.

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Any plans for revitalization are by nature an expression of a spatial ideology, and in this case,

exhibit the spatial imaginaries of the colonial administration: they are an articulated view of how

such a symbolically important urban space should appear and function.

Conclusion

Taken as a whole the maps of Goa begin to reveal the underlying assumptions about

urban space that are held by elite colonial society. Despite the obvious potential political

motivations of Linschoten’s map—which possibly motivated his Dutch countrymen’s initial

incursions into the Indian Ocean—the oblique maps produced of Goa for popular consumption in

Europe seem to be almost self-congratulatory depictions of the great success of European

colonialism and trade in the East. These maps convey a rather grandiose depiction of a colonial

capital at the height of its power, but as they are meant for popular consumption, they must do so

in terms legible to a general European audience. Thus, they must necessarily encode a series of

underlying spatial conceptions. These conceptions are in part hegemonic in that they perpetuate

seemingly unquestioned, beliefs about urban space—particularly a conception of urban space,

that includes a relatively dense conglomeration of formally constructed stone homes and cultured

landscapes, which is imagined as categorically separate from the rural/agricultural space of the

hinterland. They are also in part ideological as well though, because they make use of rhetorical

devices to make claims about the wild, untamed nature of the hinterland, the civility of the

colonial capital, and the authenticity of the maps themselves. In addition, as I demonstrate in

subsequent chapters they completely elide non-elite, more quotidian, and locally derived spatial

practices. Of course as Comaroff and Comaroff note hegemony and ideology exist in reciprocal,

interdependent relationship to each other, such that as ideological statements become naturalized

89
they no longer require articulation, becoming hegemony; and conversely as hegemony becomes

questioned it often becomes the site of contestation and ideology (J. Comaroff and Comaroff

1991a, 28–30).

The latter two categories of maps—maps for the Crown and maps for revitalization—

suggest that the more or less unspoken understandings of urban space and capital of empire are

challenged by the failures of the colonial administration to maintain the built, Christian, and thus

civilized aspect of Velha Goa. The maps for the crown show the great concern of the Portuguese

Crown with the security of their city and a growing ideological discourse about the constitution

of the city as a walled, Christian place in need of protection. Finally, the maps for revitalization

express an overt, spatial ideology regarding the appearance and function of such a symbolically

important colonial space. The plans produced for revitalization indicate specifically how the city

needed to be transformed to live up to these ideals. These ideals are noticeably consistent with

those expressed by the early Linschoten map: The city should be a Christianized landscape of

churches and orderly built, stone structures and by implication orderly colonial subjects as well.

The following chapters expand on these concepts, discussing urban governance as well as other

representations of space associated with the production of the urban landscape, while juxtaposing

these spatial imaginaries to physical, material spatial practices as revealed through

archaeological survey.

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 Chapter 3

Velha Goa as Material: Archaeological survey data and the production and use of urban
landscapes

“The buildings of these churches and palaces, both public and private, are exceedingly
sumptuous and magnificent...The extent of their buildings is considerable, but they are but few
stories: they are coloured [sic] red and white, both without and within...nearly all have gardens
and orchards though not large, with wells within their enclosures.” 1 (Pyrard 1619, 63)

“But it were an endless task to tell in detail the names of all the streets, squares,
churches, monasteries, palaces, and other sights in Goa. Suffice it to say that it is all well laid
out...And what has caused me tarry thus long in my description of the town is this, that
whosoever knows it well, knows the whole estate of the Portuguese in the East Indies.” (Pyrard
1619, 57)

Introduction

More than just expressions of hegemonic or ideological statements about urban space, the

maps of Goa also—as they are ostensibly meant to do—give an idea of the actual physical

organization of the city. As such, they represent an ideal starting place to contextualize an

investigation of the material remains of Velha Goa. Specifically, this chapter will compare the

conceptions of the colonial capital to the physical production and use of Velha Goa as revealed

through archaeological survey—using not only the visual rhetoric of increasingly accurate

depictions of the city discussed in the previous chapter, but also various travelers’ accounts and

descriptions of the city such as Pyrard’s (1619) quoted above.

The earliest maps and images of Goa available today (the first originally published in

1596) were not produced until the Portuguese had occupied the city for over 85 years, however.

To understand the processes of spatial production, it is hence necessary to first examine the

1
These quotes are part of an extensive description of the city of Goa penned by François Pyrard of Laval during his
stay there from 1608 to 1610, and it represents one of many similar accounts of the city’s magnificence at the height
of Portuguese power in the Indian Ocean (e.g. van Linschoten 1598; Valle 1664). For a summary of many of these
travel accounts of “Golden Goa” see (da Fonseca 1878, 151–60).

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influence of the original Adil Shahi settlement through both the historical record and any

physical remains of this older infrastructure because earlier urban forms always have a lasting

effect on subsequent urban expansion (Rossa 1997). In addition, it is necessary to consider the

significant modifications and the rapid growth of the city during the initial period of occupation

by the Portuguese in the 16th century. This period literally provided the foundations for both the

content of the images represented by the series of maps produced between 1596 and 1959 as well

as a large amount of the material evidence recovered during survey. Therefore, this chapter will

first discuss the particular theoretical orientations and archaeological methods used to conduct

the survey as a whole. Then, it will explore what is known about the earliest period of

occupation, providing a deeper context for the material form the city would later take, before

using the results of this survey to reexamine the received historic narratives concerning this

former colonial capital.

As discussed in Chapter 2, the results of my cartographic analysis reveal a largely

consistent colonial elite understanding of urban space even though the city and the maps change

in form and content over the course of the Portuguese’s more than 450 year occupation. In

general, the maps reinforce an idea of colonial urbanism, which argues that urban space

consisted (or should consist) of formally constructed, well-organized built space that is

categorically different from the surrounding rural landscape. By using archaeological data,

however, my analysis goes beyond the discourses encapsulated within maps and their associated

historical documents, which attempt to positively reinforce “entrenched social and political

interests” (Jacob 1996, 194). Instead, archaeological research exposed evidence that in part

questions the understanding of the city of Goa as a colonial metropolis and fully urbanized

space—even at the height of Portuguese power in the Indian Ocean. In the end, these additional

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data can expand on previous studies providing a more complete understanding of the rise and fall

of Portuguese power in Goa as reflected in the urban landscape, and it can specifically speak to

some of the silences contained in both the maps and the colonial archive.

The archaeological data presented here focuses more on the general organization and

layout of the city as whole including elements of urban infrastructure and elite architecture. My

survey revealed that the general spatial organization depicted in early maps, such as the

Linschoten and related views, is actually quite accurate—something that is not unexpected

considering the development of mapping technologies during the early modern period. The more

formally constructed stone homes of the colonial elite did often line the streets, and behind these

rows of houses blocks of land existed, which was dedicated to cultivation of some form or other

(Fig 2.1). These tracts of land were interwoven with the urban fabric of Goa and are mostly

characterized as garden plots (e.g. Pyrard 1619, 63). However, they go well beyond the common

Portuguese tradition of having backyard gardens seen in Lisbon (for discussion and examples of

Lisbon’s garden space see Leite 1997). These spaces in Velha Goa could instead be

characterized as a fully developed urban agricultural system, and they created a much more

dispersed and less dense from of urbanism except in the civil ceremonial core of the city.

The survey suggests that agricultural landscapes and likely related non-elite, indigenous

spatial production was always a consistent and enduring part of Goa’s urban fabric. While

discussed in detail in Chapter 6, especially during the period of decline and supposed

abandonment of the city, these subaltern urban practices came to dominate the city’s landscape

often repurposing even the decaying monumental aspects of the city. Yet, any indication of

these practices was ignored and elided in particular ways by colonial administrators and their

maps. I will argue that while certainly a bustling and rich trading entrepôt, the experience of the

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city as truly urban likely stems more from a phenomenological, street-side experience, and the

city of Goa outside of the civil-ceremonial core might better be characterized as a

conglomeration of country estates. Overall these data begin to complicate the narrative of

colonial urbanism expressed by both the maps and the majority of historical descriptions of the

city. The integration of agriculture in the city and the ‘nature’ of the urban space call for a

partial reinterpretation of historical accounts of the city, especially during the height of

Portuguese political and economic power in the Indian Ocean.

Archaeological perspectives and Portuguese urbanism

Archaeologists working on text-aided archaeological projects of the last 500 years (often

termed ‘historical’ or ‘post-medieval’ archaeology in North American and European contexts)

have long been concerned with using archaeological and archival material as two independent

data sets—data sets that complicate and enrich each other (e.g. Beaudry 1988; Brumfiel 2003;

Deagan 1988; Deetz 1977; Funari, Hall, and Jones 1999; Hall and Silliman 2006; Hicks and

Beaudry 2006b; Orser 1996). More specifically, the archaeological data can be used to speak to

the silences that inhere in the archival record with particular attention paid to the tensions or

contradictions between the material data and the historical (Hall 1999, 193). As Ann Stahl states

“Rather than papering over cleavages and points of disagreement, we need to treat these as entry

points into the ‘tensions of empire,’ as sources of insights into those arenas where policy and

practice did not mesh, where the imagined world of colonialism contradicted lived experience”

(Stahl 2001a, 39). Using the material evidence for the constitution of Velha Goa’s urban

landscape is exactly aimed at considering the silences in both the maps and the historical record,

at revealing potential tensions between colonial ‘policy’ and everyday ‘practice.’ By tacking

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back and forth between historical and archeological data we can thus interrogate both historical

and archaeological data in ways that provide a much fuller understanding of the social, spatial,

and natural changes that occur in this urban space during and after colonial encounters (Wylie

2002).

With the particular concern with the ideology and hegemony encapsulated by the maps of

Goa and related colonial rhetoric discussed in the previous chapter, this examination of

archaeological data could be said to fall within a tradition of analysis stemming from Deetz

(Deetz 1977). For example, comparisons could be drawn between Mark Leone’s (Leone 1996)

study of the William Paca Garden and my archaeologically informed interpretation of the maps.

The maps produced of Goa express a more top down aspect of ideology that partially reflects a

world view in a similar manner as the construction of the Paca Garden. That is, they both reveal

“ideas about nature, cause, time, and person” and that these ideas “serve to naturalize and thus

mask inequalities in the social order,” which ultimately “disguise the arbitrariness of the social

order, including the uneven distribution of resources” (Leone 1996, 372). Regardless of the

specifics of the Georgian Order thesis developed by Deetz, Leone, and others, however,

arguments about the expression of ideology made in this way have been critiqued by various

scholars. Specifically, Matthew Johnson (Johnson 2006, 319) notes that ideas of this sort still

fall into the trap of studies that always envision change as emanating from Europe outward to the

colonies without a deep consideration of the way each situated locality and preexisting set of

socio-spatial practices effected the constitution of colonial space. My archaeological data,

however, attempts to answer this critique by not only focusing on the obviously important top-

down aspects of urban planning and form, but by also attending to the silences encountered in

the archive, those things that went “without saying” (Stoler 2009, 3; Trouillot 1995). As I discuss

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in detail below, my survey thus largely examines those interstitial urban spaces and the

quotidian, residential, and vernacular spatial practices that so often go unmentioned in the

historical record.

The extant studies on Portuguese urbanism could be said to, in part, to follow similar

trends to those in historical and post-medieval archaeology. That is, they typically look at the

production of urban space in Portuguese colonies as a function of the development of Portuguese

urbanism in Europe and with a predominant focus on comparisons to cities in Portugal (e.g.

Carita 2007; G. P. da Cruz 1998; J. M. Fernandes 1998; Moreira 1995; Rossa and Trindade

2006; Rossa 2011; Teixeira 1990a). The discussions center on how urban spaces conform (or

not) to ideals generated in the metropole. Many scholars argue that especially the earlier 16th

century colonial cities in India gained a Portuguese-style unity not so much through top down

urban planning and design, but rather through the establishment of a regulated “way of making

cities, a set of norms and procedures” that emanated from urban centers in Portugal (Rossa and

Trindade 2006, 80; Carita 2007). This is not to imply that these authors are not deeply informed

by the effect of cross-cultural influences on colonial urbanism. Indeed these effects feature

highly in many studies (e.g. Osswald 2013; Rossa 1997)—what Barbara Consolini (Consolini

2006, 2) characterizes as a general Portuguese system and mentality of “adaptation and

integration.” The arguments for cross cultural influences in Goa most often revolve around

discussions of hybrid architectural forms characterized as ‘Indo-Portuguese’ (e.g. Carita 1999b;

J. Pereira 1995); although see (Gomes 2011), and in Velha Goa it is the nature of these hybrid

architectural styles that generated the city’s UNESCO World Heritage designation.

However, beyond the specific nature of individual buildings, the variations that arise in

these locales regarding the form and constitution of urban space are most often attributed to very

96
practical considerations such as topography, preexistent urban features, and climate—and Goa is

no exception as discussed in detail below (Teixeira 2000). That is, the authors cited above note

the high level of pragmatism in Portuguese colonial rule and the inextricable processes of urban

spatial production—something seen in most colonial encounters (cf. Dawdy 2008). The

practicalities of urban expansion in these varied locations thus result in differing trajectories for

urban space, but the domination of Portuguese spatial ideologies remains a consistent thematic

anchoring point. As Rossa (Rossa 2011, 344) states referring to Portuguese colonial cities in the

Indian Ocean:

But in all of them, there is something intangible about the spatial organization that
reveals the underlying Portuguese matrix, despite the fact that this is often defined by
architecture that today seems to have nothing to do with it..., the urban layout resulted
from the evolution of an earlier more precarious settlement, which was gradually
surrounded by complementary structures (mostly religious in nature) that generated an
urban cement that was predominantly Portuguese in flavor. (Rossa 2011, 344)

This Portuguese ‘flavor’ is clearly seen in many of the earliest maps produced of Goa—

especially for example when comparing the Linschoten map of Goa (Fig 2.1) to that of Lisbon

(Fig 2.4) (see also Teixeira 1990b, 26).

As argued in Chapter 2, these maps of Goa show a desired spatial form through

representations of urban space that contain somewhat consistent underlying spatial imaginaries.

These representations as well as historical accounts of the city effectively mask and naturalize

certain inequalities and attempt to reinforce a dominant, elite social and spatial order. This

spatial order becomes increasingly ideological in nature as the taken for granted understandings

of urban space are questioned due to the perceived decline of the urban landscape and the

political marginalization of the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean. The archaeological data and a

reinterpretation of historical sources in light of these findings, however, reveal that this top down

vision of urban form was contested and only partially obtained in reality. Therefore, the

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archaeological data examined below reinforces and builds upon past studies of Portuguese

colonial urbanism, but also complicates the nature of this urbanism through a greater focus on

residential, non-elite, and more quotidian spatial practices.

Archaeological survey methods: Moving beyond the shadow of the Cathedral

The archaeological survey of Velha Goa consisted of two primary and interrelated

activities. The first was a stratified systematic transect survey and mapping of judgmentally

selected survey compartments within predefined boundaries. The second was a systematic

surface collection of artifacts and subsequent artifact analysis. Taking the extant historical maps

as a starting place, the survey methodology was designed to focus on areas of the city existing

outside the immediate confines of the larger administrative and ecclesiastical structures. The

locations of the majority of these larger edifices were known because they are either still

standing or relevant historical and tourist documents adequately noted their locations, and it is

these structures that provide the overwhelming focus for studies of Portuguese colonial

urbanism.

The size of the city as well as the potential density of occupation and structural remains

precluded documentation of the entire site. In addition, the generally high degree of visibility of

archeologically significant remains including standing architecture, foundations, fortifications

and infrastructure allowed for a combination of stratified systematic sampling strategy and

judgmental mapping that provided a general overview of the site in conjunction with detailed

documentation of clusters of known occupational features (Orton 2000; Redman 1987; Redman

and Anzalone 1980; Redman, Anzalone, and Rubertone 1979). Preliminary research suggested

five major spatial strata for Velha Goa: residential (stratum 1), ecclesiastical/administrative

98
(stratum 2), defensive (stratum 3), agricultural/wasteland (stratum 4), and industrial (stratum 5) 2.

The urban core of Velha Goa, defined by the circular path of Adil Shahi fortification walls (see

Fig. 3.3), contains a concentration of ecclesiastical and administrative space, and it is already

somewhat well documented historically, architecturally, and cartographically. In addition, a

heavy amount of landscaping and ongoing occupation/use greatly reduced the chance of

acquiring relevant data from survey. The sampling strategy, therefore, favored occupied strata

outside the urban core while focusing on those areas likely to yield relevant archaeological data.

However, survey and mapping was designed to intersect with portions of all occupational strata

so as not to systematically exclude unexpected results and to produce an understanding of the

integration and use of different strata.

The sampling frame was defined by the Mandovi River to the north, the outer

fortification wall still largely visible to the south and east using Google Earth imagery, and the

natural drainage that separates Velha Goa from the village of Ribander to the west. These

boundaries correspond to the maximum extent of the official bounds of the city attested both

historically and through preliminary walking survey conducted by the author. However, the

fortification wall had not yet been fully documented, so this structure was mapped to provide a

firmer outline of especially the lesser known southern extent of the site. Once the sampling

frame was adequately demarcated, a grid was created using ArcGIS software that was laid over

Google Earth imagery depicting the entire site. The grid specified individual survey

compartments measuring 100 meters east-west and 500 meters north-south for the purposes of

2
While it is convenient to characterize each survey compartment by such designations, it should not be understood
that these spatial designations represent discrete categories. Rather, these designations suggest the primary activity
thought to take place in each area with the full knowledge that each space will likely have multiple and overlapping
functions and uses. The division into these separate survey zones, however, facilitated the broadest possible
coverage of the range of socio-spatial environments in the city at the same time allowing a focus on less well
documented residential and agricultural strata.

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orienting and providing systematic coverage for the walking survey and mapping phase of

research (e.g. Fig 3.1). As discussed, individual survey compartments were then judgmentally

selected to provide a general understanding and broad overview of the site as a whole with a

focus on the lesser known residential sections, revealing the density, diversity, and organization

of architectural and other features (cf. Orton 2000; Redman 1987). In each survey compartment

the author conducted a systematic transect survey with transects separated by 25 meters for a

Fig. 3.1 Example of survey grid (black) and several surveyed compartments (white)
total of four transects in each compartment.

Following Redman’s successful research at another urban Portuguese colonial site, Qsar

es-Seghir, we completely mapped selected occupational clusters encountered after the initial

transect survey (Redman 1986). These areas allowed for the complete documentation of nodes

of occupational concentration that extended beyond particular survey compartments. Each

significant archaeological feature was assigned a unique locus number to assist in recording and

later analysis. This strategy was deployed because the density and nature of urban occupation

created features that, of course, almost never conformed to my arbitrarily assigned survey frame,

but understanding the extent and organization of these various loci was critical to assessing the

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spatial organization as a whole. Overall, the survey and mapping accomplished the following:

1. Recorded the spatial distribution of all occupational features (e.g. standing walls, brick

alignments, foundations, courtyards, and gardens);

2. Recorded each loci’s associations with other archaeological features (e.g. plazas, structures,

wells, roads/paths, agricultural fields, drainages, and other infrastructure);

3. Recorded detailed, quantitative and qualitative information about contents, associated artifact

distributions, and internal organization for each locus.

The survey and mapping was accomplished with the aid of, global positioning systems

(GPS) and hand written notes. Specifically, I used a Trimble GPS Pathfinder ProXRT to record

and map all archaeological features. The Pathfinder provided the potential for decimeter

accuracy and the hand-held unit allowed for quick, accurate recording and mapping of surface

features, but due to extensive interfere from the dense overhead tree canopy, the best accuracy

obtained was plus or minus 1 meter. However, the final results did not affect the overall

interpretations of the site as the Trimble was used in conjunction with other archaeological

recording methods. These additional methods included the use of pre-designed transect and locus

forms, individual notebooks for each surveyor, and the production of detailed plan views of

significant archaeological features. In addition, I employed locally hired labor and volunteers to

help with vegetation clearance and recording when possible. Analysis of spatial data and the

integration of historical research were accomplished using a GIS database in conjunction with

ArcGIS software. Integrating these data into ArcGIS allowed for the production of highly

accurate maps that revealed aspects of spatial production and practice such as: differing forms of

urban residential occupation; the connectivity between spaces; access to administrative,

religious, and agricultural spaces; access to infrastructure such as fresh water, port facilities, and

101
roads; and the general organization and extent of agricultural spaces within the city (cf. Kvamme

2003; Longley and Batty 2003; M. E. Smith 2007).

The second phase of the project was a stratified, systematic surface collection and

analysis of artifacts from within particular surveyed loci. Given considerations for the labor cost

associated with surface collection and analysis, the selection of areas was chosen to provide only

the most relevant data for understanding spatial organization and use. These areas largely

depended on the results of the survey and mapping just discussed. Collection units were chosen

based on their association with identifiable archaeological features (e.g. room complexes,

structures, industrial features, plazas, and agricultural production areas). Other units were chosen

to provide systematic coverage of loci, which included areas of likely residential occupation and

agricultural zones, as well as comparative collections. The purpose of this strategy was to

provide a general overview of the site as a whole and an understanding of the range of ceramics

and other artifacts as well as their relative densities in various survey strata.

Previous research on Portuguese artifacts found in colonial sites and locally produced

Indian wares from the early modern period remains significantly limited within India (although

see Alves et al. 2001; Bettencourt and Carvalho 2007; Diogo and Trindade 1995; Newstead

2008; Redman 1986) for examples from other Portuguese colonial contexts). As will be

discussed in more detail below, a variety of material remains were recovered that predominantly

consisted of ceramics, especially locally produced earthen wares, roofing tiles, and Chinese

porcelains. In addition, a very limited number of other artifacts were collected including several

glass artifacts (such as wine bottle bases, and thin, colored bottle glass) and faunal material

(consisting primarily of ungulates—likely cow and/or water buffalo). These artifacts were

analyzed and stored at the offices of the Archaeological Survey of India’s Goa Circle, located in

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Velha Goa (see Apendix A for full discussion of ceramic analysis methods and a report of

artifacts collected from selected loci).

Fig. 3.2: Rebuilt gates from Adil Shahi fortification wall.

Left, Arch of our Lady of Conception. Photo by Walter Rossa (http://www.hpip.org/).
Right, Arch of the Viceroys with the figure of Vasco da Gama visible. Photo by author.

Velha Goa’s early history and spatial from

Without archaeological excavation, it is almost impossible to determine the actual

physical layout of the early Adil Shahi city and its subsequent expansion after its conquest by the

Portuguese in 1510. However, the extant historical literature provides some clues to this early

form, and the great influence of some of the underlying Adil Shahi infrastructure remains visible

today. Following a pattern established during the earlier Christian expulsion of the Moors from

the Iberian Peninsula, the Portuguese occupation of Velha Goa did little to significantly change

103
the fundamental urban design of the existing city (Rossa 2012). Although, Rossa (2012) argues

that this pattern included destroying or modifying certain buildings such as mosques and other

administrative symbols of Muslim power for the purpose of establishing a new sense of

ecclesiastical and secular authority over the city (Malekandathil 2009b).

The original small urban space of the Adil Shahi city was built along the Mandovi River

and surrounded by a semi-circular fortification wall and moat with gates opening on the cardinal

directions, walls which Albuquerque would repair and reinforce. Several of the larger buildings

were merely appropriated by the colonial government, such as the palace of the Adil Shah.

Whereas, according to various historical reports, other buildings such as mosques were

completely destroyed and new buildings built in their place (e.g. A. de Albuquerque 1884). The

circular patterns of streets surrounding the fortification walls and the layout of the space interior

to the wall—the space that would become the urban core and civil-ceremonial center of the

Portuguese city—were thus structured by this early urban form. Although almost all visible

traces of the city before Portuguese occupation are now gone, some of this infrastructure still

exists and was visible during survey. These elements include a few preserved sections of the

original Adil Shahi fortification wall including two rebuilt gates that now function as archways

(Fig. 3.2), and a portion of the circular street pattern that follows the outline of a section of the

moat that was not completely filled during the city’s expansion (Fig. 3.3).

While the Portuguese did relatively little to modify the overall design and layout of Velha

Goa after its initial occupation, the urban structure was increasingly changed throughout the 16th

century as the Portuguese began to dominate the Indian Ocean trading networks. In response to

the port’s growing importance as a center of trade, the city quickly grew beyond the original

fortification walls, and the growth outside of the original Adil Shahi city occurred in a largely

104
organic fashion along axes that corresponded to paths or roads leading outward from the main

gates (Santos and Mendiratta 2009). The newer portions of the city also never conformed to any

regular street pattern unlike the civil-ceremonial center, in part because of its rather hasty

expansion and formation around prominent topographic features (Rossa 1997, 47). These

features included the hills surrounding the city and the large lagoa or lagoon, which stretched

almost to the south east portion of the old Adil Shahi fortification wall.

Fig. 3.3: Modern street overlay of Old Goa.

Yellow: Extant portions of 16th century roads used today.
Blue: Still remaining section of Adil Shahi moat.
White: Modern roads.

The Portuguese would use these surrounding elevations to construct imposing new

Catholic edifices in visually dominant positions on the landscape. Some of the more prominent

edifices, which are still visible today, marked the extent of the more densely occupied, truly

urban areas of Velha Goa and are situated on hill-tops that surround and overlook the urban core

of the city. These buildings include the Convento oratoriano da Cruz dos Milagres (Oratorian

Convent of the Cross of Miracles) forming the southern boundary of the city; the Capela de

105
Nossa Senhora do Monte (Chapel of our Lady of the Mount) forming the eastern boundary of the

city; and the Convento Agostinho de Nossa Senhora da Graça (Augustinian Convent and our

Lady of Grace) and the Igreja de Nossa Senhora do Rosário (Church of our Lady of the Rosary)

both located on the Monte Santo (holy hill) and forming the western boundary of the city. The

construction of massive churches in visually dominant locales were meant to both reflect the

importance of Goa as the center of Catholicism in Asia as it reaffirmed the power of the colonial

adminstration (Malekandathil 2009b). The areas where large religious installations or

administrative buildings were constructed became focal points for additional urban development,

and the city would expand through the successive articulation of these nodes of settlement

(Teixeira 1990b, 25). Finally, all of the urban elements that gave the city its underlying urban

form (religious, governmental, commercial, and residential) developed around a single central

axis: the Rua Direita 3 (high or straight street), which along with the original Adil Shahi

fortification wall and moat occupy the low lying flat area near the river and define the civil-

ceremonial and urban core of Velha Goa (Fig. 3.4).

As the 16th century progressed, Goa officially became the capital of the eastern empire

and the crown elevated Goa’s status such that all of the privileges, statutes, ordinances and

benefices common to Lisbon were applied to its colonial capital. In conjunction with these

political developments, the historical record suggests that the colonial government further

modified or rebuilt various existing structures to create a more Portuguese style urban landscape.

For example, these modifications included rebuilding the former palace of the Adil Shah turning

3
A Rua Direita (high street or straight street) is a common feature of many Portuguese cities during this period. It
usually served to connect the commercial areas centered on the port or quay with administrative and other
institutional buildings located on higher ground. The street often became the main street and primary economic
zone in a city with various commercial activities taking place along it (Teixeira 1990b, 25). In Goa the Rua Direita
also became known as the Rua dos Leilões (Street of Auctions) further suggesting the types of activities occurring
along it (eg. (van Linschoten 1598).

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it into the Palace of the Viceroys and, at the end of the century, revamping the portside, Adil

Shahi gate into a triumphal arch called the Arch of the Viceroys installed with a large figure of

Vasco da Gama (Fig. 3.2, right).

Fig. 3.4: Basic urban structure of Velha Goa.

1. Yellow line: Rua Direita
2. Solid blue line: Still existing portions of Adil Shahi moat. Dashed blue line: Likely path
of moat now entirely filled. (The area interior to the space defined by the moat encompasses
what would become the civil-ceremonial and urban core of Velha Goa during Portuguese
rule.)
3. Dashed red line: Rough outline of maximum extent of more densely built urban space in
Velha Goa
4. Lagoa or lagoon that originally extended almost to the southern gate of the Adil Shahi
fortification wall.
These larger modifications occurred simultaneously with the renovations of personal residences

during which these homes were altered to correspond with the standard Portuguese-style urban

plot design, with the house in front and adjacent to the street with a yard/garden or public area in

the rear (Rossa 2012). In general during the 16th century, the historical record indicates that there

was a gradual reform of urban infrastructure and buildings were updated even as the city

expanded into new areas, leading Rossa (2012) to argue, “As in Lisbon, beyond the

107
standardisation or reform of new urban infrastructures, it was the gradual uniformity of the

architecture which by means of regulation endowed Goa with a Portuguese-style unity.”

As Teixiera (Teixeira 1990b, 25) convincingly argues, Lisbon was indeed one of the

“ultimate references of [Portuguese] colonial city builders,” and the growth and overarching

form of Velha Goa closely resembles that of its colonial metropole, Lisbon. In particular, both

cities had commercial activities focused on low ground adjacent to the port, were organized

around a high street called the Rua Direita, and contained large public buildings (both religious

and secular) in dominant locations within the city and on surrounding hilltops (Teixeira 1990b).

From an urban standpoint, therefore, scholars argue that Velha Goa’s configuration and

organization grew to resemble a European (or specifically Portuguese), medieval city during the

16th century (Moreira 1995; Rossa 1997; Rossa 2012; Teixeira 1990b). However, these authors

stress that the modification of the underlying Adil Shahi infrastructure and the growth of

uniformity in Portuguese style architecture was a gradual process over this period, and they

argue that the overall structure of the city, while taking Lisbon as its general model, represented

a series of pragmatic choices based on extant topography and a synthesis of European notions of

urbanism with more vernacular forms of architecture (Moreira 1995; Rossa 1997; Teixeira

2000).

Archeological Evidence for early urban spatial form:

The previous discussion reveals the influence of underlying spatial structures and the

influence of spatial reform on the development of the city in its early form. As discussed in

Chapter 2, the majority of the historical sources (e.g. van Linschoten 1598; Pyrard 1619; Valle

1664) and associated maps of the city of Goa suggest that these processes resulted in an

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organized, formal urban space that is very different from the surrounding countryside. These

sources, which show city during its floruit, depict an urban landscape consisting of wide, radial

streets lined with formally built stone homes, churches, and other administrative buildings—a

densely occupied and thriving trading city .

Fig. 3.5: Intensively surveyed residential areas—lettered A–E for ease of reference.
White: Adjacent historic roads still in use.

The archaeological research considered here, reveals the veracity of the representations of

space contained in the historical maps and descriptions, and yet also exposes tensions between

the imagination of the urban landscape and its actual lived reality. My archaeological survey

focuses predominantly on areas that were depicted as residential in the older, 16th century maps

(Fig. 3.5), but that by the late 18th century became supposedly completely abandoned agricultural

or wasteland areas (Fig. 2.7). It recorded evidence that does indeed partly support the oblique

view maps just discussed: The organization of streets shown in the maps was quite accurate and

many of these streets are still in use today.

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 Fig. 3.6: Comparison of modern and historic street patterns
Top¹: White: Historic streets still in use; Yellow: Abandoned streets recorded during survey.
Bottom: Corresponding streets marked on a detail of Linschoten’s 1596 map (image detail
from Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, http://purl.pt/1953).
1. Rua de S. Lazaro (unconfirmed) 6. Rua do Mandovin
2. Rua de Nossa Senhora do Monte 7. Rua Direita
3. Rua de S. Paulo 8. Rua dos Judeus
4. Rua de Arvore 9. Calçada de Nossa Senhora do Rosario
5. Rua dos Surradores 10. Rua das Naus de Ormuz

¹Note orientation of Google Earth image has been reversed to facilitate comparison with historic imagery; North
is towards the bottom of the image.

In addition, many of the streets shown in maps such as Linschoten’s 1596 production existed in

the past but have now fallen into disuse being today hardly visible (Fig. 3.6). The general

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organization of urban space and the abandonment of streets thus seem to support both the spatial

imaginaries of the oblique view maps and the later narratives of decline and ruination in the city.

However, the data also reveals evidence that contradicts these dominant discourses and

reveals aspects of the urban landscape that complicate the understanding of Goa as a densely

built urban locale. That is, the city was never urban in terms of being a primarily built, non-

agricultural space. Survey data emphasizes the fact the city of Goa always incorporated

exceptionally large agricultural spaces and likely less formally built residential structures behind

the façade of its white-washed, stone exterior—spaces that seem to better resemble the

vernacular settlement patterns seen outside the city in more rural contexts.

More specifically, survey revealed that large sections of streets were at one time lined

with the formally constructed stone homes depicted in the oblique view maps. Today, however,

the spaces adjacent to these streets maintain their previous agricultural and rural character and

range from highly managed space to almost completely fallow, overgrown and naturally forested

space. While the more formal stone architecture has almost completely disappeared along the

abandoned tracts, many aspects of the urban landscapes were maintained and/or modified and

residential occupation likely continued unabated in many of these areas long after the maps cease

to show these streets. These survey data supporting the early 16th century spatial layout of the

maps of Velha Goa include the evidence for the older, now derelict roads themselves; structural

remains of large, formally built laterite brick 4 homes with associated artifact scatters; and other

residential infrastructure such as wells, cisterns, and cellars.

4
The composition of the soil in the region varies, but lateritic soil—an iron rich, claylike soil formed from
weathering rocks—covers over two thirds of Goa and provides an excellent source of construction materials
(Alexander and Cady 1962; Kamat 1990; Pendleton 1941). Laterite blocks are easily quarried by spade when wet
and then dry to form exceptionally hard and durable bricks (Nichol 2000). These lateritic soils provided the primary
construction material for the old city and are still exploited by residents today. The use of laterite blocks for the

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 As mentioned, evidence for several abandoned roads corresponds to the location of roads

on the early maps of the city during its greatest demographic and spatial extent. The roads were

at first obvious as either slightly used paths or cattle trails, or in one case, as a road marked on

some more recent 20th century maps but now completely unused and overgrown with modern

occupation occurring only in the first 100 meters or so. Closer inspection revealed these paths to

be much wider and more formally constructed than needed for simple foot or cattle trails.

Specifically, the roads measured 4 to 5 meters in width, and they were visibly cut into the

surrounding hill slopes to create a flat plane. These paths/roads were typically lined with walls

that showed continued maintenance and episodes of rebuilding and there were often partially

visible wall foundations along large sections. The most intact of these older pathways, located

directly to the west of Nossa Senhora do Monte in survey area B, still had sections of laterite

paving stones with a raised track likely for use with wagons or bullock carts (Fig. 3.7). This

particular road also revealed more formal infrastructure elements such as well-built culverts also

constructed of laterite bricks (Fig. 3.8).

construction of monuments and other structures is evident in all of the standing architecture remaining in the city
especially the churches. Because of the porous nature of laterite bricks these buildings, unless otherwise sealed, are
maintained most commonly throughFig. 3.7:ofExample
the use ofwhitewash
a lime based laterite pavers
traditionally made using ground shell.
similar substance consisting of roughly processed lime (with pieces of shell still visible) mixed with mud was found
during survey to have been used as a mortar in many walls and foundations.

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 Fig. 3.8: Example of culvert
Having established that these pathways/abandoned roads corresponded to the roads that

are visible in earlier depictions of the city, the survey of areas directly adjacent to the roads

revealed significant evidence for structural remains of large, formally built homes. This

evidence consisted of linear laterite brick alignments and wall foundations with associated

landscape modifications; evidence for wall fall and brick scatters; and relatively dense scatters of

lime plaster, lime and mud mortar, and ceramics. The patterns of brick alignments and wall

foundations belie any comparison to simple agricultural compound walls, although portions of

these alignments are used as such today. More specifically, nearly all of these more formal

structural alignments are only located directly adjacent to the roads and do not continue further

into the interior of the current agricultural or fallow areas, and the spaces that these walls define

are often indicative of room blocks. In addition, the agricultural zones in use today cut directly

across the visible foundation stones set into the ground and have a much larger footprint. In

some cases, these brick alignments and foundations are associated with low lying mounds (less

than 1 meter high and between 1 to 1.5 meters wide) that continue and extend these patterns in

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linear room-like formations. These mounds are accompanied with more general laterite brick

scatters and occasional brick alignments, and thus, are likely the remains of foundations or walls

(Fig. 3.9, 3.10).

Fig. 3.9: Detail of survey area D.

White: Historic roads still in use. Light blue: Small terraced areas lining roads.
Yellow: Abandoned roads. Dark blue: Cisterns
Red: Foundations of structures located adjacent to abandoned road consisting of mounds,
brick alignments, and sections of intact walls.

Within the survey areas located on hill slopes there was also ample evidence for terracing

or the building up of hill slopes to accommodate these alignments. However, the terracing in

these areas was not done in a manner indicative of terraced agricultural fields, but rather in a

piecemeal fashion that generally corresponds with the linear pattern of brick alignments, wall

foundations, and mounding in many cases. This patterning suggests that these smaller terraces

were thus constructed to level residential structures as opposed to some form of terracing for

agricultural purposes. For example, these terraced landscape modifications are only large enough

to accommodate what may have been a smaller two or three room structure or a rather narrow,

but larger multilevel structures running along a road (the terracing system is discussed in greater
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detail in Chapter 6) (Fig. 3.10).

Fig. 3.10: Detail of survey area A.

Yellow: Rua de S. Lazaro (likely but unconfirmed).
White: Foundations of structures located adjacent to abandoned road consisting of mounds,
brick alignments, and sections of intact walls.

Associated with these structural remains are a number of infrastructural elements also

typically associated with residential occupation. These elements include cisterns (discussed in

Chapter 6) and house wells. In particular, several deep shaft wells were encountered. Many of

these would have been house wells or public wells for drinking water, while some also served

agricultural purposes. The Portuguese and wealthier mestiços often paid to have water brought

by slaves from nearby springs, the preferred spring being the one in Bangani directly west of the

city. However, according to some sources the “native and Hindu settlers depended exclusively

on their house wells” (Souza 2009, 80–81; Pyrard 1619). Many of the outbreaks of cholera in

the city were in fact attributed to these house wells because the lack of sanitation infrastructure

within the city combined with the very porous nature of the lateritic soil created a high potential

for contamination (Souza 2009, 81).

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 The wells were either square or

round in shape and have a depth of greater

than 5 meters with some extending down

over 20 meters. All of the wells surveyed

were constructed in the same manner with

a laterite brick lined shaft extending down

to a more substantial subsoil or bedrock.

Fig. 3.11 Nearly intact well in Locus 474_7 The tops of the wells were all lined with

laterite bricks typically with several courses still visible above the ground. Some better

preserved examples still contained evidence for the pillars that would have supported a wooden

beam, rope and bucket system (e.g. Fig. 3.11). The survey was conducted near the end of the dry

season (February to June), so most of the wells were dry. However, some of the deeper, better

maintained wells still contained water, and many of these deeper wells are often still in use for

agricultural purposes. All of the wells were dug until they hit underlying cavities that

presumably held (or holds) water

during the wet season. One well in

particular was also constructed to take

advantage of the natural topography.

Instead of a shaft sunk directly into the

soil, it was created to take advantage of

the steep hill slope descending down

from the Igreja de Nossa Senhora do Fig. 3.12 Keyhole-shaped well in survey area E

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Rosário. This well allows for a profile view of a typical shaft well that is otherwise

unobtainable.

Many of these wells seem to resemble the house wells discussed by Souza (Souza 2009,

81), as they are set within a residential or ecclesiastical compounds in close proximity to

structural remains, which likely limited access to them. In addition, the shape and construction

of the wells encountered during survey were nearly identical to a house well located at the back

of the Soto Maior house museum 5. However, the spatial configuration of at least one well was

indicative of communal use because of its size and open route of access (Fig. 3.12). Regardless,

of the shape, size, or accessibility all of the wells—especially the probable house wells located

directly adjacent to the structural remains discussed above—argue for an urban structure that in

part resembles Linschoten’s and subsequent maps as well as historical descriptions.

The compound walls lining both abandoned and still used historic roads in the city

contained some of the most convincing evidence for the form and structure of urban space.

Today these walls simply demarcate the agricultural space located adjacent to the roads.

However, the better preserved walls contain significant evidence for no longer extent structures.

For example, the abandoned road west of Nossa Senhora do Monte encountered in survey area B

contained what are likely the remains of foundations indicated by the wall’s more formal

construction style, evidence of lime plaster, a sill, and niched construction. Associated with

these features was also a fragment of a roof drain of a type present on various intact historic

buildings (Fig. 3.13 and 3.14).

5
The museum is a preserved 16th century elite home located in the adjacent suburb of São Pedro.

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Fig. 3.13 Remains of foundation (left) and roof drain fragment (right)

Fig. 3.14 Remains of foundation (left) and roof

drain fragment (right)

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 Fig. 3.15: Evidence of structures retained in
compound wall (Opening nos. 1 and 2 in Fig. 23).
Left: Door with offset brick pattern for door casing.
Right: Window with remains of lime plaster.

Fig. 3.16: Additional evidence of structures in

compound wall.
Left: Door with similar brick patterning as Fig 20.
Right: Profile of door casing showing door jamb.

Even more convincing evidence occured along the still used historic street located today

between Nossa Senhora do Rosário and the Convento de Santa Mónica and descending down the

hill to the street Rua dos Naus de Ormuz. The wall running along this street exhibits multiple

openings that have been bricked over, leaving only a few access points to the agricultural space
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behind. The pattern of bricked over openings is consistent with occupied structures containing

both doorways and windows (Fig. 3.15 and 3.16).

Fig. 3.17: Map and plan in survey area C of locus 474_2.

Top: Map showing location of 474_2. (Red: Walls; Light Blue: Terraced area; White: Historic
roads).
Bottom: Plan of 474_2 showing openings (Solid line: walls; Dashed line: ill-defined or eroded
walls).

In addition, the area directly behind the openings shown in figures 21 and 22 (located in

survey area C and defined as locus 474_2) is backed by small structural terraces of the type

discussed previously that contained denser artifact scatters including roof tiles, and an associated

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well (Fig. 3.17). This pattern of bricked over openings and windows continued the length of the

street. Similar, although less-well-preserved configurations of openings, terraces, and structural

remains were also observed on the abandoned roads encountered in survey areas A,B, D, and E.

Adding support to the interpretation of the patterns observed in the compound walls

throughout the surveyed areas of Velha Goa was the documentation of convincing evidence of a

structure located between Nossa Senhora do Rosário

and the Convento de Santa Mónica on a street (Rua

do Rosário) perpendicular to the historic road

discussed above. This structure (recorded as locus

474_7) is still visible as late as 1775 on the maps

produced my Machada (Fig. 3.18). Survey recorded

the remains of this structure, which were similar to

those encountered in locus 474_2 but with much

Fig. 3.18 better preservation.

The space contained brick alignments and partially intact walls in a configuration roughly

similar to that shown in Machada’s map, and were located on a relatively small terrace located

directly adjacent to the historic road. The walls contained partially exposed sections with well-

preserved lime plaster still intact. The compound wall running along the northern boundary of

the locus and bordering the road (Rua do Rosário) also contained the partial remains of an

opening identical to those encountered in locus 474_2 pictured in Fig. 3.16. Associated with

these remains was a well-preserved house well (Fig. 3.11 above) of the type discussed

previously. In addition, there was an exceptionally dense scatter of roof tiles and other ceramics

(including both locally produced earthen wares and Chinese porcelains) on the terraced area

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directly adjacent to the road. However this density dramatically decreased in collection units

located further from the road on lower terraces (Fig. 3.19).

Surface Collection no. 1 2 3 4

Roof tile fragments (total
1006/10659g 199/2080g 144/1055g 101/734g
count/weight)
Vessel sherds (total
60/245g 53/215g 72/114g 35/64g
count/weight)
Fig 3.19: Plan view of locus 474_7 with table of ceramic counts and weights for 1m x 1m
surface collection units
While the area was undergoing intensive cultivation including palm and jackfruit and is highly

disturbed, this evidence indicates that a structure would have been located directly adjacent to

the road as depicted in the 18th century map. Thus, the data from this locus adds substantial

support to the interpretation of the less well preserved areas in 474_2 and other surveyed loci

located adjacent to other historic roads that have similar but less intact deposits. Finally, there is

one still intact structure located along the Rua Direita, known as the Casa da Bula da Cruzada,

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that is from the early period of occupation and fits the profile of elite structures discussed above

(Fig. 3.20).

All of this archaeological data

presented here again provides substantive

data that suggests that the basic urban form

depicted in the early oblique, bird’s eye

view maps such as the 1595 map by

Linschoten, was indeed generally accurate.

The city consisted of a radial street pattern

Fig. 3.20 Casa da Bula da Cruzada with formally constructed brick homes

lining the streets. The oblique view maps also generally depict the city of Goa at the height of

Portuguese power and influence when the urban footprint was at its greatest and the city had its

highest concentration of population and wealth, and they are accompanied by descriptions of the

city that speak to its great size and opulence.

What is not discussed in historical accounts (or mentioned only in passing) is the garden

spaces associated with these structures. Reexamining Linschoten’s map and those similar to it,

however, it is clear that this space was potentially quite substantial. Archaeological survey

revealed that indeed beyond the smaller terraces in the city that lined the streets and were

associated with foundations, brick alignments, and dense scatters of roof tiles and other ceramics,

there is little to no evidence of formally built architectural features. Instead the space is by and

large completely agricultural with only evidence for more ephemeral, non-elite structures and the

occasional ceramic scatter (discussed in detail in Chapter 6). Comparing the spatial footprint of

non-occupied space to the potentially occupied space adjacent to the roads in Velha Goa reveals

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that the majority of the urban landscape was in fact cultivated, agricultural space. The

prevalence of this urban agriculture and the character of urban space force us to reconsider the

received historical narratives and colonial rhetoric that imparts an image of Velha Goa as a fully

urbanized trading entrepôt and the ‘Rome of the East.’

Discussion: Reconsidering spatial form and function

Archaeological survey data suggests that the city may never have completely conformed

to the imaginations of urban space seen in the map of Linschoten and promulgated by the

previously mentioned travel accounts. However, a few historic accounts do question the

standard description of the city. They note that the space in the city was rough and lacking in

sophistication despite the more common image of a cosmopolitan, urban trading entrepôt. For

example, Souza (Souza 2009, 119) notes that one missionary report compares houses in “native”

areas of the city to pigsties with between 15 and 20 people living in these small, earthen huts.

The particular document referred to by Souza was written in 1570 during what would have been

the height of Portuguese dominance in the region, and it goes on to discuss the great amount of

poor people in the city and how certain neighborhoods had become “corrupt” (Wicki 1964,

8:316). Significantly, this description occurs only a few years prior to the publication of the

influential and grandiose images, descriptions, and maps of Goa by Linschoten. In addition,

Garcia y Figueroa writes in 1617:

The city is totally disordered, disarranged and scattered, especially its extremities, with
many groves of palms and other kinds of trees among the buildings; most of the streets
are very twisted with neither refinement nor coordination, so that outside of what little
exists inside its old walls, the rest looks more like a populous cluster of houses among the
trees than an ordered city. (as quoted in (Rossa 2012)

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There is also evidence for a general lack of sanitation infrastructure in the city and how residents

often did not follow orders mandating the emptying of bed pans in the river, many times

emptying them directly on the streets or simply relieving their bodily functions directly there

(Souza 2009, 83). Finally, Linschoten (van Linschoten 1598, 1:227) himself describes the homes

of some of the poorer “heathens” that existed both in the city of Goa and the region as “verie

little and low, covered with straw, without windows, and verie low and narrow doors [sic].” The

descriptions of the city such as those made by Garcia y Figueroa (quoted above) argue for

alternative realties that exist simultaneously and in juxtaposition to these more dominant

historical narratives and images. Figueroa’s description suggests a riot of growth in the city,

impinging agricultural fields, uncleanliness, hard to navigate streets, and a generally

disorganized urban landscape. His description thus points to some of the tensions surrounding

conceptualizations of the city of Goa that exist between the historical record and the actual

experience of the city by its past denizens—especially those who may have lived in non-elite and

less regulated spaces.

The spatial form of the city revealed through archeological survey argues that outside of

the densely built civil-ceremonial core of the city—located within the footprint of the old Adil

Shahi fortification wall—the city was configured more like a dense conglomeration of country

estates, or “urban farmsteads” (Stewart-Abernathy 1986). That is, large often palatial homes

lined the streets but with large tracts of plantation and other cultivated space behind. The

descriptions of Goa as a densely populated city, as the Rome of the East, or as Golden Goa (Goa

Dourada) may stem from an elite, more phenomenological, experience of the city. Walking

through the streets amongst large formally built stone homes in row house-like configurations,

large Catholic churches, and experiencing the verve and bustle of a busy port and large markets,

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would create an impression of an urbanized cityscape recognizable to European travelers familiar

with similarly configured spaces such as Lisbon. However, the non-elite experience of working

the large tracts of agricultural space and living in the more ephemeral structures suggested above

presents a very different set of urban spatial practices and forms. The urban, formally built

nature of Velha Goa is, in many ways, a façade (cf. Disney 2009, 148–9).

Emphasizing these few, less prominent historic accounts in light of the archaeological

data suggest that two simultaneous urban ‘realties’ coexisted in the city. On the one had is a

thriving trading entrepôt full of the riches of the Portuguese empire in the east and on the other is

a rough, dispersed, form of urbanism that integrates less formal architectures and agricultural

practices. The complex nature of any city argues that of course multiple perceptions and uses of

space are in fact the norm for any urbanized landscape including those in Europe. For example,

scholars who study cities today always characterize them as complicated, contested and

contradictory spaces thoroughly involved with large-scale landscape transformations, political

power, and a multitude of socialites and spatial practices (e.g. Adams 2005; Eisenstadt and

Shachar 1987; Engels 1993; Gandy 2005; Harvey 2009; Lefebvre 1996; Kipfer 2002; Mumford

2011; Rosen and Tarr 1994). Cities are still predominantly defined though, by a certain density

of population and built space, and underlying these definitions is an implicit separation of

cityscapes from rural, more ‘natural’ places (Melosi 2010). However, paying attention to the

tensions between historical accounts and archaeological data complicates the elite

conceptualizations of Velha Goa as a particular type of dense urban landscape, while it also

questions common definitions of urban space held today.

On the surface the city does indeed follow a general Portuguese pattern of urban

production seen throughout their colonial empire (Araujo and Carita 1998), at least Velha Goa

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does so at the height of Portuguese power in the Indian Ocean during the 16th century. Yet, the

maps and historical accounts that propagate this pattern elide an abundance of alternative socio-

spatial practices in the city. As the realities of governing this complex landscape begin to

challenge elite conceptions of what constitutes proper colonial urban space—especially such

symbolically important space as the capital of the eastern empire—various taken for granted

aspects of colonial urbanism are increasingly the subject of legislative and thus ideological

actions taken by the colonial administration. As the next chapters elucidate, the approaches to

governing this colonial milieu also expose an ongoing conceptualization of

civilized/Christian/built urban space as something that was set apart (or should be set apart) from

the uncivilized/pagan/rural landscape of the hinterland surrounding the capital. These

understandings of urban space become more and more prevalent as locally derived, typically

non-elite spatial practices continue to challenge colonial norms.

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 Chapter 4

The City and the Country in Goa

Where Goa’s warlike ramparts frown on high,

Pleas’d shalt thou see thy Lusian banners fly;
The pagan tribes in chains shall crowd her gate,
While the sublime shall tower in regal state,
The fatal scourge, the dread of all who dare
Against thy sons to plan the future war. 1
(Camões 1877, 45)

Introduction

The characterization by Luís Vaz de Camões of Goa’s ‘warlike ramparts’ frowning on

high poetically reveals a cosmology that separates the civilized from the uncivilized, Christian

from non-Christian, the urban from the rural and ultimately of culture from nature that were

reinforced through colonial encounters (cf. M. Sahlins 1996, 400). As discussed in detail in the

first chapter of this work, the changing perception of the natural world and entangled discursive

formations directly influenced the imagination and later exploitation of particular colonial

environments and people, and indeed, worked to constitute both nature and the city as an object

in the first place. The chapter revealed how these new imaginaries were influencing Portuguese

thought and the functioning of various colonial institutions from the beginning of their expansion

into South Asia—that as part of long-term European and Portuguese advancements in navigation

technologies, botany, and other burgeoning sciences, nature was reconfigured as an object that is

rational, quantifiable, and knowable and thus ultimately open to control and exploitation by

1
This excerpt is from the renowned poet Luís Vaz de Camões’ epic Os Lusiadas. It is based on his journey
throughout the Portuguese’s eastern empire during the mid-16th century.

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colonial elites. Moreover, typically included within these ‘natural’ landscapes were the

peoples/cultures occupying these ‘new’ lands.

The following two chapters engaged with both written and material evidence, arguing

that these processes of cataloging and categorizing were at once deeply spatialized as colonists

were often initially concentrated in well-ordered urban colonial settlements on the coasts, which

were juxtaposed to the vast unexplored, wild, and ‘uncivilized’ natural landscapes surrounding

these centers. Portuguese colonization of ports such as Goa along the west coast of India, and

throughout the Indian Ocean, exemplified this nodal strategy of occupation. Ideas about the

separation of nature and culture were expressed physically through the very process of creating

these colonial capitals and centers of administration. The city of Goa was meant to be a material

manifestation of the underlying colonial elite ideology that holds the ‘civilized’ city (and in this

case the capital of a colonial empire) separate from the ‘native’ country surrounding it, and these

ideologies were embodied in various forms of colonial discourse such as the production of maps.

The expression of this shared, underlying spatial ideology by the colonial elite is,

however, complex and fraught with tensions between various elite colonial factions. The

Catholic Church, the Crown, Portuguese and indigenous merchants, and other groups had at

times very diverse goals for governing the colony. These spatial ideologies would manifest in

sometimes contradictory mechanisms of governance based on influences ranging from pragmatic

logistical concerns to religious extremism. Following on these themes, this chapter situates the

city of Goa in its regional landscape. It expands on the conceptualization and production of the

city of Goa as a place categorically different from its ‘native’ hinterland and one that was meant

to embody certain colonial ideals. I argue that these spatial ideologies in turn resulted in at times

very different forms of governance between the ‘country’ and the ‘city.’ However, the title of

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this chapter is meant to directly reference understandings of the urban/rural divide penned

famously by Raymond Williams in his 1973 book The Country and the City. I suggest that while

there were very different conceptions between the rural countryside and the colonial capital held

especially by the colonial elite, these places were very much co-constitutive. Of course a deeply

held belief in the separation between urban and rural ways of life, coupled with an understanding

of their dependence on one another to exist—both conceptually and physically—is nothing new

(as Williams reveals in European and specifically British imaginaries). Yet, by better dissecting

the urban rural dichotomy in this particular context we can open up new understandings about

the underlying motivations driving the production of space in the city of Goa, expanding our

knowledge of colonialism, the development of Goan society, and the production of urban

landscapes in general during the early modern and modern periods.

To expose the underlying ideologies that hold the city and country separate, this chapter

juxtaposes the forms of governance between the village hinterland and the city of Goa. First, I

analyze the Foral de usos e costumes dos gauncares written in 1526 by Afonso Meixa. The

Foral documented the extant system of land tenure and agricultural production dominant in the

initial landholdings of the Portuguese in Goa (known commonly as the Old Conquests and

consisting of Bardez, Salcete, and Tiswadi). This document had a pronounced influence on the

administration of Goa’s villages. It served as the archetypical image of village life for all future

colonial administrators, and they used the Foral as the primary source of information for

governing rural, village life throughout their occupation of Goa. As such, it is perhaps the best

source for understanding the underlying spatial ideologies influencing the colonial regime’s

management of its rural hinterland. I next examine the very different strategy of governance for

the capital city, looking at various sources related to the organization of city government, the

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changing nature of city finances, and the passage of various city ordinances and laws, especially

those laws concerned with urban spatial production. These different aspects of colonial

governance and structure reveal the underlying conception of the capital as a place that is meant

to conform to largely European and Portuguese forms of urban space, which is very different

than the spatial practices codified in the Foral.

Governing the country and the city: Theoretical orientations

The city is never an island (in the metaphorical sense)—that is, the concentration of

population within a city is always in some way dependent on its surrounding hinterland or on

longer distance trade for provisioning. In the case of Goa, both longer distance seaborne trade

and local land based produce were critical for the survival of the port; not to mention the fact that

the Portuguese conquered a preexistent urban center that was itself only a peripheral port city to

powerful kingdoms located on the Deccan Plateau. At the time of Portuguese conquest, Goa had

been under the control of the Adil Shahi sultanate and ruled from Bijapur for only a little more

than 20 years, and prior to the Adil Shahs had changed hands several times in the preceding

century (Correia 2006; M. A. Cruz 1998; Kamat 1990; Nayeem, Ray, and Mathew 2002; G. A.

Pereira 1973). It is therefore essential to understand Velha Goa within its regional landscape.

This emplacement and the connections to more rural, locally derived settlement patterns and

forms of spatial and economic production are always influential in the form and functioning of

urban landscapes. Within the Indian context specifically, S.C. Misra (1991, 2) writes:

The Indian town in many cases is an extension of the village, carrying over the
same social unities and attitudes…Urban economic activities were an extension of
those initiated in the villages. The linkages are so pervasive that it is myopic,
misleading, to see the town apart from the region which brought it into being or
sustained its economic activity.

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Although debatable in its broad application to South Asian urban space, this research in

general and this chapter specifically demonstrates how this statement applies in part to

Velha Goa regardless of colonial attempts to create the capital city in an image that

reflects more European urban imaginaries. Moreover, if the city is in many ways an

extension of the village in this case, then changes in agricultural regimes, redistribution

of lands, and other aspects of colonial domination of the lands surrounding a city can

have profound effects on urban development (cf. Alcock 1993; Childe 1950; Cowgill

2004; Cronon 1991; Green and Leech 2006; Neild 1979).

Understanding the administration of the city, its rural village hinterland, and their

relationship to distinct spatial ideologies reveals specific mechanism of governance elucidated by

Michel Foucault (2007) and discussed in greater detail in the first chapter of this dissertation.

But, rather than exemplifying a single mechanism of governance, the management of different

spaces within the colony represents an early example of the transition between what Foucault

terms disciplinary mechanisms and mechanisms of security. I argue that the colonial

government does work to segregate individual subjects and to enact bodily forms of discipline

through surveillance (Foucault’s disciplinary mechanisms). The disciplining of colonial subjects

and colonial space was indeed necessary to perform a particular form of sovereignty for the

Portuguese—a form of colonial control that would signal the Portuguese Crown’s dominance in

the region to its global and regional competitors.

However, the governance of the village hinterland and the city also reveals the rise of

new mechanism of governance: mechanisms of security. There is a shift away from simply

governing through either penal or disciplinary mechanisms that have as there focus a group of

individual wills. Rather, there is a growing understanding of the effect of a range of natural

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processes on the body politic considered as a whole—or in Foucault’s formulation as a

population that is considered a natural/biological object. As a natural object, a population is then

realized to be deeply affected by a range of natural and social processes (processes which were

being reconfigured and elucidated by the developing field of the natural sciences). The

processes that affect the population include everything from juridical-legal systems, religious

ideas, social norms, climate, topography, and “above all, of course, with the condition of means

of subsistence,” i.e. the milieu (Foucault 2007: 99). Foucault (ibid, 36) defines the “milieu” as a

“set of natural givens—rivers, marshes, hills—and a set of artificial givens—an agglomeration of

individuals, of houses, etcetera” and, he importantly includes within this definition the

circulations that occur within it.

While the colonial government in Goa does not expressly state that they are employing a

concept such as the ‘milieu’—which is in any case Foucault’s analytic—it will become clear that

to effectively rule their colony they incorporate aspects of governance that point towards such an

integrated, comprehensive understanding of the social and natural landscapes. This changing

perspective is in large part directly results from the practical considerations of ruling any

complex, polysemous colonial landscape. To effectively govern a milieu, however, the ruling

powers needed new mechanisms of control that go beyond simply disciplining or segregating

individual subjects because, as again discussed in previous chapters, these mechanisms are

focused primarily on prohibition. The new understandings of the complex socio-natural systems

that were being developed by the natural sciences reveal that prohibitory mechanisms of

governance focused on individuals are only partially effective in governing the milieu—meaning

both the territory and the population. Mechanisms of security on the other hand work instead

toward the maintenance of certain norms and acceptable forms of circulation. These norms and

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circulations (for example those that provide for the provisioning of the city from its hinterland, a

market for surplus goods, and the protection of the countryside from invasion) are necessary to

maintain the integrity and security of the milieu, or in the case of Goa the colony. The

government is deeply concerned with maintaining a secure and productive territory and

population, but it is also struggling with its desire to create proper, Catholic colonial subjects.

The binary opposition between city and country within elite imaginings of space in Goa thus

addresses several needs of the colonial elite: it allows for a form of pragmatic governance of the

territory that addresses the inability of the Portuguese to drastically affect the forms and relations

of production in its hinterland as a whole; and at the same time, it allows for the performance of

a particular form of sovereignty within its colonial capital that allows for the perceived ability to

create a space of properly constituted colonial subjects.

Ultimately then, the changing nature of village and city governance is indicative of the

tension inherent in and between various factions of the colonial elite population and

administration. The various laws, ordinances, and changes to colonial administration all reveal a

working out or transition between governing a group of individual wills through penal or

disciplinary mechanisms and a growing understanding of the need to govern the milieu through

mechanisms of security. These new understandings of governance developed and experimented

with in the colonies would go on to have drastic affects in colonial metropoles in Europe—

something Foucault (2007) demonstrates for 18th century France but without discussing the

contribution of colonial encounters to European modernity (for much later 19th and 20th century

contexts cf. Rabinow (1995); also Wright (1997)).

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The Country

An analysis of the colonial elite conception of the rural, village landscape of Goa

demonstrates at times very different colonial aspirations, and it highlights tensions within and

between colonial elite factions. The hinterland surrounding the city of Goa was variously

envisioned along racial, economic, religious or political lines depending on the specific needs of

the particular colonial institutions or individuals angling for control—institutions such as the

Catholic Church, the colonial administration, or the private enterprise of various Portuguese

settlers. However, despite the differing agendas of colonial elites there is a shared underlying

spatial ideology: The rural landscape was imagined as a largely ‘native’ place, a place apart,

meant for provisioning and exploitation, and for the harvesting of both produce and souls.

The Foral de usos e costumes dos gauncares e lavradores (the Charter of customs and

practices of the gauncares and farmers) is perhaps the most important historical document for

understanding the Portuguese administration of the small landholdings under their control

because, for the colonial administration, it represents a description of the smallest administrative

unit functioning in the rural landscape outside the city: the village. It was written in 1526 by

Afonso Mexia 2 who, while the chief revenue superintendent (Vedor da Fazenda) for the

Portuguese, was tasked by the Crown with writing the Foral—a type of administrative document

created with the explicit purpose of defining an administrative unit and fixing its contribution

directly to the royal treasury (Axelrod and Fuerch 1998, 453). This particular charter is the

oldest known document written by a European concerning village life in rural India, and it was

known well outside the Portuguese colonial world, directly influencing later British attempts to

2
Perhaps the most complete version of the Foral was transcribed by J. H. da Cunha Rivara in 1857 and is contained
is his Archivo Portuguez Oriental. Cunha Rivara used several copies of the 1526 document that are contained in the
Historical Archives of Goa (for a full bibliographical discussion of the Foral see (Souza 2009, 41). It is Cunha
Rivara’s version that I use in the following discussion in addition to various secondary historical sources.

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administer villages under their control as well. For example, B. H. Baden-Powell’s (1899) well-

known work The Village Communities of India directly references Mexia’s work as does his later

(1900) work “The Villages of Goa in the Early Sixteenth Century” written expressly on the

Foral.

Nearly every law passed in regards to Goa’s villages was based on the descriptions found

in the Foral, and it thus became the single most influential document for managing the rural

hinterland surrounding the Portuguese colonial capital. What was initially a descriptive

document became prescriptive, and in many ways it worked to create new socialites—socialites

that were later assumed to represent the original and ‘ancient’ form of Goan life, which existed

before Portuguese control of the region (Fernandes 2010). Therefore, in what follows I analyze

the practices and categories that constitute the primary focus of the Foral, as well as subsequent

changes to governance enacted by the Portuguese because the document reveals the underlying

spatial ideologies motivating the colonial, elite management of its rural hinterland and how these

ideologies became implemented.

The Foral consists of 49 clauses that focus on particular aspects of village life. The first

clause recounts a founding myth related specifically to the original clearance and cultivation of

the land by the first settlers of Goa, which Mexia relates as the work of possibly four men

(“…em tempo antigo forão quatro homens aproveitar huma Ilha”) (da Cunha Rivara 1875, vol.

5). These original settlers and their heirs become the class of gauncares (sing. gauncare)

translated by Mexia as governor, minister, and benefactor (“Gancar quer dizer Govenador; e

Ministrador, e Bemfeitor”) (Cunha Rivara 1875, fasc. 5, 119). Similarly, Fernandes argues that

the word gauncare itself literally means village founder, being derived from the root ganv

(village) and karne (to make) (J. K. Fernandes 2010, 11). Because of their initial work in settling

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the area, the gauncares gain hereditary rights to govern the land—which is held in common—to

collect taxes and to share in any profits. The gauncares and their subordinates thus formed

communal village associations that governed village life.

These communally owned village associations became known as comunidades under the

Portuguese, and a system emerged where a set number of these comunidades, run by gauncares,

directly managed lands not assigned to the temples, were responsible for their maintenance, and

collectively provided the payment of revenue to the Crown (Fernandes 2010, 12). A broadly

similar system of land management and agricultural production/distribution existed elsewhere in

peninsular India. For example, the mirasi system was prevalent in Tamil Nadu where village

elites held shares in commonly held village lands (Mizushima 2002, 260). Under this system,

agricultural land was held jointly and in certain instances was either cultivated in common or

divided on a yearly basis with rights to occupation being heritable and established by long

tradition (Ellis 1818).

The individual clauses of the Foral discuss the details of the management and

distribution of these village lands, the payment of taxes, laws of inheritance, and the role of

gauncares and various other subordinate village functionaries. Baden-Powell (1900) divides

these clauses into ten separate categories that provide a general overview of the focus of the

Foral. While he incorrectly translates gauncare as ‘village headman’ to further his own colonial

and orientalist agenda (for full discussion see Axelrod and Fuerch 1998), his categories are

illustrative of the general European understanding of the role and function of villages in their

colonial holdings. The categories Baden-Powell (1900, 261-74) creates to organize the clauses in

the Foral to, as he states, “make the rules more intelligible, by bringing together under definite

heads all that the charter contains on each subject” are as follows: “The Village Headman, their

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origin and privileges”; “The Headmen’s Precedence (among themselves)”; “The Status of

Villages”; “The Headmen’s Duties in connection with the Revenue and the Cultivation”;

“‘Watan’ 3 Grants for Village Services”; “Disposition of Village Lands that are Vacant”; “Failure

[to pay revenue] of a whole Village”; “Rules of Inheritance”; “Rules about Alienation of Land”;

“Rules of Procedure”; and Miscellaneous.” These categories make visible the focus of both

Portuguese and later British colonial administrations on issues of land ownership, rights of

inheritance, inter- and intra-village hierarchies, and most importantly revenue collection.

More specifically, the various clauses in the Foral demonstrate that the villages and their

various members are directly involved with managing both the productive and unproductive

aspects of the rural, agricultural landscape. That is, what becomes clear is that Mexia’s Foral

was concerned with the organizational procedures for the management of the village hinterland

which included a consideration of the social and natural landscapes 4. The focus of the Foral is

clearly centered on clarifying the distribution of these resources—such as the payment of taxes

and the production of goods for consumption like rice, coconut, and betel—which would have

been necessary for the propagation and continued security of the colonial enterprise and the

maintenance of their colonial capital, Velha Goa. It shows that the village was essentially viewed

as a source of provisioning for the capital city and the empire. The village was in this way

envisioned as the smallest administrative unit created for the extraction of natural resources from

3
Baden-Powell uses the term ‘watan,’ which is an Arabic word that refers to gifts of land given to create local
agents for the ruling Muslim powers in the region. However, Axelrod and Fuerch(1998) again note this is a
“misreading” of the type of land referred to in the actual Foral. Instead these lands are namoxin lands, meaning
lands that are given to various village functionaries rent free in lieu of payment for services rendered to each village
(cf. Kamat 2000).
4
For example, clause IX of the Foral relates procedures for developing ‘waste or fallow lands’ (chãos…perdidos ou
desaproveitados) (da Cunha Rivara 1875, 122). In addition, a significant part of the agricultural landscape in the
Old Conquests includes the ancient system of khazan lands (low-lying agricultural lands reclaimed from the sea and
surrounded by a system of levees and bunds) that were maintained by the gauncares through the village associations
(J. C. Almeida 1967; Souza 1994a, 45; Trichur 2013, 51).

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the rural landscape—as it was in polities throughout peninsular India (e.g. Bayly 1988b, 346; B.

Stein 1980). In addition, the system of joint ownership described by the Foral is in many ways

similar to systems of land use and agricultural production/distribution in other areas of

peninsular India.

The Foral, however, would eventually serve a dual purpose for the Portuguese colonial

administration. First, it was initially produced to clarify local village customs of land distribution

and management in order to pacify local elites. This clarification was needed to solve

developing disputes between “Portuguese city-dweller’s” and “native landowners of the village”

regarding the purchase of agricultural land by the former as the gauncares felt the native

Portuguese were usurping their traditional rights (Souza 2009, 34) 5. Especially in the early

period of colonial occupation, the support of the local elite population was critical for the

Portuguese colonial administration and Crown who were still greatly concerned with the limited

number of Portuguese natives living in the territory as well as landward attacks from the Deccan

sultanates.

When conquering Goa in 1510, Afonso de Albuquerque both relied on local Hindu

cooperation for success and was very cognizant of the need for their continued support in

maintaining their foothold on the Konkan coast (A. de Albuquerque 1884, 1:26–9; Bethencourt

and Curto 2007; Boxer 1991; da Fonseca 1878; Pissurlencar 1940; Subrahmanyam 1993).

Albuquerque went so far as to guarantee the rights of Hindus, leaving their possessions intact and

reducing their tax burden to the state. At the same time, he killed and burned Muslim residents,

destroyed many of their edifices in the city, and redistributed their lands. In a letter to the King

5
Souza (2009, 34) specifically discusses correspondence between Portuguese ‘city-dwellers’ and the King of
Portugal relating a petition by the city-dwellers to land or palm groves in the villages in order to further their own
economic interests (and of course pay any required taxes to the Crown based on additional profit). However, the
acquisition of village land was blocked by both Mexia and the then Chief Captain and Governor Lopo Vas.

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of Portugal written immediately after the conquest, Albuquerque describes the great number of

‘Moors’ that his men killed but how he spared the Hindus and allowed them to remain in the city

(A. de Albuquerque 1884, 1:26–9; Souza 2009, 33). In this way, Albuquerque curried the favor

of the local Hindu elite and helped guarantee their cooperation. From a strategic point of view,

these actions were critical because of the very low number of actual Portuguese natives. Souza

(2009, 82) estimates for example that during the first years of the seventeenth century, at the

height of Portuguese power in the region, there were only 1,500 Portuguese in the city and its

immediate surrounds. This number is contrasted by a total population of at least 75,000. The

Foral can thus be read as an extension of the policy of pacifying the local populace by

guaranteeing the property rights and ritual control of land held by prominent members of village

society. It is telling in this context that Mexia begins the Foral with the founding myth regarding

the initial settlement and improvement of the land by those who became the elite class of

gauncares.

The Foral and related documents would also come to serve a second purpose. As various

authors (Axelrod and Fuerch 1998; Correia 2006; Fernandes 2010; P. Kamat 2000; Souza 2009)

argue, the intent of early Portuguese administrators was to preserve the economic and revenue

structures already existing in the villages (or at least those structures that would benefit the

colonial administration and the Crown) not unlike the later British incursions into Indian rural

economies. Unlike the British, however, the Portuguese were at the same time deeply committed

to converting the population to Catholicism, which included inserting the Catholic Church into

the economic and social position previously occupied by local village temples (cf. Â. B. Xavier

and Zupanov 2015). The Foral set the parameters through which this process could occur

because it not only examined the basis for village land tenure, and administration, it also

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highlighted the role that the local village elite played in regards to the maintenance of village

temples as well as ways that the land could legally be transferred to non-village members.

Clause XII of the Foral for instance notes the ability of gauncares to assign hereditary title to

rent free lands to officials such as Brahmins of the temple for continued services rendered to the

village (Cunha Rivara 1875, fasc. 5, 123). In addition, clause XXVII notes that if a man dies

without sons, or those sons turn Muslim or renounce their property, the land reverts to the Crown

(ibid: 128); and clause XV notes that gauncares can sell heritable property to anyone as long as

he grants the other gauncares the right of first refusal (ibid., 124).

While the Foral does not explicitly mention the centrality of the temple to village life,

other documents show that in the initial land holdings of the Portuguese the best rice producing

lands were already assigned for the maintenance and upkeep of the temple and for provisioning

temple priests and other servants (Axelrod and Fuerch 1998; Souza 2009, 48; Souza 1994a;

Correia 2006; Velinkar 2000). The temples and the lands set aside for them (referred to as nelly

lands) were controlled by the temple founders or mahajans. The mahajans were themselves

typically gauncares and thus already members of the village elite who controlled the distribution

of village resources (Axelrod and Fuerch 1998, 446; P. Kamat 2000, 138). In the pre-Portuguese

constitution of village society then, there was a seeming monopolization of both spiritual and

material resources by the class of elite gauncares centered on the temple. It was these same elites

who Mexia consulted when writing the Foral, so it is no wonder that they remain the prominent

figures in the colonial regime’s understanding of village life. Importantly though, all of these

functionaries remained rooted to the local economy as residents of each village.

The rootedness of the local economy would change during the middle of the sixteenth

century and this change would ultimately disrupt the distribution of resources amongst local

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village inhabitants. Due to the Crown’s deep entanglement with Catholicism and the subsequent

rise of the Counter Reformation in Europe there was a growing concern for the Portuguese

colonial administration to assert the dominance of their state religion. These developments

resulted in temple breaking campaigns beginning the 1540s in Goa, which attempted to

physically remove any traces of Hinduism from the landscape (Ames 2000; Axelrod and Fuerch

1996; Boxer 1969; Osswald 2013). As Souza (1990, 104) notes, “the demolition of temples

implied deprivation of religious and cultural traditions that sustained an established social

structure and its underlying economic base.” And, the Foral provided one of the references for

Portuguese administrators that helped to insert the Catholic Church into the social and economic

position formerly occupied by the temples.

The Foral thus provided one of the legal means to disrupt the village communities by

revealing the places where the Portuguese—and especially the Catholic missionaries—could

fracture the existing communal relations of production. After the temple breaking campaigns,

instead of the best village lands (the nelly lands) and their produce remaining within the local

village economies through the temple and its priests (who were gauncares), the resources from

temple lands now went to the communal pool of resources owned by whatever Catholic order

had control of that particular village 6. The Catholic Church was intent on using the produce from

lands in their possession to fund the construction of huge churches and homes in the city of Goa

as well as missionary activities throughout the empire (Alden 1996a; Harris 2005). These

resources were consequently removed from the local economy in significant ways, hindering the

Crown’s ability to realize revenues from these lands. In addition, various Portuguese casados

6
See for example Cunha Rivara 1875, fasc. 5, no. 75 that transcribes a 1541 provision of the chief revenue officer
Fernão Rodrigues de Castello Branco regarding the payment and redistribution of substantial revenue collected from
destroyed temples toward various churches.

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(married settlers) and fidalgos (Portuguese noblemen) would attempt to acquire and exploit

village lands for their own profit as discussed above. The Crown would at times support the

interests of these native Portuguese settlers by granting village land to private individuals, which

in turn would often be bequeathed to the Church (Souza 2009, 45).

Even though committed to a Christian population, the Crown obviously became

concerned with the eroding of the village agrarian structure by the Church. This concern likely

stemmed directly from the declining revenues received by the Crown due to lands now falling

under Catholic jurisdictions. Rubinoff (1991, 231–5) notes that, while not explicitly stated in the

Foral, the document worked to protect the gauncares’ rights to manage village lands but that

ultimate ownership of the land rested with the Crown 7—something that was confirmed in

subsequent declarations in the 17th century (for example the 1604 proclamation that was meant to

reaffirm the gauncares’ rights and limit any foreign ownership of village property (see Souza

2009, 171). Rubinoff (ibid.) goes on to argue that these subsequent proclamations were not

meant to increase the disenfranchisement of the gauncares, but rather to protect their land from

further usurpation. The tension between the Crown and the Church eventually resulted in first,

the expulsion of the Jesuits (one of the larger land holders in Goa) in 1759, and later, the curbing

of all religious orders in the colony during the early 19th century (Borges 2001; Souza 2001).

However, the continued encroachment on the Comunidades would continue into the 20th century.

Discussion

7
Although outside the scope of this chapter, it is interesting to note that these early colonial experiences and
strategies—especially the issues of ultimate sovereignty—would have reverberations in later colonial encounters. In
particular, after taking over from the British East India Company, the British Crown worked very hard to establish
its legitimacy and role as ultimate sovereign in the eyes of its colonial subjects while guaranteeing certain ‘native’
rights (Cohn 1987a, 632–3). Regardless of the preservation of these rights, these actions would have significant
effects on social configurations in British India as they did in Portuguese controlled areas (Bayly 1988a; Cohn 1996)

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 In briefly examining some of the tensions between gauncares, the Crown, the Church and

the local Portuguese population, it is obvious that social and economic aspects of village life

underwent, at times, drastic changes due to colonial involvement in village affairs. Village life is

and never was static despite various orientalist paradigms that may have suggested otherwise (cf.

Cohn 1996; Dirks 2001; Said 1978). Axelrod and Fuerch (1998, 456) argue that there are two

particular orientalist and ultimately essentializing visions of rural, village life that arise from

examining the Foral and other documents in this context. On the one hand is a theology based

view that the hinterland surrounding the city of Goa is filled with indigenous, heathen villages in

need of conversion and civilization and which resulted in the eventual destruction of village

temples and the passage of laws forbidding Hindu worship. On the other is a more economic and

mercantilist based orientalism that is focused on issues of land ownership, the payment of taxes,

and the relationship between the village and state in general. This view takes the villages of Goa

to be self-sufficient, “autonomous little republics” that paid tribute to the larger state (Axelrod

and Fuerch 1998, 460). This view becomes quite common to European colonial assumptions

about Indian village life in the larger region, and it is again echoed in British contexts by figures

such as Sir Charles Metcalfe in the early 19th century (Cohn 1987b, 344).

It is the latter vision of economic and mercantilist based orientalism which is more

expressly the concern of Mexia’s Foral, but it also provided a way for the Catholic Church to

achieve the role it did in village life especially considering that many gauncares and sometimes

entire villages converted. As Dirks (2001) argues in other contexts, the act of codification that

occurs in documents like the Foral disenfranchises or at least solidifies particular power

relationships within existing structures (cf. Fernandes 2010, 13). The new configuration of the

village power relationships engendered by the system of Comunidades, therefore, becomes “akin

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to a local municipal authority run by oligarchs,” (Fernandes 2010, 12), but oligarchs who were

definitely still answerable to the ruling colonial powers. Ultimately, the Foral allows for the

exploitation of various groups on multiple scales, ranging from the most intimate, local village

transactions to the global engagements of colonial and ecclesiastical powers.

These disputes between various elite colonial factions, however, mask a shared

underlying spatial ideology that holds the rural hinterland as categorically different from the

more civilized urban capital. What becomes clear from this analysis of colonial documents is that

the expression of this ideology may differ in its specific claims to the rural landscape by colonial

elites—as evidenced, for instance, by the dispute between the colonial administration and ‘city-

dwellers’ regarding the purchasing of village land mentioned by Souza (2009, 34) and discussed

above. The Crown views the villages as Crown property necessary for provisioning the city and

maintaining a stable population base and territory but acknowledges the source of potential profit

for Portuguese settlers, whereas private Portuguese citizens see the land as simply a source for

individual profit in which the Crown should not interfere. Yet, these seemingly opposing views

still envision the land outside the city as essentially the same thing: The villages are principally a

source of provisioning for the capital city and the empire, and this conceptualization of the rural

hinterland is equally true for the purposes of the Church.

Especially from the point of view of the Crown and the Catholic Church, we see a rural

landscape conceptualized as a ‘native’ place that is unruly and lacking in material and spiritual

security. Following Foucault’s understanding of governing through the mechanisms of security,

the hinterland around the city of Goa is realized to be a “milieu” where a series of “uncertain

elements unfold” (Foucault 2007, 20). The Foral does not constitute prohibitory or disciplinary

laws that work on individual wills, rather they work on the milieu (or the entire set of natural and

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social givens) by addressing the system of land management and maintenance of the rural

landscape as well as the social relations of production. The hinterland is a place where the

colonial elite—and particularly the Crown—are attempting to establish and maintain certain

norms vis-à-vis the codification of rules relating to the operation and management of the

villages. From the colonial administration and the Crown’s perspective, these laws are meant to

normalize relationships between the rural, indigenous population as a whole and the state, thus,

working to secure the territory. At the same time, they work to create a stable, productive, base

and to insure circulations between the country side and the city through the collection of revenue

(cf. Trichur 2013, 53). Moreover, the Foral works to create an ultimately loyal population

because it guarantees and reinforces the preexistent rights of the local, landed elite class of

gauncares—despite attempted inroads into this system by Portuguese settlers.

Governing the population in this way is necessary because the Crown is unable to sustain

other forms of direct control or disciplinary forms of governance (such as the direct surveillance)

due to a lack of colonial personnel and the intractability of the social and natural landscapes in

the villages 8—especially during the early colonial period. This situation continues

notwithstanding the temple breaking campaigns and the Church attempts at mass conversion.

Axelrod and Fuerch (1996) amply demonstrate the resistance in regards to the persistence of

Hindu ritual within the colony and in adjacent lands. Specifically they detail the removal of

various Gods from Hindu temples before they were destroyed and the establishment of new

temples in nearby towns such as Ponda, located just over the Portuguese frontier, as well as

8
In regards to the intractability of the rural landscape, Linschoten (van Linschoten 1598, 1:177) writing in the late
16th century states, “The Iland is verie hillie, and in some places so desert [and rough], that on some sides men can
hardly travel over land (but with great difficulty) to the towne of Goa [sic].” Souza (Souza 2009, 43) also notes
major difficulties in transportation and communication between the city and its rural hinterland, which forced the
villages to be self-sufficient, contained entities. As late as 1781, reports suggest that in Bardez for instance the roads
were so undeveloped that no “vehicles” could pass and everyone was forced to proceed on foot (ibid.; Souza and
Borges 1990).

146
various syncretic ritual practices amongst both Hindu and Christian populations that persist to

today. The historical record also reveals that various members of the local population could

and did relocate to areas outside the Portuguese colonial dominion to avoid paying taxes or other

debts to the state, and indeed sometimes kept the bulk of their assets outside the colony (Souza

1994a; Souza 2009, 83–4).

Thus, examining the Foral and related aspects of the changing nature of village

governance reveals the tension experienced by a colonial administration that is inextricably

bound to the Catholic Church. In the case of the Foral, it seems the colonial government is

experimenting more with the apparatuses of security—as opposed to penal or disciplinary

mechanisms—and beginning to recognize the need to govern a population and territory that

exists as part of a larger natural system (or ‘milieu’), and where the city in particular is

dependent on various forms of circulation between the urban and the rural. Within this context,

the colonial administration recognizes that they cannot control every aspect of village life.

However, there is a great resistance to this form of government inculcated by the Crown’s deep

involvement with the Catholic Church and the growing sentiments of the Counter Reformation

and Inquisition in Goa, which are explicitly about disciplining individuals and, as I will argue,

the spaces they inhabit. These sentiments eventually work to create a greater involvement and

disruption in village life through the auspices of the Catholic Church. The Church in many ways

attempts to institute more feudal relations of production based on their greater, direct

involvement in the management of village lands.

Prominent historians such as C. R. Boxer (Boxer 1991, 74) suggest that the Portuguese

seaborne empire can be described as a “military and maritime enterprise cast in an ecclesiastical

mold” (cf. Ames 2000). However, this characterization partially masks the deep tensions and

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“fault lines” between various colonial factions explicated here (Zupanov 1998, 135; Pachuau

2004), and colonial experiences always result in improvisation and the working out of often

novel forms of governance (J. Comaroff and Comaroff 1997; Cooper 2005; Dawdy 2008; Hall

1999; Morrison 2002). The above discussion of the Foral and the conceptualization of the rural

hinterland surrounding Velha Goa work to highlight the fact that no colonial enterprise is

monolithic in its political forms or expression of power. However, despite this improvisation,

especially in colonial contexts these tensions may still stem from a shared ideology of space by

various elite groups—one that envisions the city as a very separate form of space set apart from

the countryside. The working out of these issues in Goa becomes even clearer when juxtaposing

the governance of the rural hinterland surrounding Velha Goa to the strategies enacted in the city

itself. As I argue in the following section, city governance was significantly different than that

of the village hinterland.

The City

As many varied traveler’s accounts attest, the city of Goa (later known as Velha Goa) was a

large, cosmopolitan and seemingly Lusitanized urban space before its decline, complete with

towering churches and the administrative trappings of Portuguese cityscapes (e.g. (Burton 1851;

Cottineau de Kloguen 1831; da Fonseca 1878; Pyrard 1619; M. J. G. de Saldanha 1925; Valle

1664). While specific aspects of the urban landscape contained in these accounts are

questionable (as discussed in detail elsewhere in this work), it is clear that the conception of Goa

as a European, cosmopolitan urban capital of empire was propagated by many—not least of all

the colonial administration itself. For the colonial administration, the Catholic Church, and other

colonial elites, it was imperative that the city conformed to a particular spatial imaginary that

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represented both ecclesiastical and political dominance within the Portuguese’s colonial capital.

This imperative was in-part motivated by the previously discussed underlying spatial ideology

that holds urban/civilized/Christian landscape separate from the rural/uncivilized/non-Christian

landscape of villages and agricultural space outside of colonial cities. Regardless of the state’s

ability to directly control its wider territorial holdings, the Portuguese did attempt to

communicate to their geopolitical rivals and its own urban subjects a more comprehensive form

of domination through the social and spatial manipulation of its capital city.

In juxtaposition to the management of Goa’s rural hinterland, this section analyzes the

governance of the city itself. Just as the governance of the hinterland reveals a shared underlying

ideology regarding rural space, so too does the governance of the city reveal elite conceptions

regarding the urban landscape. By examining the municipal organization of the city, urban

finances, sumptuary laws, and ordinances affecting the physical space of the city, these

underlying spatial ideologies reveal themselves. Moreover, many of these laws and ordinances

reflect particular forms of governance and strategies of social control that Foucault would

classify as disciplinary mechanisms aimed at creating a particular type of colonial subject.

The governance of the city, however, again reveals the many tensions between and

amongst various elite colonial factions such as the casados (married Portuguese settlers), the

clergy, the Crown, and local Hindu and Muslim merchants. City governance also demonstrates

the transition and conflicts that arise between governing through disciplinary mechanisms and

governing through mechanisms of security that have as their focus a milieu. These shifts in

strategies mirror those discussed by Foucault (2007), especially in reaction to the difficulties

encountered in defining and governing expanding urban space. As European walled medieval

towns grew and were no longer neatly contained by their early fortification walls, and as they

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became critical centers for the economies in their regions, governments began to experience

significant problems defining, demarcating, and administering them. The issue of what

constituted the urban space of Velha Goa, how to maintain security—or govern it more

generally—and how to insure various forms of circulation in the capital were deeply concerning

to Portuguese administrators.

This concern is reflected in the various laws and ordinances discussed below. Yet, all of

these aspects of city life reveal the imagination of the city of Goa as a place that must embody

Portuguese power and dominance both socially and spatially. Therefore, the city is conceived by

the colonial administration as symbolically separate from its ‘native’ hinterland even though it

was in reality a highly diverse and cosmopolitan space. That is, the governance of the city also

exposes the same, shared underlying spatial ideology shown through the analysis of its rural,

village hinterland. It is these conceptions of urban space and colonial capital that ultimately

drives the production of space in the city of Goa—and, as discussed in detail in the next chapter,

specific aspects of the urban landscape such as the massive outer fortification wall that

eventually surrounds the city.

Municipal Organization

From the very beginning of colonial occupation in Goa, the city is organized along very

different lines than those outlined for the surrounding hinterland by the Foral. After conquering

the city of Goa, Afonso de Albuquerque granted an initial charter of privileges to city officials

that reveals the structure of the municipal organization, and it is clear form this charter that city

governance was modeled after its “metropolitan prototype,” Lisbon (Souza 2009, 98). The

charter provides for a municipal council (Camara municipal) through the election of alderman

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(vereadores) and justices of the peace (juizes ordinários), and established the rights of the

married Portuguese (casados) settled in the city (da Cunha Rivara 1875), fasc. 2, 4–8). In

addition to the municipal council, the charter created a body to represent the guilds and artisans

of the city, the House of Twenty-Four (Casa dos Vinte e Quatro), which was organized exactly

as the same institution in Lisbon (Cunha Rivara 1875, fasc. 2; Rego 1965, 55). The charter of

Albuquerque was confirmed by King Manuel I in 1518 who officially raised the status of Goa to

a “royal city, never to be severed from the Portuguese Crown” (Rego 1965, 54). Later these

privileges and the interactions between the city and state were clarified when Goa became the

official capital of the Eastern Empire, taking over from Cochin in 1530. Additional decrees in

1559 by King Sebastian—and further in 1577, 1582, and 1641—stated that Goa should follow

the system of Lisbon “without alteration” (Souza 2009, 99–100).

Certain aspects of these laws particularly reveal how the city of Goa was re-envisioned as

a Christian and Portuguese urban space. Specifically, the 1518 proclamation by King Emanuel

states that city life and finances were to be governed by a group of elected officials which

included the vereadores and juizes 9. Although the comunidades are governed through a roughly

similar council or group of elites, these positions in the city are clearly non-heritable titles—

unlike the position of the guancares and many other village functionaries. This is confirmed

through establishing complicated election procedures that were intended to make sure that these

positions did not fall prey to nepotism or cronyism (Boxer 1966, 35–6; Souza 2009, 101). In

addition, these official positions were reserved for Christians and undoubtedly meant for

Portuguese natives, with Hindus, Muslims, and converted Jews (knows as New Christians)

9
For example clause VII states, “...que se fizesse enleiçaõ cadano de Juizes asy como se fazẽ nas cidades villas e
lugares de nossos Reinos, e que nas ditas enleiçaoẽs se goardasse inteiramente o Regimento sobre isso dado aas
cidades villas e lugares de nossos Reinos” (as transcribed in (da Cunha Rivara 1875), fasc. II, 5).

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specifically excluded (Priolkar 1961, 124–5). Boxer (Boxer 1966, 154) provides for example a

translation of a letter sent to Goa by the King of Portugal in 1542 in which the King stipulates

that in the city of Goa those “in whom the control of the city is vested, should always be drawn

from among the married men and heads of household therein, who are Portuguese by nationality

and birth and not from among those of any other nationality, birth, and quality whatsoever.”

Although with the continual shortage of manpower in the colony, these ordnances were likely

not followed to the letter. There is evidence that various ‘mestiços’ (offspring of Portuguese

settlers who married local women) were allowed to serve in these offices and that they were also

occasionally held by prominent New Christians and others (Boxer 1966, 30–5; Souza 2009, 101).

The charter and subsequent decrees thus mandated that the city of Goa function in the

same way as Lisbon and that it should enjoy the same privileges and freedoms, placing Goa and

its Portuguese denizens on par with those in the metropole (Boxer 1966; Souza 2009; Rego

1965; Russell-Wood 2007). As (Malekandathil 2009b, 26–7) states:

The administration of the city affairs passed into the hands of the urban elite, through the
mechanism of the city council with members elected from the Portuguese married
settlers . . . where they decided on all matters related to urban cleanliness, sanitation,
property acquisition and space management, food supply and hoarding, management of
welfare institutions like misericordia, local trade, law and order within the city, matters
affecting morality of the city-dwellers, etc.

In short, the city was imagined as not simply a source of revenue, as was the rural village

hinterland, but rather as a place that should represent a fully functioning Portuguese city

recognizable as the capital of the empire.

Urban Finances

Beyond the organization of municipal government, the finances and economic base for

the city also followed a more European and Portuguese system. As mentioned previously, the

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establishment of the House of Twenty Four to represent to various guilds and artisans in the city

follows a model typical of medieval cities in Europe and specifically in Lisbon. Souza (2009,

104) argues that, while there are few existing documents detailing city finances, the municipality

earned most of its income from the lease of shops and land to individuals; issuing licenses to

artisans, shopkeepers, and other professionals to operate within the limits of the city, and on fines

for violations of market regulations. The city was also granted a small percentage of the revenue

generated by customs on various trade items coming through the port (ibid.). In addition, land

was not held in common or based on rights of original settlement as it was in the village

hinterland, but was rather privately owned or leased by the Crown. After the conquest of the city

for example, Muslim land was confiscated and given to many casados by Albuquerque (A. de

Albuquerque 1884, 1:27). It is telling that land becomes almost predominantly privately owned

on the small island of Tiswadi, upon which the city of Goa is situated, as opposed to the

continued persistence of the comunidades system in the other provinces of the Old Conquest

(Rubinoff 1991, 258).

However, this situation became complicated due to the continued and growing

dominance of Hindu merchants within the city during the early part of the 16th century. As will

be discussed in detail in following chapters, during the early half of the 17th century there was a

significant population decline in the city, especially amongst Portuguese natives. This “mass

exodus” of Portuguese was caused by insalubrious nature of the city combined with repeated

outbreaks of plague and cholera and attacks by the Dutch (Malekandathil 2009b, 29). The

changing nature of the population base in the city allowed for various non-Portuguese merchants,

in particular the Saraswat Brahmins, to gain a greater control over the money and commodity

markets in the city (ibid., 30). These increasingly powerful merchants also often owned revenue

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farms in the village, hinterland surrounding the city and had numerous foreign connections with

Portuguese rivals in the region (Souza 2009, 83). The “diluting of the Portuguese element in the

city” would have resulted in a great insecurity within the colonial government in its ability to

control its own population and to effectively control the circulation of goods, especially

considering that between 1604 and 1634 as much as 25,000 soldiers died in the Royal Hospital

(Malekandathil 2009b, 31). As will be discussed in connection with the construction of the outer

fortification wall in the following chapter, it is a significant coincidence that this period of both

economic and demographic decline for Portuguese natives in the capital of their empire

corresponds with the final phase of construction for the wall.

Urban, Christian subjects

The Crowns patronage of the Catholic Church would eventually necessitate an attempt to

normalize (and Christianize) rural life as well, but as the previous discussion demonstrates this

was only partially successful. However, the Church’s deepening involvement in the affairs and

governance of the city show a determined attempt to control and shape the social lives of urban

residents that goes well beyond the organization of city governance and finances. This influence

resulted in a series of discriminatory and sumptuary laws aimed at producing proper colonial

subjects within the city through the application of various disciplinary measures. The application

and especially the enforcement of these laws again show tensions between various colonial

interests, but they equally reveal the same shared spatial ideology—an ideology that imagines the

colonial capital as a place that must represent Christian and Portuguese ideals, and thus, must

contain Christian subjects representative of Portuguese dominance and control.

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 Following numerous requests by St. Francis Xavier to the Portuguese Crown and the

Catholic Church beginning in 1545, the Inquisition was officially established in Goa in 1560

(Priolkar 1961, 24–5). Shortly after in 1567, the first Provincial Council of Goa was held to enact

the decrees of the Ecumenical Council of Trent, which had firmly established Catholic doctrine

regarding the Counter Reformation (Mathew 2001). Subsequent provincial councils, held

between 1567 and 1606, along with the Inquisition, worked to promulgate a series of rather

draconian measures aimed at disenfranchising non-Christians and creating proper Europeanized,

Christian subjects. The Provincial Councils of Goa thus established various sumptuary laws

aimed at disciplining the urban population. For example, decree (decreto) 39 from the 1567

Council mandates that all Christians including those from foreign lands such as Armenia

distinguish themselves by dressing like Portuguese Christians (“Pareceo que todos os Christãos

estrangeiros como Armenios...que vierem a nossas terras, andem vestidos como Christãos

nossos naturaes...”), and further requires non-Christian women to distinguish themselves by their

clothing so that they are known to be ‘gentiles’ (da Cunha Rivara 1875), fasc. 4, 29-30).

In addition to laws stipulating various forms of dress for Christians and non-Christians,

most of the other decisions handed down by ecclesiastical authorities were turned into legislation

by the Crown. These edicts attempt to discipline nearly all aspects of colonial life and were in

effect designed to alter the social and economic fabric of the colony (Souza 2001, 444), thereby

creating recognizably Christian subjects in both appearance and action. These laws included

banning traditional practices such as the use of betel leaves as offerings, the distribution of

particular food-stuffs during significant events, banning the growing of Tulsi (a plant sacred to

Hindus), forbidding cremation of the deceased, and allowing widows to remarry. They also

include changing the temporal rhythms of life through the alteration of feasting and fasting

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schedules and banning the celebration of any non-Christian holy days or days of rest. Laws were

passed regulating additional aspects of comportment such as the wearing of the sacred thread,

using sandalwood paste on the forehead, and the wearing of specific types of clothing associated

with Hindus such as the dhoti or cholis. They also banned or discouraged the employment of

non-converted artisans (especially for making objects directly associated with Christian

worship). Perhaps one of the harshest and most disruptive laws was the Church’s removal of

Hindu children, who were very loosely classified as orphans, for the purpose of baptism. In

addition, such seemingly innocuous practices such as cooking rice without salt were forbidden.

Various edicts even attempted to regulate the soundscape of the colony by banning the use of

Hindu-associated instruments during ceremonies, forbidding any Christian person to be referred

to by the name or surname of a Hindu, and forcing Hindu residents of the city to listen to the

preaching of Christian doctrine (for details see (da Cunha Rivara 1875; Souza 2001; Mathew

2001; Osswald 2013, 135–142; Priolkar 1961, 97–149).

Within this corpus of disciplinary measures, laws governing Hindu marriage ceremonies

in particular reveal the tensions between colonial elite factions and the differing strategies and

goals of governance. Yet, the regulation of Hindu marriage equally shows the attempt to

discipline the urban environment and separate it from the surrounding hinterland in which the

colonial government lacked definite control. From the first Provincial Council in Goa there were

prohibitions on both the attendance and celebration of various Hindu ceremonies including

marriage (da Cunha Rivara 1875), fasc. 4). In 1613 the viceroy specifically banned Hindu

marriage ceremonies during times forbidden by the Church, and in 1620 this was expanded to

include any Hindu marriage ceremony at any time. However, under equal pressure from both

increasingly powerful Hindus factions and the Church, the nature of the laws would fluctuate

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between two extremes—at times being severely limiting and other times granting concessions to

Hindu marriage. For example, in 1630 the viceroy Conde de Linhares suggested that allowing

Hindu marriage celebrations in the city would generate significant revenue for the state if they

were forced to pay substantial fines; in 1679 marriages were allowed but only on barges or ships

in the rivers at the edge of Portuguese territory; and finally in 1701 Hindus successfully

petitioned to be allowed to perform marriages behind closed doors at home as long as no

Christians attended, yet this order was rescinded in 1705 after the Holy Office protested and

marriages were again banned (Priolkar 1961, 118–20). The Inquisition’s strict enforcement of

these laws caused many Hindus to migrate to territories outside Portuguese control. The extent

of the migration caused such a problem for the state that the Crown finally relented, allowing

marriages and other Hindu ceremonies in 1726, but only on specific islands set aside for such

purposes (ibid., 121).

Although nominally meant to apply to the ‘province’ as a whole, it is clear that there was

an understanding by the Crown that many of these edicts could not necessarily be enforced

outside the city. Nor was it always in the Crown’s best interests to enact such draconian

disciplinary measures across the territory, despite the protests of the Catholic Church. However,

it is likely that the elite casados running the municipal council were happy to enact the Church’s

mandates regarding Hindus and other non-Portuguese in order to eliminate powerful, indigenous

commercial rivals in the city (Malekandathil 2009b, 27). Priolkar (1961, 116) for instance notes

that in 1560 the viceroy ordered Brahmins to be “thrown out of the island of Goa and the lands

and fortresses of the Portuguese King.” However, the Brahmins native to Salcete and Bardez

were allowed to return to their villages. A year later this law was repealed because the new

viceroy found that the island of Goa (Tiswadi) was depopulated with villages abandoned and

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fields inundated. Recognizing the detriment to the “king and welfare of this land,” the viceroy

asked that Brahmins be allowed to return (ibid.). Yet, the law was reinstituted under pressure

from the church the following year with the exception of Brahmins employed in critical

occupations such as farmers, physicians, blacksmiths, or revenue collectors. These laws were

reaffirmed and expanded in 1575 and 1585. This push and pull between pragmatic legislation to

meet various socio-economic needs of the state and legislation bowing to ecclesiastical zeal and

private interests, illuminates the tensions between governing through disciplinary mechanisms

(that have as their focus groups of individual wills) and mechanisms of security (that are

concerned with populations and include a consideration of socio-natural landscapes and the

circulation of goods). However, this legislation also clearly indicates that the city and its

immediate suburbs on the island of Tiswadi are of paramount importance to all elite colonial

factions as it is the administrative, ecclesiastical, and economic heart of the eastern empire.

As discussed, in the early period of Portuguese occupation, Albuquerque stuck a

somewhat conciliatory tone with at least the Hindu residents of Goa. Although as the Church

became more established, conversion proceeded, and Portuguese control over its territory

solidified, there is a general shift seen in the legislation towards more draconian disciplinary

measures aimed at creating particular Christian and Europeanized colonial subjects. However,

the lack or Portuguese personnel, the difficulty in navigating the physical landscape of the

village hinterland, and the socio-economic power of various Hindu groups, indicates that the

type of control imagined by these disciplinary laws could not have been effectively realized in-

or outside of the city. The ability of the local population to resist forms of colonial and

ecclesiastical domination of this sort is clearly demonstrated, for example, by the failure of the

colonial administration to control the mass migrations of Hindus (and their deities) outside of

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Portuguese territory (Axelrod and Fuerch 1996; Priolkar 1961). It is equally demonstrated by the

changing nature of the laws that variously represent both the Crown’s often more pragmatic

forms of governance and the less yielding disciplinary measures called for by the Church.

Finally, the Crown’s need to continually restate previous proclamations (such as the 1559, 1577,

1582, and 1641 proclamation that the city of Goa follow the system of Lisbon “without

alteration” (Souza 2009, 99–100)) indicates that these laws were not being followed—even

within the city—where the Portuguese colonial administration arguably had the ability to directly

control and monitor the population.

As Robinson (2000, 294) argues though, regardless of the draconian measure advocated

by the Catholic Church, the Church also recognized “the limits of coercive measure of

evangelization.” The Church too saw the need for compromise and at times even for

accommodation—for example the dissemination of Christian teachings in local dialects such as

Konkani and Marathi. Robinson’s analysis, however, centers on the Inquisitorial Edict of 1736,

which contains some of the most severe and invasive laws regarding both public and private

social practices—some of which were mentioned above. This is the most highly detailed edict to

be passed and occurs after almost 200 years of colonial occupation bent on preaching the faith

and attempting conversions, providing another clear indication of the lack of success in creating

proper, Christian colonial subjects. Robinson suggests that this edict though, is not “an

expression of an excess of power” and top down coercive control (ibid., 302). Rather, it

represents a change of tactic by the Church. She argues following Bourdieu that the Church is

trying to achieve “a practical mastery of the socio-cultural world . . . through bodily experience

within an environment that has been structured according to the principles of that world” (ibid.)

These laws are in effect attempting to restructure the habitus of the people by disciplining both

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the social practices and dispositions of the populace as well as the ‘environment’ in which they

live.

As discussed in the context of the Foral and the management of the village hinterland,

the possibility for the direct control and observation necessary for disciplining a population in

this way would have been considerably limited. However, both the colonial administration and

the Church perceived the situation to be very different within the confines of the city. Not only

did the colonial administration attempt to observe and discipline the urban population—although

clearly not very successfully—they could also control the built environment in significant ways

and thus attempt to create a Lusitanized and Christian urban landscape—a landscape that would

contain the physical structures needed for disciplining colonial subjects.

Governing the production of urban space

Discussed in detail in the previous chapter of this work, at first the Portuguese did little to

change the underlying structure of their newly conquered city. Following a pattern established

during the earlier Christian expulsion of the Moors from the Iberian Peninsula, the Portuguese

occupation of Velha Goa did little to significantly change the fundamental urban design of the

existing city (Rossa 2012). Although, Rossa (ibid.) argues that this pattern included destroying

or modifying certain buildings such as mosques and other administrative symbols of Muslim

power for the purpose of establishing a new sense of ecclesiastical and secular authority over the

city (cf. (Malekandathil 2009b). This argument follows from historic documents such as the

letters of Afonso de Albuquerque, cited above, that suggest he burned various Muslim buildings,

particularly mosques. However, the urban structure was increasingly changed throughout the

16th century as the Portuguese began to dominate the Indian Ocean trading networks, and the

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surrounding elevations were used to construct imposing new Catholic edifices in visually

dominant positions on the landscape. This modification of the urban space generally took

Lisbon as its model with commercial activities focused on low ground adjacent to the port, and it

including a central high street called the Rua Direita and large public buildings (both religious

and secular) in dominant locations within the city and on surrounding hilltops (Teixeira 1990b,

25). The laws passed legislating general aspects of spatial production in the city, such as specific

building practices, particularly demonstrate both the changing nature of governance and the way

that the city was imagined and recreated as a space set apart from the rural, native hinterland.

Leading Rossa (2012) to state that “as in Lisbon, beyond the standardisation or reform of new

urban infrastructures, it was the gradual uniformity of the architecture which by means of

regulation endowed Goa with a Portuguese-style unity”—although as I argue in chapters two and

three, this imagination of a Europeanized cityscape was only partially realized.

More specifically, while Helder Carita (2007, 71) notes a general dearth of historical

documentation that directly concerns the development of Indo-Portuguese architecture in Goa,

his analysis of a vast a number of building contracts from the late 16th century does at least

demonstrate the implementation of standard building techniques and architectural models in the

city that were imported directly from Lisbon (see also (Carita 1999a). Carita (2007) argues that

these contracts correspond to legislation implemented during the reign of King Manuel (1495–

1521), “which established a new, rational and centralised management of public works carried

out on behalf of the monarchy and which later applied to municipal councils, the church and

religious orders.” These laws, originating in the metropole, were directly imported to the city of

Goa in 1527 when King João III ordered the Camara de Lisboa to send its own regimento

directly to the city of Goa (ibid).

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 A wide range of buildings and structures in the city were encompassed by this legislation

including “walls, towers, barricades, bastions, places of refuge, subterranean works that

necessitate a master-builder, as well as cisterns, wells, and ovens and mills” Carita (2007, 86).

The laws mandated specific percentages on lime and mortar and proper building techniques

based on particular ratios of structural walls and empty space. In addition, they detailed the best

practices for construction—particularly hydraulic projects on sandy soils. All of these details

were then included in bids made by contractors to the Crown, who thus choose the best price but

also maintained centralized oversight over the form of urban space through its management of

these contracts—what Carita (ibid., 73) refers to as “contracts and instructions for work to

proceed.” These standardized practices would have worked to create the Lusitanized urban

space and ‘Portuguese-style unity’ depicted in so many maps and travelers’ accounts.

However, it was not just the Crown that was intent on reforming the physical space of the

city. The construction of the many churches in prominent locations throughout the city provides

dramatic evidence of the Catholic Church’s attempt to dominate the physical landscape in the

capital. The large religious installations or administrative buildings became focal points for

additional urban development, with the city expanding through the articulation of these nodes of

settlement (Teixeira 1990b, 25). Hand in hand with the construction of these churches was the

division of the city into parishes, which occurred first in 1545 and again under Archbishop D.

Gaspar de Leão beginning in 1560 (Osswald 2013, 133–4). This additional, ecclesiastical

(re)organization of the urban landscape coincides with the attempts by the Catholics Church and

the Crown to produce proper Christian, colonial subjects. As discussed above, sumptuary and

discriminatory laws often banned the employment of non-Christians and endeavored to limit

social interactions between them and Christians. In combination with the spatial reform of the

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city, these laws thus worked to effect both a social and physical segregation based on religious

and ethnic affiliation. As Osswald (2013, 130) argues, this “brought about a radical re-mapping

of urban geography” because “frequent strict measures bear witness to a long-term policy

intended to foster the emergence of an expanding urban space inhabited only by Catholics.”

Indeed, Osswald (ibid.) notes that “by the end of the 17th century, some categories of the

population—Muslims, foreign Hindus, and prostitutes—were living in separate suburbs far from

the city centre.” However, these non-Christian denizens were never absent in the city.

This policy of segregation is also seen not just between the city and its suburban and rural

hinterland, but also within the city itself. The much cited descriptions of Goa by Linschoten

(van Linschoten 1598) describes the urban core and the separation of the commercial quarters by

the goods being sold, which often corresponded to ethnic or caste affiliation. In addition, Souza

(2009) transcribes a document from Viceroy Dom Francisco da Gama in 1622 which the viceroy

affirms that he will enforce an order from the Crown “regarding the assignment of separate

streets to different artisans according to their professions.” Nevertheless, many of these

professions were certainly dominated by non-Portuguese and non-Christian groups such as the

Saraswat Brahmins and Gujaratis and it is clear the Church could never realize the dream of a

completely Christianized space and population, and especially as the city began to lose its native

Portuguese population during the 17th century, the dominance of these non-Christian groups

grew.

This type of urban organization/segregation is a pattern common to both Portuguese and,

as I argue in Chapter 5, South Asian cities. However, the other forms of spatial and social

control enacted by the Portuguese suggest that this “politics of segregation” (Osswald 2013, 130)

is built upon an underlying spatial ideology that holds the urban/civilized/Christian city separate

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from the rural/uncivilized/non-Christian hinterland—an ideology, that while it attempts to create

a Lusitanized space in the entire territory, focuses on the urban landscape where Portuguese

control is more certain, relegating less desirable people and practices to the periphery. It also

again reveals the tensions inherent in governing a city deeply dependent on trading revenue from

‘native’ trading contacts but at the same time a city that is the head of the Catholic Church in

Asia—a Church that believes it necessary to engage in a “politics of tabula rasa” and eradicate

all vestiges of local culture and religion to successfully implant Catholicism (Osswald 2013,

135).

One of the most striking manifestations of this underlying spatial ideology is reflected in

the mortuary practices within the city. It was already noted above that the practice of cremation

of the dead (typical of Hindu mortuary practice) was banned even for non-Christians in Goa, and

it would never have been allowed for converted Christians. As Osswald (ibid., 142) notes there

is a long history of individuals trying to increase their chance of salvation by being buried close

to saints or martyrs, which stretches back the early days of Christianity. In addition, the need

for Catholics to be buried on consecrated ground is well known. The abundance of tombs

located in the churches of Goa (e.g. Fig. 4.1). attest to the centripetal force created by the

churches and their many relics—not least of which was (and is) the body of St Francis Xavier,

which can still be viewed today in Goa at the Basilica do Bom Jesus. These burials reflect the

spatial hierarchy that both the Crown and Church attempted to create in the colony as a whole.

In Goa the interior of the church was reserved for high status Portuguese natives, typically

fidalgos, influential casados, and those who ranked high in the colonial administration (Osswald

2013, 143). Less elite people and especially those who were excommunicated, or who were

suspected of not having confessed in the prior year, were forbidden and excluded from these

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centers. While this is in tension with the putative aims of the proselytizing mission, these spatial

practices affirm that, class, religion, and ethnicity all played a role in determining social status

(cf. Boxer 1963).

Fig. 4.1 Nossa Senhora da Graça

Left: Overhead view of graves clustering towards the chancel with fewer graves
located in the nave
Right: Detail of crossing

How people were interred in death thus reflected the spatial ideologies of the living: there

is a Christian, civilized center and a non-Christian, uncivilized periphery. Taken together, both

the burial practices in the city and the attempted spatial configuration of the urban landscape are

really indicative of a coherent cosmology that encompasses more than just spatial hierarchies.

This system more than anything influenced the way that the city became idealized in various

historic documents as the center of civilized, cultured and Catholic life that was necessarily

juxtaposed to the rural, uncivilized, non-Christian hinterland outside the capital—regardless of

the level of conversion in the surrounding Portuguese controlled territory or the actual success

of urban spatial reform.

Building codes, laws and other forms of spatial reform in the city work to discipline the

urban landscape through the creation of a particularly Portuguese form of space that in turn

structures social interactions. The modification of the urban landscape accomplishes this by
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structuring the physical environment, which forces bodies to move through space in very

particular ways and dictating the settings for social interactions. The built environment can thus

reinforce and legitimize socio-political and economic norms through the standardization of

building forms, appearance, and other aspects of urban infrastructure. This process of structuring

the urban space is similar to the aforementioned argument concerning Bourdieu made by

Robinson (2007, 301-4). Urban reform of this sort attempts to create an urban spatial ‘habitus’

that works hand in hand in with the attempt to control and modify the wide range of Hindu social

practices. However, these spatial and social mandates are questioned, subverted, and resisted.

Thus, there is not an established habitus (stemming from an unquestioned doxa in Bourdieu’s

sense), but rather these mandates are an attempt to create a space that, it is hoped, will engender

a habitus through the articulation of a socio-spatial orthodoxy (Bourdieu 2007, 168–9).

These laws relating to urban space, however, also go beyond the simple disciplinary

mechanisms encompassed by the prohibitory laws concerning Hindu social practices. They

reveal a concern—by the Crown at least—with managing a milieu in that they set the terms and

parameters for creating structures, and cityscapes more broadly, by managing both the material

and social aspects of the urban environment. Indeed Carita (2007, 73) notes that the reform of

Goa’s urban space was “characterised by its rational inclination and tendency towards norms,

circulating across the great spaces that comprised the Portuguese empire.” The tendency towards

establishing and maintaining both social and spatial norms is exactly how Foucault (2007)

characterizes governing through mechanisms of security. Yet, norms by definition do not have

to be legislated. Therefore, in Goa the passage of all of these laws for the city suggests that there

is an ongoing and concerted attempt to police both a non-conforming population and a non-

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conforming urban landscape—something that becomes more clear as the city declines and is

discussed in detail in Chapter 6.

Yet, again as the previous analysis of the Foral and village governance indicates, the

level of structural control attempted in the city would not have been wholly possible in the

surrounding village hinterland nor was it entirely advocated by the colonial administration.

Certainly in these rural places most residential structures were not falling under the purview of

the Crown or church in the same way as those in the city. For example, quoting Duarte Barbosa’s

early 16th century account of the Malabar and Konkan coast, Carita (2007, 75) notes that more

formal building techniques such as tiled roofs were only allowed for the residence of kings and

for temples and that vernacular architecture was only allowed to incorporate palm leaf covered

roofs—something common throughout the larger region. In this regard, it is particularly

significant that the first evidence for the implementation of standardized building codes (and thus

the beginning of the spatial reform of both residential and monumental architecture in the city) is

a contract between Afonso Meixa and two stonemasons. This contract stipulates very specific

building techniques for the construction of a shipyard in the city, which included detailed

procedures for tile roofing (Carita 2007, 73). Afonso Meixa is of course the author of the Foral,

which would have such influence in the governance of village life. Tiled roofs would go on to

be standard for all elite architecture in the city including personal residences.

Discussion

As with the management of the village hinterland, a focus on the governance of the city

demonstrates the tensions between and amongst various colonial factions. At the same time, it

reveals the enactment of various sometimes conflicting strategies of governance aimed at

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controlling the populace—strategies of governance that either work through disciplinary

mechanisms or mechanisms of security. The analysis of the municipal organization, the

economic base and structure of urban finances as well as the attempt to discipline both urban

subjects and urban space also reveals a shared spatial ideology held by the colonial elite—an

ideology in the sense of an agentive, articulated expression of the way society should be

organized (J. Comaroff and Comaroff 1991b).

However, the tensions, conflicts, and improvisations seen in village and city governance

all speak to a great insecurity in maintaining adequate control of the colony—and not just on

behalf of the Crown, but also by the Church. The Inquisition itself is undeniably in response to

the great anxiety caused by the Reformation in Europe and the Crown’s deep involvement and

patronage of the Catholic Church cannot help but be influenced by these concerns. This deep

seeded anxiety is reflected in village and city governance that variously tries to discipline the

population through sumptuary and spatial reform, but with a clear focus on the urban space.

These disciplinary mechanisms function on a sovereign-subject axis through prohibitory laws,

which require a high degree of surveillance to operate effectively. In addition, one could easily

make the case that from the point of view of the Portuguese colonial elite, maintaining a

normalized system for the production and circulation of goods was in fact the raison d'etre of the

colony and critical to the success of all colonial factions. Therefore, there is a push and pull

between these disciplinary mechanisms and mechanisms of security that instead attempt to

establish certain norms of social interaction and production while maintaining necessary forms of

circulation between city and country.

In effect, the complex colonial milieu engendered a multitude of new social and spatial

categories requiring new forms of governance. However the spatial ideologies that become

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articulated in various colonial documents are very much built on “epistemic uncertainties” and

the anxieties of colonial rule (Stoler 2009)—generated in large part by the resistance and non-

conforming nature of the urban landscape at the heart of the colonial empire. In this respect, it is

then perhaps no mere coincidence that the construction of the outer fortification wall began in

1566. This date coincides with two major events in the history of Goa that speak to both the

need to discipline and produce proper Christian subjects within the colonial capital as well as the

need to control and maintain the circulation of goods in and out of the colonial capital. The first

event is the defeat of the Portuguese’s regional ally and major trading partner in 1565,

Vijayanagar, and the second is the previously mentioned first Provincial Council of Goa in 1567.

These events are indicative of the great insecurity experienced by the colonial elite

population concerning their lack of control of the political, economic, and social domains in the

region. And as I argue, the construction of the outer fortification wall is a dramatic spatial

response to this insecurity that reveals the government’s growing need to reform its own colonial

population as opposed to merely an outward-looking defensive structure concerned with

invasion. Furthermore, regardless of attempts to fashion proper colonial subjects and spaces in

the city, which were largely the result of the ideological separation of town and country, the

colonial administration was ultimately never successful in creating its ideal capital of empire. As

the following chapters demonstrate, the city itself—while greatly affected by practices of

Portuguese urban production common throughout its colonies—must also be considered in light

of the long history of South Asian urbanism in combination with the influence of spatial regimes

particular to the Konkan and southwestern coastal India in general.

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 Chapter 5

Performing the City: The outer fortification wall of Velha Goa and South Asian urbanism

...dom graça de Deos Rey de Portugal e dos Algarves daque dalem mar em Afriqua, Senhor de
Guiné, e da conquista, navegação, comercio de Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia, e da India.
(..by grace of God King of Portugal and of the Algarves on either side of the sea in Africa, Lord
of Guinea, and of conquest, navigation, commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia, and of India.) 1

In 1510, on behalf of the King of Portugal, Afonso de Albuquerque conquered Goa and

defeated the forces of the Adil Shah, ruler of the Bijapuri Sultanate. However, during the initial

period of occupation of Goa, there was a constant fear of reprisal attacks from the Sultanate and

other landward powers in the region. This fear was greatly exacerbated after the forces of all

five of the Deccan Sultanates combined to defeat the Portuguese’s primary trading partner and

regional ally, Vijayanagar, in 1565 (M. A. Cruz 1998). Having only a very small foothold in the

region and with limited manpower, the Portuguese initiated construction of a truly ambitious

defensive project in 1566: they began to build one of the longest fortification walls in all of Asia.

The purpose of this wall was to defend the new colonial capital from landward attacks and to

secure the empire’s position along the Konkan coast.

The construction of the wall would continue for almost 100 years and was originally

meant to surround the island of Tiswadi upon which the capital of their eastern empire, Velha

Goa, was situated. In spite of the waning threat from the Bijapuri Sultanate during the latter half

of the sixteenth century, the rise of other expansionary polities such as the Mughals and

Marathas as well as the arrival of the Dutch and later English continued to threaten the

1
Style taken up by the Kings of Portugal during most of the 16th century (e.g. da Cunha Rivara 1875, fasc. 2, 3).

170
Portuguese’s colonial holdings and capital city. These concerns seemingly providing the

impetus for the wall’s continued construction (Subrahmanyam 1998). However, the outer

fortification wall ultimately held little strategic defensive value and was a major financial burden

for the state, leading Santos and Mendiratta (2009) to characterize it as a disaster of military

engineering. Yet, regardless of the wall’s lack of military value, most scholarship focuses on the

structure as part of a comprehensive system of defense put into place by the Portuguese to

protect its colony (e.g. da Fonseca 1878, 148; M. J. G. de Saldanha 1925, 1:134–5; Santos and

Mendiratta 2009; Mendiratta and Rodrigues 2012; but see Rossa and Mendiratta 2011).

The construction of a fortification wall is always in some way part of a system of defense

that is intended to protect an interior space from the outside, and it would be rather myopic not to

consider the production of the wall in Goa as an obvious attempt to fortify the city from

invasions. Archeological survey, however, complicates this rather obvious association. It

reveals that the different phases of the wall’s construction showed marked changes in

construction techniques and design. These changes correspond to a series of pragmatic choices

based on the terrain the wall covers as well as evolving defensive engineering techniques.

However, these changes are also indicative of underlying ideological considerations that parallel

those discussed in the previous chapters. A fortification wall—especially one that surrounds a

city—provides a physical boundary between ‘the country and the city’; it demarcates the spatial,

legislative, and social boundaries of the city in very significant ways. This chapter thus argues

that the wall is a dramatic physical expression of the same underlying spatial ideology that holds

the city as a categorically separate space from the surrounding rural landscape—an ideology that

demarcates the urban/civilized/Christian landscape of the city of Goa from the

rural/uncivilized/non-Christian landscape of the village hinterland.

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 Moreover, the very different construction techniques and the form the wall takes—

especially during the second phase of construction—represent a performance of sovereignty that

materializes this spatial ideology. Significantly though, this performance would have been

equally recognizable to the Portuguese’s own colonial subjects as well as its geopolitical rivals in

the region (cf. Johnson 2002). As the previous chapter’s analysis of village and city

governance revealed, the expression of this underlying spatial ideology was complex, built on

uncertain knowledge, and resulted in at times very different strategies of governing both the city

and the country—strategies that often varied between disciplinary mechanisms and mechanisms

of security. With this in mind, I argue that in addition to its symbolic and performative

characteristics as part of an outward facing system of defense, the wall and its continued

construction provides materiel evidence for the great insecurity experienced by the colonial

administration in relation to governing its colonial population. The primary value of the wall lay

not in its defensive capabilities, but rather in the perceived ability for the colonial government to

more effectively monitor and in many ways discipline its own subjects (disciplinary

mechanisms). In addition, however, the form and function of the wall allowed for governance

aimed at establishing norms, maintaining circulations, and took into consideration both the social

and natural environment or ‘milieu’ that the wall defined (mechanisms of security). Thus, the

wall represents not only the dramatic material expression of underlying concerns of the colonial

elite, but it also represents a working out or compromise of sorts between these different

strategies of governance. In this regard, it could be considered an early experiment on the path

toward what Foucault (2007) terms ‘modern’ forms of governance.

The form of the outer fortification wall, what it encompasses, and its legibility as an

aspect of urbanism and sovereignty to neighboring South Asian polities, however, also provokes

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a consideration of the long history of urbanism in the larger region. The Portuguese colonial

administration was necessarily very aware of local centers of power, especially taking into

account the continuing tensions with the Deccani Sultanates, the later rise of other powerful

political actors in the immediate region (especially the Mughals and Marathas), and the many on-

going trading connections between Goa and the broader region despite these political tensions

(e.g. M. Alam and Subrahmanyam 2004; M. A. Cruz 1998; Subrahmanyam 1998). It is thus

more than likely that a consideration of the regional forms of sovereignty and control—including

its spatial correlates—would have been a concern of colonial administrators as they attempted to

understand how to most effectively rule their territorial holdings. Later colonial regimes such as

the British were of course notorious for collecting and codifying local knowledge to better

govern colonial subjects, as various scholars have discussed (e.g. Cohn 1996; Dirks 2001). As

reflected in my previous discussion of the Foral the Portuguese were no different, and in many

ways influenced later European colonial strategies.

At the same time, much of the population actually living in Velha Goa was native to this

particular region and would likely have been most influenced—in terms of habitual settlement

practices—by those common to the immediate hinterland surrounding the city. The complicated

nature of the urban landscape of Velha Goa, which includes the tensions and resistances to top

down elite ideologies of spatial form and practice explored in previous chapters, therefore argues

for an equal consideration of the influence of more local forms of settlement that dominate the

Konkan coast and southwest coastal India in general. Thus, this chapter will conclude with a

consideration of Velha Goa’s urban form in light of both contemporaneous urban centers located

elsewhere in South Asia as well as the local settlement patterns of the immediate surrounding

region.

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History of the wall’s construction.

The fall of the primary Portuguese ally in the region, Vijayanagara, to an alliance of the

Deccan Sultanates in 1565 increased the pressure on the Portuguese to strengthen the already

extant fortifications protecting the eastern passages onto the island. These passages were located

along the narrow Cumbarjua canal at Daugim (in the far northeastern corner of the island),

Gandaulim (known as the passo seco or dry passage), Banastarim (the primary crossing point to

the mainland), and Agassim (in the far south), and they represented the most viable routes onto

the island. Otherwise, invading forces would have to cross the much wider, deeper and swifter

Zuari or Mandovi rivers to reach the capital city.

In 1566 during the rule of Viceroy Antão de Noronha, the Portuguese initiated the

construction of the first section of the outer fortification wall, connecting the three northernmost

of these eastern passages. By 1581, the wall extended from Banastarim via Gandaulim ending

somewhere near the village of Daugim in the far northeastern part of the island and covered a

distance of nearly 5 km (Santos and Mendiratta 2009). By the end of the 16th century, another

stretch had been constructed heading south from Benastarim and ending at the village of

Assozim. At this point construction of the wall was halted for several years. According to

Santos and Mendiratta (Santos and Mendiratta 2009), sometime in the early 17th century for

somewhat obscure reasons the decision was made to abandon the final stretch of the wall south

to Agassim along the Cumbarjua canal, and instead turn the wall towards the northeast across the

middle of the island. Construction of this section of the wall began c.1615 and continued for

some years after, possibly until as late as 1660. It was built from the village of Assozim through

the jungle and over the Kadamba plateau before descending again toward the suburb of Panelim

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located on the banks of the Mandovi river east of Old Goa. However, it is unclear if the wall was

actually constructed the entire distance to Panelim or if the far northwest section between

Panelim and Bainguinim remained partially incomplete. After it was completed, the wall was

the most extensive perimeter wall built by the Portuguese in the entire world, stretching in total

over 22km—several times larger than the Linha Fundamental de Fortifcação built in Lisbon

after Restoration (Rossa and Mendiratta 2011, 388) (Fig. 5.1).

Fig. 5.1: Outer fortification wall and surrounding region

Dashed line: Outline of Tiswadi
Solid line: Outer fortification wall

As later Dutch blockades of Goa demonstrated, it was much more critical to effectively

guard the bar and river entrances to the capital rather than to protect against potential marine

invasions of the city from the south—the steep, hills and low-lying marshes that form the

topography of the southern part of the island of Tiswadi providing at least some natural obstacles

to the movement of troops and artillery. While landward invasions from the east were a

continuing and at times significant concern for the Portuguese, the rivers bounding Tiswadi again

provided relatively good protection. The only exception to this natural defense is the narrow and

175
often shallow Cumbarjua Canal that stretches along the far eastern portion of the island and

separates it from the mainland. However, the passes along the Cumbarjua Canal were well

fortified, and following the first phase of the outer fortification wall’s construction, a substantial

curtain wall connected these fortifications by the end of the 16th century. If the river entrances

were well protected, then this section of the wall would have provided for an adequate defense

from any landward invasion. However, by the time construction of the second portion of the

wall began, many parts of these older sections were already falling into disrepair (Santos and

Mendiratta 2009; Mendiratta and Rodrigues 2012). The Portuguese—always limited in military

personnel—also never had enough men to adequately man the wall in the first place 2. Thus, by

all accounts the continued construction of the wall was a financial and military disaster. It was

never strategically very useful and it put exceptionally heavy strains on the financial resources of

the colonial government at a time when there were mounting challenges to their economic

dominance in the region. This situation was amply demonstrated by the fact that during the

Maratha incursion into Goa from 1683–4 the wall proved to be all but useless (Rossa and

Mendiratta 2011, 392). So, the question beyond the simple defense of Velha Goa and

corresponding level of pragmatism in its construction, is why continue to build the wall over the

Kadamba plateau at all, and what more can be read into the pronounced changes in design and

form that occurred over the course of the wall’s contruction?

In this regard, it is important to remember that the Inquisition was officially established

in Goa in 1560, and that only one year after construction began on the wall in 1566, the city of

2
As noted in the previous chapter, during the period from 1604 to 1634, 25,000 Portuguese soldiers died in the
Royal Hospital of Goa (Malekandathil 2009b, 29; Pearson 1990). Also as Souza (Souza 2009, 86) argues, citing
numerous historical sources, “there were never at any single time during the seventeenth century more than a few
hundreds ready to take up arms at an emergency call.” This period corresponds to the second phase of the outer
fortification wall’s construction.

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Goa held its first Provincial Council. As discussed previously, the Provincial Councils along

with the Inquisition established the strict codes of proper Catholic action and comportment that

were especially enforced in the city proper. These actions speak to a growing sense of insecurity

and anxiety on the part of the colonial administration concerning their own colonial subjects.

Added to this concern were the a series of Dutch blockades of the port that first occurred in 1604

and then reoccurred yearly beginning 1636 (Alden 1996a, 175–6). These blockades had a great

economic impact on the colony and coincided with periodic and at times very severe outbreaks

of plague and cholera in the city. The result of these factors caused what Malekandathil (2009b,

29) terms a “mass exodus of inhabitants” from the city who were for the most part, however,

Portuguese natives. These changes allowed for various non-Portuguese and non-Christian

groups—particularly the Saraswat Brahmins—to begin monopolizing both economic and social

power in the city (Malekandathil 2009b).

It is significant that these issues of governance and insecurity with the colonial

administration correspond especially to the construction of the second phase of the outer

fortification wall. While it was arguably not very effective in its military applications, it is clear

that the wall served other important functions for the administration. These functions allowed

for the colonial government to discipline and observe its own colonial subjects, to maintain a

sense of security, and to control forms of circulation. Historical accounts make it clear that the

population moving into and out of the city underwent heavy surveillance by the colonial

administration. In his account of his stay in Goa during the beginning of the 17th century,

François Pyrard (1619, vol 2, 33–4) notes that each pass was equipped with a fort, a prison, a

captain, guards of soldiers, and a writer who keeps a register of every person leaving or arriving

177
on the island. This intensive monitoring of the population included physically marking colonial

subjects. Pyrard states:

All who leave the island for the mainland, for the purpose of trade or to get
provision—that is the Indians and Canarins of Goa, as well men as woman and
children—must go the captain of the Cidada (that is the city) and get each a ticket
or token. They carry this ticket wet with ink upon their arms, which are naked,
clapping it on there; then the officers at the gate see it, and after effacing it let
them pass, and each of the two places costs them a Bouseruque. On their return
they take the same token from the captain of the fort. By this means the ascertain
the number of people coming and going…All the passages bring in large
revenues, both from merchandise and from the large numbers of people passing
them. (Pyrard 1619, ibid.).

Other contemporary traveler’s accounts such as van Linschoten (1598, 1:180), report a

similar system, verifying Pyrard’s statements.

The large salaries paid to the captains of each fortified crossing further attests to

the importance placed on the surveillance and disciplining of colonial subjects as well as

the revenue gained from controlling the circulations of good s and people between

country and city. For example, the captain at Banastarim earned 60,000 reis and the

captain at Gandaulim (passo seco) earned 40,000 reis (Malekandathil 2009b, 23).

Souza’s (2009, 195) transcription of an official letter sent to King John IV of Portugal

also indicates that bodily searches were regularly conducted at the “toll booths.” All of

this data points the importance of both disciplinary mechanisms of governance and

mechanisms of security in regards to the functioning of the outer fortification that

included the physical separation of the country and the city—a claim supported by the

archaeological record.

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Survey methodology

While various primary and secondary sources cited previously discuss the construction and

extent of the outer fortification wall, most published contemporary studies have been largely

based on satellite-aided reconnaissance with limited amounts of ground-truthing (e.g. Mendiratta

and Rodrigues 2012; Santos and Mendiratta 2009). To-date no serious archaeological

expeditions have examined the current state of preservation of the wall, given a detailed

description of its construction and lay-out, or recorded its exact course through walking survey

and GPS aided mapping (with the exception of Wilson, Ambekar, and Pande (2013), which was

published based on the research discussed here, but see Rossa and Mendiratta 2011). Much of

the area surrounded by the outer fortification wall is currently enclosed behind modern

property/compound walls and vast amounts of the archaeological remains of the city lie

underneath coconut, cashew and mango groves or beneath large tracts of jungle. However, old

village revenue maps still show the wall passing through the villages of Panelim, Banguenim,

Goalim Moula, Carambolim, Corlim, Gandaulim and Ella (Daugim) with the wall often now

serving to mark village boundaries. These boundaries remain today, and portions of the wall are

visible on the recent state government’s 2021 development plan (Regional Plan for Goa or RPG-

2021) created in 2011 (e.g. Fig. 5.2).

These maps in combination with the most recent satellite imagery provide an operational

knowledge of the wall’s course but without specifics of form, construction techniques, and

preservation. Therefore, a survey methodology was employed that differed from that used in

surveying the relatively less know areas of the city (as discussed in previous chapters) because

the goal was to document a partially known archaeological entity rather than completely

unknown elements of the urban landscape.

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 Fig. 5.2: Land survey maps showing sections of the outer fortification wall
Both maps show the boundary of the village of Banguenim demarcated by still extant portions
of the outer fortification wall, which includes the same three bastions but with clear evidence
of structural degradation in the 2011 map.
Left: Map from the Office of Land Survey Records, 1904
Right: Map from the Government of Goa’s Regional Plan–2021 (Government of Goa 2011)
Therefore, the wall was divided into a series of survey areas labeled Area A to Area G for

convenience. These sections proceeded from easily visible sections of the wall to more

unknown, inaccessible, or otherwise less-visible areas. As with the survey of the interior of the

city of Goa, a Trimble ProXRT Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) receiver and Nomad G series

handheld was used to record the location of extant segments of the wall and any associated

features. A GPS point was recorded along each preserved section of wall in intervals of

approximately 10 to 20 meters, and at the center of any associated features unless otherwise

indicated. However, due to very dense tree cover and other vegetation, the accuracy of the GPS

recording equipment while vaiable averaged to within 1 meter. All existing segments and

features were further documented using standard archaeological recording methods. These

methods included detailed notes on the form, construction techniques, and preservation of the

wall as well as plan drawings of notable, well-preserved features and extensive digital

180
photography. All measurements were recorded using the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM)

projection for zone 43 north and all measurements were recorded in meters unless otherwise

indicated.

Survey Area A began near the gate of Navelkar Hill City where the National Highway

4A bypass (NH4A), which is the bypass road connecting Old Goa and Panaji, cut through a well-

preserved section of the wall visible from the road. Area A is located to the north of the NH4A

bypass and proceeded generally northwest towards Panelim through the Navelkar Hill City

property before all trace of the wall disappeared before the Kadamba plateau begins its descent

to the banks of the Mandovi River. Area B began south of the NH4A bypass and proceeds

generally southeast over the Kadamba plateau until reaching a small unimproved, dirt road that

bisects the wall. The road bisecting the wall stretches from theNH4A bypass to the Church of St.

Anne in Talaulim. Area C continued southeast and then east from the unimproved road that

connects to Talaulim and proceeds across the Kadamba plateau until reaching the Rajvithi where

a large gate still exists partially preserved. The Rajvithi is an old royal road connecting Old Goa

with Goa Velha (or Gopakpattanam) and functioned as one of the major gates allowing access to

the city. Area D proceeded from the gate on the Rajvithi to the southeast until the Kadamba

plateau drops down to the east towards the village of Azossim. All trace of the wall disappears

in the village of Azossim and the end of Area D marks the southernmost extent of the existing

portions of the outer fortification wall. Area E begins just to the east of the village adjacent to a

modern embankment formed by construction of the major north-south running rail line

connecting Old Goa to Margaon and it continues generally west and slightly north heading

towards the Cumbarjua Canal. This section of the wall proceeds across a low lying estuarine

landscape containing mangrove, rice paddy, and other agricultural fields ending at a small

181
partially preserved fort or outpost with a well preserved gate located in an area of high ground

known as Mangurial. Area F proceeds generally northwest from the fort at Mangurial passing

over NH4A (near the new Banastarim Bridge) and the old bridge (destroyed during the liberation

of Goa by India in 1961), which used to connect Tiswadi to the mainland at the Benastarim Fort.

This section ends just south of the Syngenta Chemical factory in Corlim village. Area G

proceeds north from the north edge of the Syngenta factory along the Cumbarjua canal passing

another main gate at Gaundalim until reaching the ferry at Daugim in the far northeast of the

island of Tiswadi (Fig. 5.3).

Fig. 5.3: Survey Areas A–G

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Survey results

While many portions have been destroyed by ongoing development, the archaeological

survey of the outer fortification wall revealed several significant features including its truly

monumental nature. In total, the wall covered approximately 22 km and enclosed a large area

that encompassed not just the urban landscape of the capital, but also large tracts of productive

agricultural space and several suburbs and small villages. The survey also documented 8 intact

gates (5 of which were small postern gates and three were large fortified passages), 42 bastions

of four different types, one large fort, and a wealth of other features such as earthen

embankments, battlements, and sophisticated drainages. However, the two different phases of

construction showed marked design differences and changes in construction techniques, which

correspond to both a series of pragmatic choices (based on the terrain the wall covers) and

advances in military engineering, but they also reveal the underlying ideological considerations

of the colonial government, as discussed at length in previous chapters.

Survey Area A B C D E F G
Construction 2 2 2 2 1 1 1
Phase
Approx. Width 1.8 1.8 1.8 1.8 2.5 2.5 3
of Wall (m)
Avg. Block 80-90 x 80-90 x 80-90 x 80-90 x 60 x 60 x 60 x
Dimensions 25-30 x 25-30 x 25-30 x 25-30 x 30 x 30 x 30 x
(cm) 35-40 35-40 35-40 35-40 25 25 25
Bastion Types 2 1 1, 2 1, 2, 3 4 4 4
Interior Y Y Y Y N N N
Reinforcement
Earthen N N N N Y Y Y
Embankment
Fig. 5.4:
This figure shows the relevant differences between the two phases of the outer fortification
wall’s construction. Survey areas A–D correspond to phase two lasting from 1615 to c. 1660;
survey areas E–G correspond to phase one lasting from 1566 to c. 1600.

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The differences in construction and design are notable in the width of the wall and the average

dimension of the laterite blocks used but are most significantly seen in the types of bastions, the

presence or absence of interior reinforcement, and the construction (or not) of the wall on an

earthen embankment (Fig. 5.4). While many other features of the wall’s construction were

recorded, they are either not germane to the discussion here or provided less secure data due to

preservation issues (for a full account of the archaeological data see appendix B).

In this first phase of construction

(Fig 5.5) much of the wall east of

Assozim is constructed on top of an

earthen embankment. The embankment

is necessary to provide a stable surface

on which to construct the wall in some

low-lying and inundated areas.

However, these ramparts

continue throughout much of the eastern

Fig. 5.5: Extent of wall after building phases 1
and 2
portion of the wall where they are not

essential for stability, and in some cases constitute a significant part of the defensive structure,

rising more than 4 meters in height. The early sections of the fortification wall lying east of

Assozim also contain only simple rectangular bastions, labeled as type-4 (Fig. 5.6). These small

bastions were between two and three stories high and were likely connected by a crenelated

battlement as indicated by some small well-preserved sections encountered in survey area G. In

addition, low lying inundated areas or the Cumbarjua canal itself were used to from a natural

moat along much of the wall. In appearance, the wall in this section thus resembles many

184
fortification walls built during the medieval period in Europe and corresponding middle period in

India.

The second phase of construction of the wall (Fig 5.5) beginning in 1615, however,

shows substantial changes in construction and layout. The wall is no longer built on top of any

earthen embankments, and is therefore often shorter, reaching on average a height of 3 plus

meters where preservation allowed measurement.

Fig. 5.6: Bastion types

Fig. 5.6: Bastion types
However, in many places these short walls

were fronted by a deep ditch created in

part by quarrying the laterite blocks used

to build the wall and in other places by

expanding preexistent sink holes. The wall

was also reinforced on the interior side by

evenly spaced walls that join

perpendicularly to the main fortification

Fig. 5.7: Bays along fortification wall

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wall and form a series of bays. These perpendicular walls provided a much greater stability and

strength to the structure as a whole (Fig. 5.7). This later, western portion of the wall also

contains completely different bastions documented as types 1–3 (Fig 5.6). The type-1 bastions

are particularly noteworthy because of their triangular shape. This shape is indicative of

evolving defensive engineering techniques influenced by Italian architectural designs and known

commonly as trace italienne (or fortificação abaluartada in Portuguese), which produced star

shaped fortifications and forts both in Goa and throughout Europe (e.g. Fig 5.8). This

architectural form resulted from the increased use of cannon during sieges, and was known for its

series of triangular shaped bastions, shorter, reinforced walls, and ditches (Kingra 1993; Lynn

1991). Significantly, this architectural innovation became one of the more influential

fortification designs in Europe during the early modern period—even influencing Renaissance

visions of the shape of the ideal city (e.g. Filarete’s fictional, star-shaped city of Sforzinda (Lang

1972)—something I will return to shortly.

Fig. 5.8: Fortifications in Goa similar to European, trace italienne styles

Left: Fort Aguada, which guards the entrance to the Mandovi River
Right: Survey area B with path of fortification wall in white

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 The differences noted between the early and later sections of the fortification wall are

arguably on account of multiple factors. From a pragmatic point of view the geological

formations upon which the wall is built dictate diverse construction methods and defensive

needs—for example the use of earthen embankments in periodically inundated areas. The wall

was also built over nearly a 100 year period. Therefore, more than one architect would have

supervised its construction, which would have easily allowed the incorporation of evolving

defensive engineering techniques and the modification of bastion forms. However, this does not

adequately account for the underlying reasons for the wall’s continued construction, especially

the later sections built across the middle of the Kadamba plateau.

Discussion

Rossa and Mendiratta (2011, 389) argue that the second portion of the wall is actually

more reminiscent of a medieval enclosure, rather than the more modern, bastioned perimeters

typical of trace italienne architecture (“lembra mais o das cercas urbanas medievais, do que o

dos pesados perímetros abaluartados modernos”). They make this claim based on the wall’s

slight nature and sinuous track, which follows the most favorable topography. In addition, they

note the lack of other classic features such as a double curtain wall with an embankment (“cotina

dupla com terrapleno”), large earthen works (“grandes movimentações de terra”), or evidence of

a moat (“evidência de fosso”) as well as the continued presence of “archaic” forms including

cylindrical bastions (Rossa and Mendiratta 2011, 389). However, archaeological survey argues

that despite the lack of some of the features typical of trace italienne there is a clear intent to

imitate this architectural style.

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 Specifically the characterization of this portion of the wall as ‘sinuous’ in nature is

somewhat questionable. With the aid of GPS mapping, it becomes clear that the second phase of

construction consist of a series of very straight, geometric segments set at angles to each other

(Fig 5.9). When the wall does directly follow topographical features in the western, second

section it seemingly does so only to take advantage naturally occurring sink-holes. These sink-

holes, and the previously mentioned pits that were quarried directly in front of the wall for

construction materials, serve the function of a dry moat in many places and would have made

any approach to the wall exceptionally difficult.

Fig. 5.9: Sections of wall built during the second phase of construction in survey areas B, C,
and the northernmost section of D
In addition, as Rossa and Mendiratta acknowledge, there are numerous triangular bastions.

These bastions are highly indicative of trace italienne influenced architecture, and in this case

are very regularly placed, often within approximately 200 meters of each other. Triangular

bastions were preferred over the ‘archaic’ cylindrical form because the triangular bastions did

not create ‘dead space,’ which allowed attackers to approach walls out of the line of fire (Kingra

1993, 433–4). However, an examination of the cylindrical bastions in this section revealed that
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they were almost always without dead space due to adjacent firing positions. In addition,

cylindrical bastions were predominantly associated with small postern gates, suggesting other

possible reasons of the continued use of this form.

Indeed, the outer fortification wall of Goa has a strong resemblance to the Italian

influenced fortification wall built around the city of Antwerp from 1542–1553. The wall

surrounding Antwerp was one of the earliest large-scale city walls “built according to the new

bastioned system” (Bertels and Martens 2006, 47) (Fig. 5.10).

Fig. 5.10: City of Antwerp c. 1572 from Braun and Frans Hogenberg's atlas Civitates orbis
terrarum, vol. I
The city of Goa does not have a directly adjacent, attached citadel seen in Antwerp (although the

nearby fort at Aguada is similar (see Fig. 5.8). However, the series of triangular, in-set,

rectangular, and rounded bastions as well as the enclosure of some tracts of agricultural space are

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rather analogous in both city walls. Considering the many trading ties between Portugal and the

low-countries in Europe, one would expect such influences. In addition, the wall surrounding

Antwerp covered only 5 km, unlike Goa’s nearly 22km long wall, so various differences due to

topographical and financial concerns would be expected.

Moving beyond somewhat reified concepts embodied by a modern-medieval dichotomy,

it is important to appreciate that the choice of bastion type—and architectural form in general—

is not simply a matter of utilizing the most current technical solutions. Rather a range of

practical, economic, and esthetic concerns are taken into account (Hirst 1997, 15). So, it is

perhaps more efficacious to determine what was the intent of the changes in construction beyond

simple advances in military engineering and their effectiveness. Why would the Portuguese

colonial administration choose to use–or at least gestures towards—these ‘modern’ designs in

constructing an otherwise useless defensive structure?

As Michael E. Smith (2007, 23) argues in his discussion of ancient cities, “Some walls

served a defensive purpose, some were primarily symbolic in nature, and many probably served

both purposes. In all cases, however, walls with gates served to channel the movement of people

in and out of the city.” As the defensive value of the walls surrounding the city of Goa was

decidedly limited, it is especially the latter two aspects of the nature of walls that are critical to

understanding the outer fortification wall in Goa. That is, the symbolic aspects of the wall and

the way that it channels people (and I would add goods) into and out of the city is critical to

understanding its continued production.

Concerning the symbolic aspects of spatial production, M. E. Smith (2007, 30)—

following Amos Rapoport (1990)—argues that particularly planned, monumental aspects of

urban spaces encode various “levels” of meaning that range from deep-seeded cosmological

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symbolism to the quotidian. However, it remains difficult to infer cosmological or “high-level”

meanings from monumental urban architecture without a rich historical record, but nonetheless,

architecture can reveal “the transmission of messages about identity, status, and power” (M. E.

Smith 2007, 34). By looking at the form, layout, size, etc. of monumental structures, scholars can

infer something about the power of the state and the intended social and political messages it

meant to convey (cf. A. T. Smith 2003). In M. E. Smith’s argument though, he is specifically

speaking about the interpretation of ancient cities, where inferring any cosmological, ‘high-level’

meaning to these same structures is largely speculative. However in the case of Portuguese Goa,

access to a rich historical record, as discussed in the previous chapter, allows for a nuanced

interpretation of the symbolic aspects of the outer fortification wall that points toward the

cosmological—an interpretation that includes the promulgation of deeply held spatial ideologies,

set within a long tradition of European thought, and that conceives of a civilized center set apart

from the uncivilized periphery. Therefore, the outer fortification wall of Goa reveals both

underlying spatial ideologies and the intended messages regarding power and identity that the

colonial elite meant to convey.

If considered along with the previous chapter’s discussion regarding the differing

conceptions and governance of the city and the country, it becomes clear that the continued

construction of the wall is a performance of a certain kind of sovereignty by the Portuguese

colonial government. As Hirst (1997, 15) states, “Artillery fortifications were regarded as a sign

of modernity, and . . . Kings and city councils took pains to enhance the experience of the

fortifications for the citizen or the foreign merchant passing through the walls.” Hirst (1997)

goes on to argue that this included not only geometrically shaped bastions but also large

impressive gates, which were the focal point of the circulation of the population between city and

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country. These same strategies are evident in the construction of the wall in Goa considering its

appearance (if not function), replete with triangular bastions and also monumental gates and

fortified passes (Fig. 5.11).

As the capital of the Portuguese empire, it was critical that the urban space was

representative of their political dominance of the region, one that buttressed the king’s claim to

be the “Lord of Guinea and of Conquest, Navigation, and Commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia,

and India.”

Fig. 5.11: Large gate in the outer fortification wall along Rajvhiti (royal road) heading south
towards the Zuari river Left: Picture of gate entrance; Right: Plan of gate

It is in this context that we can read the continued construction and the changing form of the

outer fortification wall. The changing nature of the wall to fit into the increasingly dominant

trace italienne type thus represents a very particular performance of sovereignty. Its

construction and form displays a physical domination and control of the landscape in terms

easily understood by other European powers, and indeed it makes gestures toward an ideal city-

type, which following Ifeka (1985) and Malekandathil (2009b), can be read as being bound up in

the later promulgation of the myth of Goa Dourada (Golden Goa) or the city as the ‘Rome of the

East’—something discussed in greater detail in the following chapter.

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 However, while the wall’s form is clearly articulated with European forms of

architectural authority, it must be understood that this type of landscape modification—or more

specifically the inscribing of political authority on the landscape (A. T. Smith 2003)—is

something that would have been very legible to indigenous inhabitants of both Goa and the

larger region (cf. Malekandathil

2009b). Asserting political

dominance through the destruction of

temples and other large-scale

landscape modifications is certainly

nothing new in South Asia and was

often a standard part of establishing a

new sovereign’s legitimacy (e.g.

Eaton 2000; Morrison 2013; Wagoner

2007). The walled city is itself also a

prominent feature in the millennia

long history of urbanism in South Asia

(Heitzman 2008a, 305; M. L. Smith

2003). Cities from at least as early as Fig. 5.12: Walled city of Bijapur (from Heitzman
2008, 68)
800 BCE were distinguished by three

features: fortification walls delineating political and mercantile quarters, monumental religious

architecture, and a “cultural orientation . . . linked to subcontinent- spanning trading system that

stretched from the Mediterranean to South East Asia” (Heitzman 2008a, 305)—something

clearly imitated in Goa. In addition, the region surrounding the city of Goa was replete with

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fortified cities with long histories such as Ahmadnagar, Vijayanagar, and Bijapur (the seat of

government for Goa’s rulers prior to the Portuguese) (Fig. 5.12).

More than just a sign post of sovereignty to foreign powers though, the wall is

representative of the concern of the Portuguese with its own subjects—especially the growth of

power within the city of Konkan merchants such as the Saraswat Brahmins and a general exodus

of casados and other Portuguese residents. As noted, the continued construction of the wall,

especially to south of the city, was all but useless from a military perspective. However, the wall

was exceptionally important for surveying the population coming into and out of the city as

indicated by the heavily monitored and fortified gates as well as the significant income generated

by charging tolls at the major passes. The colonial government was in effect able to police the

circulation of people and goods and (in the meaning intended by Michel Foucault) to discipline

the population entering the city. As noted previously, the construction of the wall also began

only a few years prior to the provincial councils of Goa and the beginning of the more strict

regulation of bodies and space as exemplified in the many sumptuary laws passed in the city.

In addition to these disciplinary mechanisms of governance, the wall also shows a

concern with mechanisms of security. Its primary function was to control the circulation of

goods and people and to thus maintain security in the colonial capital. In conjunction with the

various laws passed by the municipal government regarding social action and the production of

space, the colonial administration was clearly intent on establishing a normative, Lusitanized

urban landscape. The wall also indicates a growing understanding of the need to manage a

‘milieu’ which includes more than just the social landscape. Thus the wall also encompassed a

huge amount of agricultural space well beyond the city’s urban boundaries, and is equally

reflected in the Crown’s management of the village hinterland outside the walls, as discussed in

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the previous chapter. As Heitzman (2008a, 327) suggests, “the future of urban form would lie in

open cities with a radically altered security apparatus.” As the complicated history of managing

the surrounding village hinterland in juxtaposition to the city indicates, the physical and social

landscapes of the hinterland were highly resistant to the type of direct control and spatial reform

mandated by various colonial factions like the Catholic Church. The wall in some ways

responds to these tensions in colonial governance by making more strict enforcement of

disciplinary measures possible but also incorporating in part a notion of a more ‘open’ cityscape.

In Velha Goa, we thus see an early working out of the complex issues inherent in these

two conceptions of urban governance. There is a visible tension in the construction of the outer

fortification wall of Velha Goa that reveals the wall to be at once ‘modern’ and ‘medieval,’ to be

equally involved with both disciplinary and security based forms of governance. The wall was

certainly an attempt to alleviate the insecurity caused by a hinterland menaced by highly

permeable borders and the ever present threat of invasion. It clearly demonstrates the intentions

of a colonial government enmeshed with the Church that is almost by definition concerned with

individual souls and governed through a medieval structure. The form of governance largely

advocated by the Church is very much predicated on the what Foucault (2007, 65–6) calls the

sovereign-subject axis and by prohibitory laws, which work through a high degree of

surveillance (for example laws discussed previously that forbid the practice of Hindu-associated

practices). This is the case in the city, where the Portuguese could potentially have this type of

control due in part to the construction of the outer fortification wall, although total control of this

sort is never achieved in Goa—nor in any colonial setting.

Yet, we see a very pragmatic form of governance outside the city (at least by the Crown)

in terms of understanding the inability to achieve a more significant degree of direct control.

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Added to this lack of control was the need to govern a range of phenomenon related to

agricultural production and the provisioning of the city. This situation generated the need for

different forms of governance based on mechanisms of security. These forms worked to govern

the ‘milieu’ (again defined by Foucault (2007) as the range of social and natural phenomenon

that occur in a territory) and to establish norms of action that operate within acceptable limits.

Most critically this form of governance called for “circulations to take place, of controlling them,

sifting the good and the bad, ensuring that things are always in movement, constantly moving

around, continually going from one point to another, but in such a way that the inherent dangers

of this circulation are canceled out” (Foucault 2007, 65)—something that was equally facilitated

by the construction of the outer fortification wall.

It is equally noteworthy that the colonial government’s attempts to police and control its

population—especially in regards to the second phase of the wall’s construction—corresponds to

the beginning of the end of Portuguese dominance in the Indian Ocean and the supposed

ruination and decline of their capital city. Therefore, as the many changes in the urban landscape

of Goa during the 17th century suggest, the outer fortification wall was, ultimately, not very

successful in either its military or ideological functions—a point that the following chapter will

directly address. However, the production of this urban landscape, as intimated above, has

connections not just to forms of European urbanism and Portuguese colonial power but also to

locally derived South Asian urban places.

South Asian urbanisms

The tensions with and resistance to elite colonial imaginings of highly constructed,

civilized urban space in Velha Goa that was materially manifest by the outer fortification wall, is

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so often only compared to Luso- or Euro-centric understandings of urban history and

development. However, the millennia long history of walled cities in South Asia begs a

consideration of patterns of urbanism in Peninsular India. In addition, the nature of the highly

integrated urban agricultural landscape in the city proper (discussed in previous chapters) as well

as the almost completely disregarded non-elite, quotidian spatial practices within these spaces

(that as I discuss in detail in Chapter 6 become increasingly visible) also suggests parallels with

the local Konkan settlement patterns seen in the hinterland around Velha Goa but also in the

southwest coastal region of India as a whole. These somewhat contradictory patterns of

settlement allow for an insight into some of the underlying reasons why Velha Goa’s urban

landscape developed and declined in the particular ways that it did over the 450 plus years of

Portuguese occupation.

Somewhat contemporaneous with the rise and decline of Goa, the city of Surat is an

example of a largely similar trading entrepôt located in Gujarat. However, Surat was not

controlled by Europeans, and they were only one amongst many other, often more powerful

actors in the city (A. Das Gupta 1994). Surat is, like Goa, located a few kilometers inland along

the navigable Tapti River in Gujarat and was long a center of maritime trade. The city first

began to rise to greater importance, however, in the early 16th century under the Gujarati

Sultans. It maintained a prominent position in Indian Ocean trading networks until the first half

of the 18th century, especially after the Mughal empire under Akbar conquered and consolidated

power in Surat in the 1570s (Subrahmanyam 2000). The city itself contained a walled central

castle and the inner part of the city was originally surrounded by a wall with bastions (similar to

civil-ceremonial core area of Goa). In addition, the mint, customs house, and facilities of the

harbor master were located adjacent to the urban core along the river bank. Finally, enclosing

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the entire city, a much longer fortification wall was constructed in the early 18th century

(Heitzman 2008b, 94).

The city also exhibited very similar social configurations and spatial hierarchies as seen

in Goa: According to Heitzman (Heitzman 2008b, 94–5), the population consisted of a

cosmopolitan urban elite involved in trade, various religious and caste affiliations, smaller shop

owners, artisans, and laborers. Beyond monumental ecclesiastical and administrative edifices

such as the castle, the residences ranged from palatial homes to more modest abodes all fronting

the street and constructed of brick, lime, and mortar. However, the largest number of homes

occupied by the laboring classes consisted of more ephemeral mud cottages with thatched roofs.

Just as in Goa, these residences were often organized or arranged along religious or occupational

lines. Interestingly, many of these groups interacted with each other and the state through

councils of leading citizens (Heitzman 2008b, 95 also Pearson 1976), which could very loosely

be compared to the previously discussed Camara of Goa (i.e. the city council of Goa made of

leading citizens). With the many trading connections between these two cities during the 16th,

17th, and 18th centuries—not least of which were the prominent Bania merchants who had a

strong presence in both locales—it becomes clear that many social and spatial parallels existed

between the two trading entrepôts.

Perhaps an even more striking South Asian example than Surat are comparisons between

Portuguese Goa and the Imperial capital of their closest trading partner during the first half of the

16th century, Vijayanagar, particularly considering the outer fortification walls surrounding that

city. Vijayanagar was a large, wealthy city located on the Deccan plateau in what is now the

state of Karnataka. Trading contacts between the two are well attested historically by, in

particular, two first-hand accounts written by Portuguese traders arriving from Goa. The first

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penned by Domingo Paes c. 1520 and the second by Fernão Nuniz c. 1535 (Sewell 1900). These

accounts relate in varying detail the highly urban character and great wealth of this expansionary

empire’s capital city, which at one point controlled the entirety of south peninsular India (Sewell

1900, 1).

Beyond the historical records, the city has been the subject of a comprehensive and wide

ranging program of architectural and archaeological investigation that has documented and

partially verified some of the historical accounts of the city (e.g. Brubaker 2014; Fritz, Brubaker,

and Raczek 2006; Fritz and Michell 1987; Morrison 1995a; M. T. Lycett and Morrison 2013;

Sinopoli 1988; Sinopoli 1986). Brubaker (Brubaker 2004) in particular conducted an extensive

study of the defensive and military aspects of the urban capital. His investigation reveals that the

outermost fortification wall constructed around Vijayanagar is in many ways similar in intent

and function, if not in form, to the wall surrounding Goa discussed above—with the wall in Goa

actually being a much smaller example. Brubaker (Brubaker 2004, 194) notes that the

fortification wall surrounds 650 square kilometers, dwarfing the space encompassed by Goa’s

wall. In addition, the wall, and military architecture in general in Vijayanagar, was constructed

pragmatically to take advantage of numerous landscape features such as large boulders, steep hill

slopes, and bodies of water that accentuate its defensive capacities—what he describes as not

“fortifications constructed on or in the landscape” but rather “fortification of the landscape”

(Brubaker 2004, 198). In a very similar manner the wall in Goa also takes advantage of large

sink holes, naturally occurring boulders, and bodies of water.

The primary function of the outer wall according to Brubaker (Brubaker 2004, 135 ff.)

was not just to provide protection from invading forces but to also channel, control, and observe

developments both within and around the civil-ceremonial center of the urbanized region—

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known as the Urban Core and enclosed by its own smaller fortification. In addition the city of

Vijayanagar was located at the northern frontiers of its empire, and thus it seems likely that the

series of fortifications were also meant to perform a particular version of sovereignty and control

for the empire’s political rivals to the north as well as being highly functional. All of which

again, have particular parallels to Goa’s outer wall. Finally, the outer fortifications of

Vijayanagar protected both urban elements of the city and massive tracts of productive

agricultural land. It is clear through various processes of agricultural intensification and large

scale landscape modifications that agricultural space were highly valued and strategically

necessary for the city to maintain its dominance in the region (Morrison 1995a; Morrison 2013).

Thus the strategy of creating this comprehensive system of defense suggests that an

understanding of a milieu—in Foucault’s sense of circulations and the whole array of poltical-

ecological interactions—was implicit in imperial rule in Vijayanagar as well.

Beyond the wall, however, the urban elements of the city also suggest parallels to various

aspects of Goan socio-spatial practice. Both cities seemingly maintained symbolic control of the

landscape not just through military might and military infrastructure, but also through the

combination of impressive, monumental administrative and religious edifices in prominent

locations throughout the landscape. Walls having less military value in Vijayanagar also worked

in the interior of the city to separate various social, symbolic and legislative areas (Brubaker

2004). In addition, there were wholly agricultural zones interspersed with more formally

constructed aspects of the city, such as the agricultural zone located directly between the sacred

and royal centers that constitute the epicenter of the urban landscape (Fritz and Michell 1987).

In the urban core of the city there was also ample evidence for an equally cosmopolitan populace

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organized around various religious, caste, occupational, and class groups that worked within

varying levels of state control (Sinopoli 1988; Sinopoli 1993).

Even considering just these two examples it is clear that the form of urbanism observed

in Goa has numerous antecedents in South Asia. As discussed above, these parallels include the

very cosmopolitan nature of urban places and a corresponding spatial organization of social

groups along caste, occupation, and religious lines. It is also represented in the formal attributes

of urban design including the types of enclosed space and the similarly symbolic nature of the

fortification walls. In addition the close connection between ecclesiastical and political power so

prominent in Goa would have been widely recognized. Indeed, the political patronage and

central role of religious institutions was a common feature of urbanism amongst a multitude of

South Asian cities (Morrison 1995b; M. L. Smith 2006). Finally, the incorporation of tracts of

agricultural or garden space into urban environs also has a long history in South Asian forms of

urbanism, and these gardens go beyond simple production for personal consumption (e.g. Ali

and Flatt 2012; Habib 1996; Heitzman 2008a, 313; Wescoat 1996), These spaces were involved

with various social, economic, and political activities, including the production of medicinal

substances. As noted in Chapter 1, the benefits of medicinal plants and the circulation of these

substances was already a concern of the colonial administration (Walker 2001; Walker 2009) not

to mention other cash crops such as coconut, mango, and cashew.

These comparisons, together with a consideration of the outer fortification wall of Goa in

its symbolic and physical registers add further complications to an understanding of the form and

design of Velha Goa as being primarily Lusocentric in nature. That is, the form of the city and

its surrounding outer fortification wall was likely heavily influenced by other regional powers,

especially considering the previously mentioned long term, involved economic and political

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connections between colonial Goa and the rest of the subcontinent. In addition, as I have

discussed, the very pragmatic and improvisational nature of the colonial encounter would

suggest that the incorporation of locally derived urban spatial forms and practices would extend

beyond the already well-studied Indo-Portuguese architectural forms.

However, even in South Asian spatial imaginaries there is an inherent understanding of

the separation of the urban and the rural. As Narayani Gupta writes, “Writers in south India have

for centuries been quite clear that town and country were distinct” (N. Gupta 1991, 122 also S.

M. Alam 2011; N. Gupta 1993; Heitzman 2008c). He goes onto argue that there are clear

elements of urban design and organization with certain hierarchical divisions of space between

Brahmins and non-Brahmins and in relation to the central positon of temples as nodes of further

settlement. These South Asian modes of urbanism are not then, necessarily in opposition to

European understandings of urban space. As I have argued, similar understandings are at play in

Goa, which includes the nodal development of the city around particular large Catholic edifices,

and specifically in the ideological separation of the urban/civilized/Christian landscape of the

city as set apart from the rural/uncivilized/non-Christian landscape of the village hinterland.

Coastal western India: dispersed villages and integrated landscapes

While aspects of the urban form of Goa are likely influenced by its position within the

larger South Asian world, it is also necessary to consider the potential effects of the settlement

patterns of the region immediately surrounding the city, which are quite different from the types

of urbanism observed in other areas such as the Deccan plateau or Northern India more

generally. The type of common settlement common to the territory under Portuguese control also

indicates some of the reasons why there was a growing concern with the colonial capital as a

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representation of Portuguese power and control over the population (again materialized by the

outer fortification wall). In addition, this settlement pattern is critical to understanding some of

the reasons of for the placement of Catholic churches in such prominently visible positions

across the regional landscape and within the city itself.

In the New World, large population declines in the native inhabitants among other factors

resulted in a tabula rasa of sorts for Europeans to construct new settlements according to

specific European spatial ideologies. A primary example, seen most prominently in Spanish

contexts, are the laws for town planning contained in the Leyes de Indias (Law of the Indies)

(Crouch, Garr, and Mundigo 1982; Griffin and Ford 1980; Mundigo and Crouch 1977;

Stanislawski 1947). Some authors (e.g. R. C. Smith 1955) argue, though, that the Portuguese

settlements in the Americas did not typically follow the rational, Renaissance ideals mandated in

the Law of the Indies and instead developed without planning along earlier medieval lines—

although as discussed in Chapter 2 the argument for a lack of planning and regulation in

Portuguese overseas settlements has been widely critiqued (e.g. various essays in Araujo and

Carita 1998) . Regardless of these debates surrounding urban form in the new colonial

territories, both forms of settlement were predicated on the concentration of population around

official and/or ecclesiastical buildings and adjacent squares or plazas. These population centers

formed a recognizable administrative unit designated as a village, town, or parish. These

administrative units were necessary to define for the purposes of governance and revenue

collection, and they were predicated on similar socio-spatial formations in Europe.

However, the social, political, and natural landscapes South Asia did not allow for the

same types of colonial strategies employed in the New World. Specifically in the case of Goa,

the extant form of village settlement and administration combined with a lack of native

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Portuguese personnel (both military and administrative) presented great challenges to the

Portuguese colonial government. As Gomes (2011, 19) notes:

The fact is that these ‘villages’ did not correspond to their European-
Mediterranean image: they had no main or secondary squares with religious
buildings or noble dwellings presiding over them; there were no streets and no
aligned houses along street fronts. On the contrary, Portuguese and other
European observers were in agreement about describing the settlements along the
Konkan and Malabar coasts as devoid of urban form in European terms.

Rather, the settlements were highly dispersed with houses located in and amongst the fields on

high ground. Villages were administratively defined but not by spatially discrete

conglomerations of people surrounded by fields. As village boundaries were somewhat arbitrary

they often interrupted a rather continuous stream of human occupation. This pattern is not to

suggest that there was no organizing principle. Sometimes dwellings were grouped around

landmarks or shrines, which themselves are often associated with sacred pools or other features.

They were also, as in much of South Asia, often grouped by caste and profession (Gomes 2011,

20). Overall, this more dispersed settlement pattern existing outside of the coastal trading towns

is a common feature seen on the Konkan littoral as well as further south in Kerala (N. Gupta

1991, 125).

Therefore, there were not adequate population centers cum villages within which to

construct the classic village form with Church fronted by a plaza and surrounded by various

administrative and residential structures seen so often in the Americas. As Gomes argues (Gomes

2011, 18) the Churches are rather “landscape monuments.” That is, they are built on visibly

prominent locations that allow for a symbolic and visual domination of the region (cf.

(Malekandathil 2009b). More than just spiritual domination, these churches are also placed in

militarily strategic locations, allowing for a greater observation and control of the local populace.

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For example the Church of Our Lady of the Mount located at the eastern edge of the urban center

of Velha Goa is placed on a hill top were reputedly the Adil Shahi forces set up cannon to

bombard the Portuguese before they consolidated control over the city. Similarly, the Church of

our Lady of the Rosary is located on top of a hill opposite to Our Lady of the Mount at the

western edge of the city, and it is the location from which Albuquerque observed the initial

invasion of the city (Souza 2009).

The dispersed settlement pattern then both dictated the placement of Catholic churches

but also presented great challenges to the colonial administration’s understanding of how to

effectively rule a population without defined population centers other than the city of Goa itself.

This situation would have been especially problematic considering the continuous lack of

Portuguese military and other administrative personnel available to enforce colonial rule

amongst such a dispersed population, as discussed in previous chapters. The tension caused by

these challenges to colonial rule suggest some of the underlying reasons for the importance of

demonstrating control in the colonial capital and in defining a legible landscape upon which to

inscribe this control.

Thus the cityscape of Velha, while certainly being modified and in many ways defined by

Portuguese ideals of urbanism, is not without potentially deep influences from both the local

Konkan region as well as wider South Asian forms of urban spatial production. It is likely that

these regional influences played a larger role in the constitution of urban space in Goa, especially

considering the underlying urban infrastructure from the original city, which was most recently

ruled by the Adil Shahs from their capital city in Bijapur on the Deccan plateau. Despite these

influences though, it is the more dispersed from of settlement that comes to dominate the urban

landscape of Goa. That is, the Konkan pattern of dispersed residence amongst the fields is the

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successor to the failed colonial administration’s interventions into the urban landscape of Velha

Goa, and it is the resurgence of this form of occupation that ultimately questions the narrative of

decline, abandonment, and death of the city—which is the subject of the following and final

chapter.

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 Chapter 6

The Ruins of Empire? Reassessing the decline and ruination of Velha Goa

“All the rest is a vast solitude, a very few retched huts being only to be found, and at great
distances from each other . . . In certain places these walls are perforated and a hut is raised
behind of mud against it, which serves to lodge a miserable family.”
(Cottineau de Kloguen 1831, 53)

“Eis a cidade morta, a solitaria Goa!

Seis templos alvejando entre um palmar enorme!
Eis o Mandovy—Tejo, a oriental Lisboa!
onde em jazigo regio immensa gloria dorme.”
(First stanza of a poem written by Thomaz Ribeiro in 1870 as quoted in Mendes 1886, 1:151)

“The first glance around convinced us that we were about to visit a city of the dead, and at once
swept away the delusion caused by the distant view of white-washed churches and towers,
glittering steeples and domes . . . Everything that met the eye or ear seemed teeming with
melancholy associations; the very rustling of the leaves and murmur of the waves sounded like a
dirge for the departed grandeur of the city.”
(Burton 1851, 58–9)

Introduction

These evocative descriptions of Goa written in the 18th century encapsulate the dominant

historical narrative of the city’s decline and ruination, which began in the latter half of the 17th

century. However, they also point toward the continued existence of an urban underbelly, of

slum-like conditions, and the people and semi-illicit economies that are familiar parts of so

called urban blight and decay today. These quotes ask us to reconsider what socialites may have

existed in this colonial capital of empire after the seeming failure of the elite population to

maintain such a symbolically important urban landscape. In light of these failures, how might

the historical record elide or disguise more quotidian, non-elite forms of spatial practice? Has the

city truly become ruined and abandoned, or is it more the European forms of spatial practice that

declined, leaving a less historically visible subaltern population?

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 In the previous chapters of this work I have focused largely on elite spatial ideologies and

the production of urban space. Elite ideologies are imminently more accessible in the archival

record since they are, by and large, produced by elite members of society for their own varied

purposes. However, I have also worked to indicate how archaeological evidence begins to

challenge and destabilize various historical assumptions that are made regarding the production

of urban space in Goa. Here—while I still necessarily use elite spatial ideologies to

contextualize the archaeological evidence—I turn away from the production of the urban

landscape and instead focus on the city’s decline. The decline of this colonial capital of empire

reveals the failure of these elite conceptions of urbanism and the reassertion (or more accurately

revelation) of vernacular, locally derived spatial practices. As Shannon Dawdy (2010, 773)

states, “Ruins and vacant lots clear away the clutter that masks historical processes and the verve

of urban life...The built environment and its clunkier accessories are demoted from their

seemingly deterministic role when transformed into ruins, leaving us freer to see the

archaeological evidence as signs of human improvisation rather than human design.” In this

way, the period of decline shows the success of alternative forms of spatial production that

questions—or at least makes us qualify—what is meant by the notion of urban decline and decay

that is so prevalent in both the primary and secondary historical literature on the city of Goa.

The ‘ruined’ urban landscape of Goa provides evidence for a dynamic, continuously

occupied urban space that was modified, preserved, and reused in ways that are indicative of

both the influence of several hundred years of colonial occupation as well as evolving, locally

conceived settlement patterns. It is at its core a landscape of improvisational and pragmatic use

that captures both elite and non-elite responses to changing environmental, economic, and social

realities.

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 This chapter will first engage with both the imagination and descriptions of the ruin that

the city of Goa has become—a city that becomes known as Velha or Old Goa after the rise in

importance of the new capital Pangim (Nova Goa) a few kilometers downriver. Next, I will

examine the archaeological evidence of this ruin that includes: the evidence for the preservation

of vast pieces of urban infrastructure for agricultural purposes; the reuse and repurposing of elite,

administrative, and ecclesiastical structures; and the evidence for forms of vernacular, non-elite

spatial production and consumption that continues into the present day. Finally, I will reassess

the historical literature in light of these data pointing toward changing elite strategies of

domination and governance. Following Ann Stoler (2008, 194), “The focus then is not on inert

remains but on their vital refiguration. The question is pointed: How do imperial formations

persist in their material debris, in ruined landscapes and through the social ruination of people’s

lives?” Stoler’s (2008, 196) focus is decidedly on how the process of ruination “lays waste” to

both material and social lives, arguing that ruination is a critical vantage point that allows us an

entrée into what counts as imperial ruins and how they can be/are appropriated into

contemporary politics.

In my argument, I build on this reconstitution/refiguring of ruins and ruination but work

to show the productive reuse of supposedly ruined urbanscapes and the resistance to colonial

forms of domination (cf. Dawdy 2010, 787; Gray 2012; M. T. Lycett and Morrison 2013; Mayne

and Murray 2001; Morrison 2014). I suggest that the creation of the image of Goa Dourada

(Golden Goa) and the ‘Rome of the East, mentioned in the previous chapter, and the related

narrative of ruination surrounding Velha Goa is in fact a myth within a myth—or rather a myth

built upon another myth—which both lays bare an ideology of proper, colonial urban landscapes

as it works to conceal failures of colonial policy and governance. The first myth was the

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creation and fostering of the romantic image of a ‘Golden Goa’ or the ‘Rome of the East’ by the

colonial government. These images worked to establish and promulgate the image of an urban

landscape that—even at the zenith of Portuguese colonial power—never wholly existed. The

second myth was the subsequent discourse of ruination and ‘death’ of the capital city. It was not

dead; it was only the European aspects of spatial production that became ruined and the

Europeanized population that fled.

Moreover, the constitution of Velha Goa as a ‘ruin’ in its later days represents another

attempt to forcefully and violently appropriate space; ruins are not just found but made (Stoler

2008, 201). When a place is established as a ruin it becomes an object through a similar process

to those discussed in chapter two in reference to mapping colonial empires. That is, the city

becomes defined and codified in ways that both create a seemingly stable entity as it erases other

possible points of view. As a ruin undergoes this process of definition it fixes the temporality of

the place to a single point thereby erasing (or worse criminalizing) any subsequent/current use or

reuse of the space—something seen in part in the laws surrounding UNESCO World Heritage

sites (Gordillo 2014). As I demonstrate for Velha Goa, this temporal fixing attempts to erase and

delegitimize the non-elite socialites that remain (and were always present) in this former capital

of colonial empire.

While there is clearly a decline in urban population and much of the formal architecture

disappeared or was partially destroyed, there was still a vibrant population living in more

vernacular structures, modifying and tending the urban space in productive ways. These varied

forms of spatial production still included administrative and ecclesiastical aspects of colonial

domination such as plantation agriculture and its associated labor, but they also speak to a very

Goan from of socio-spatial life seen more typically in the region as a whole. Velha Goa retained

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specific characteristics of its more Europeanized forms of urbanism, but the overall settlement

pattern became more dispersed with informally built structures scattered around the productive

aspects of the landscape, thus becoming more integrated with the always present forms of urban

agriculture in the city. As seen in chapter two and three in the context of mapping and urban

infrastructure, archaeological data reveals here that the type of urbanism suggested by the myth

of Goa Dourada was literally a façade. This façade began to crumble beginning sometime in the

late 17th century, allowing for the reassertion of settlement patterns common throughout the

region, and these changes to the urban landscape were unacceptable to the colonial elite

population and administration. After several failed attempts at revitalization in the late 1700’s,

they eventually legislated the failed capital into a ‘ruin’—formalizing the role of Pangim as the

new seat of colonial administrative power in 1843, but at the same time keeping Velha Goa as an

official part of that capital—thereby maintaining the city’s romantic and symbolic references to

the past glories of the Portuguese Empire (Faria 2007, 73).

Imagining a ruined city: The history and imagery of a ruined capital—“Quem viu Goa não

precisa de ver Lisboa” (Whomever has seen Goa need not see Lisbon) 1

The maxim regarding Goa and Lisbon as well as other epitaphs such as Goa Dourada

(Golden Goa) or the Rome of the East, embody an image of Goa that is reproduced by its

designation as a ruin and were propagated largely through travelers’ accounts, in the poetry of

such well-known works as Luís Vaz de Camões’s 1572 epic Os Lusíadas, and by the colonial

government. These spatial imaginaries picture a gleaming, urban landscape full of the riches of

colonial trade in the ‘Orient,’ but also a landscape that is as European and Catholic as it is full of

1
Common aphorism associated with the city of Goa from at least the early 17th century (e.g. da Fonseca 1878;
Pyrard 1619).

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exotic goods and peoples. As Malekandathil (2009a, 32) argues, “The intent was to keep the

scattered and dispersed Portuguese residents of different Lusitanian enclaves of Asia moving

towards the power centre for the purpose of strengthening its Lusitanian social base...” These

images were thus used to encourage specifically Portuguese casados (married settlers) to remain

in the city and to instill both a sense of the greatness of the city of Goa and a loyalty to it as the

heart of the Estado da Índia. By maintaining Velha Goa as an official part of the colonial capital

in 1843, the administration could continue to draw on these symbols of past glory.

The image of Goa Dourada was also engaged with a notion that went beyond the

characterization of the city itself as the great, prosperous and rich capital of empire. It also

imagined a great harmony within the social landscape of the colony, with racial and class

divisions happily accepted by all and drawing on notions of the “happy savage” (Ifeka 1985,

187). Ifeka (1985) argues that the notion of Goa Dourada was thus a tool of colonial domination

that worked to create an image of an integrated but ultimately Catholic and Portuguese

dominated landscape. Despite being a legacy of colonial rule, the romanticized image of Goa

Dourada has remained a consistent part of the conceptualization of Goa into post-colonial

times—especially by elite portions of society. Today the image continues to be capitalized on by

the tourist industry, and it is even appropriated by upper caste members of society to either

justify their sometimes exploitative position in society or to harken back to a better, ‘golden’ era

where they enjoyed an even greater social, political and economic supremacy (Perez 2012, 23;

Souza 1994b, 69–70; Trichur 2013).

However, these images first arose at a time when the Portuguese were beginning to

experience significant challenges to their domination of Indian Ocean trading networks by the

Dutch and English as well as by the rise of both Maratha and Mughal powers to the north

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(Disney 2009). The city also experienced significant episodes of plague beginning in the latter

half of the 16th century and continuing into the 17th century. Malekandathil (Malekandathil

2009a, 29) notes that the plague of 1625 in Goa was particularly severe and that in 1639 even the

Viceroy Pedro da Silva succumbed to an outbreak. In addition, the Dutch began yearly

blockades of the port from 1636 to 1644 (Blusse and Winius 1985; Boxer 1991). Goa was

always somewhat dependent on the importation of goods, especially rice, to feed its urban

population, and these blockades had serious effects on the wellbeing of the urban population:

starvation and famine were not uncommon during this period (Pearson 1990, 166; Souza 2009,

83). The notion of Goa Dourada would continue to surface particularly whenever the colonial

government faced challenges to its colonial rule or political legitimacy (Perez 2012, 31).

Thus, the image of Goa as a golden, paradisiacal metropolis—even during its period of

economic and political dominance in the region—can obviously not be taken at face value.

However, the dissemination of this image remains significant because it reveals the continued

symbolic importance of the capital to the Portuguese colonial administration and the underlying

spatial ideology of the elite factions of society. This image was promulgated throughout Europe

with the publication of several maps that showed Velha Goa at the height of Portuguese power in

the region during the 16th century. Many of these maps were based on or directly copied from

the famous Linschoten map of 1595, and they depict a large prosperous, Europeanized city.

Moreover, they were continually reproduced despite the changes in the urban landscape that

began in the 17th century and thus reinforced the romantic myth of the great colonial capital. 2

2
For a detailed discussion of the production of the maps depicting Goa see Chapter 2, and for a detailed discussion
of archaeological evidence that complicates this view of the city, see Chapter 3. Chapter 3 shows that the urban
landscape in part conformed to the spatial imaginaries encapsulated by the maps but that these images elided the
non-elite, often locally derived forms of spatial practice. In addition, Chapter 3 reveals the great amount of ‘rural,’
agriculture practices that constituted the bulk of the supposedly built, urban landscape.

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 The historical record indicates, though, that a concern with the more unruly, vernacular,

and non-conforming aspects of the urban landscape eventually became a great concern to the

Portuguese administration, but only after there was a substantial decline in the Portuguese and

more Europeanized populations in Velha Goa. In addition to the outbreaks of plague and

declining revenue just mentioned, the city was nearly invaded by the Marathas in 1683.

According to several accounts of this period, these events caused the “more opulent families” to

leave the city and the general ruination of private residences increased (da Fonseca 1878, 173ff).

In light of this continuing elite abandonment of the city, a parallel discourse to the myth of Goa

Dourada developed that began to suggest that the once great city of Goa was becoming

abandoned and falling into ruin during the latter half of the 17th century.

Immediately following the attack by the Marathas, the image of a ‘dying’ city was

bolstered by the then Viceroy the Count of Alvor’s plan to move the seat of government to

Mormugão (a coastal enclave several kilometers south of Velha Goa). The plan proceeded in fits

in starts with some progress made on the new city, but it was finally abandoned in 1712 due to

the resistance of various colonial factions, particularly the Church who maintained several large

establishments and were still firmly entrenched in the old city (da Fonseca 1878, 176). The

attempt to transfer the capital though, gave many of the more affluent residents the needed

justification to fully abandon and pull down and their larger stone homes. Many of these

wealthier families had in many cases already left for suburban and country estates but were

required by law to maintain their homes in the capital. These purposeful acts of destruction had

the result of contributing to the European vision of a ruined, desolate cityscape. Fonseca (1878,

177–183) cites numerous British, French, Dutch and Portuguese accounts from the late 17th

century through the late 18th century that remark on the decay of the more formal aspects of

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urban architecture, which often juxtaposed the “heap of ruins” (181) in the capital to the more

splendid villas in neighboring villages and suburbs. These accounts clearly reveal the bias in

nearly every description of the urban space in the historical record toward the grand, stone

constructions comprising elite residences, ecclesiastical structures, and administrative buildings.

While certainly the city population had declined and more formal, residential

architectural features had fallen into ruin, the symbolic importance of the city Goa remained

owing to its continued position as the administrative capital of the eastern empire. Thus, during

the period of his great influence over the Portuguese Crown in the latter half of the 18th century,

the de facto ruler of Portugal the Marquis of Pombal ordered in 1774 that the city be revitalized

(A. B. de B. Pereira 1931, 164). Work began following plans drawn by José de Morais Antas

Machada, a military engineer employed by the colonial administration. These plans and

subsequent communication between the Crown in Lisbon, city officials, and engineers make it

clear that the focus of this revitalization was on the production and rehabilitation of elite

residences and formally constructed stone architecture. Revitalization also included the

systematic demolition of larger edifices thought to be beyond repair and the clearance of

particular forms of native vegetation (C. A. D. da Costa 1931; Mendiratta 2011). In nearly all of

these accounts, however, non-elite forms of spatial production and practice are omitted with the

exception of blanket statements about the depravity and poverty of the residents—something I

will return to below.

As mentioned in Chapter 2, ideas arising from the Enlightenment in Europe greatly

influenced the Marquis of Pombal, and these sentiments were reflected in the envisioned

rationalization of urban space seen in the maps produced by Machada for the planned

revitalization (Fig. 25, Chapter 2). In addition, the correspondence concerning these plans reveals

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a deep concern with health and forms of circulation, as well as the unacceptable encroachment or

appearance of wild, unkempt, and natural aspects of the rural landscape (C. A. D. da Costa 1931,

104). These plans are thus firmly entrenched with European imaginings of proper urban space

and governance elucidated by Foucault (2007) and discussed in detail in Chapter 1: The concern

with mitigating health risks, opening up the city, widening streets, and facilitating circulations

are all indicative of governing through mechanisms of security as well as changing post-

Enlightenment understandings of urban form. Moreover, the continued attempts to maintain the

city, which included the Crown mandating elite residents to return to Velha Goa as part of the

revitalization plans, also clearly demonstrate the symbolic importance attached to the capital. As

the center of Portuguese power in Asia, the Crown and colonial administration still envisioned

the city as a place that is (or at least should be) set apart from the rural, natural, and ‘heathen’

landscape of the countryside—as detailed in Chapters 4 and 5.

Added to the continued administrative and political importance of the city of Goa, the

city remained the center of Catholic power in Asia. The massive Catholic churches were some

of the only well-preserved monumental structures that were maintained in the city after the

political and economic decline of the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean—although many were

ruined as the Christian population fell throughout the 18th century. However, by the 19th century

the ruination of the urban landscape was supposedly complete—especially after 1835 when the

religious orders were repressed in the empire as the Crown pulled away from its close

association with the Catholic Church (da Fonseca 1878, 189). The suppression of the orders

sealed the fate of many of the still preserved pieces of monumental architecture in Velha Goa,

and the most dramatic aspects of European urbanism, the large Catholic churches, were mostly

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abandoned and fell into disrepair (Fig. 6.1).

Fig. 6.1: Façade of the Augustinian Church (Our lady of Grace) just prior to collapse in 1931
and in 2012 (left photo by D’Souza and Paul, right photo by author)

It was largely this landscape of ruined and partially ruined churches that motivated

European travelers to visit the city in the late 18th and 19th centuries, and these churches still

draw numerous tourists today. As reflected in the quotes at the beginning of this chapter, these

travelers maintain that the city was nearly deserted, ruined, and dead during this period—often

invoking melancholy, romantic notions of ruined places prevalent in various European literatures

of the time (e.g. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s much cited poetic reflection on the collapse of empires,

Ozymandias). In light of all of these developments, the administrative capital of the empire was

officially moved to the new city of Pangim in 1843 (located several kilometers down river and

known as Nova Goa).

Before the suppression of the religious orders, however, the Church and Crown began to

foster the increasing popularity of the feast of Saint Francis Xavier after his beatification in 1619

and canonization in 1622 in order to continue the movement of the “dispersed elements” of both

Portuguese and Christians toward the center of political and ecclesiastical power for the Empire

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(Malekandathil 2009a, 32). Pilgrimages were often sponsored to the Basilica by the colonial

government and St. Francis Xavier was declared Defender of the East and patron saint of Goa.

The colonial government even helped to circulate rumors that as long as St. Xavier remained in

the city it could not be conquered, and many claimed that this power was confirmed by the

seemingly miraculous events that caused the Marathas to withdraw from the gates of the city in

1683 (Malekandathil 2009a, 33). The popularity of the festival for Xavier was revived with a

new exposition of the saint’s remains in 1859, which to this day reside in the Basilica de Bom

Jesus in Velha Goa and are processed to the Cathedral and openly displayed every ten years

(Mendiratta 2011).

The festival of St. Xavier would become more and more politically important for the city

of Goa as Portugal attempted to hold on to its colonies. Especially at the twilight of the

Portuguese Empire in the late 19th and early 20th century, the celebrations became an excuse to

again try to push back the encroachment of the natural landscape and funnel people to the former

capital. Numerous colonial reports note the attempts to clear vegetation from the buildings and

streets. In addition, monumental structures were variously demolished or repaired (especially if

related to or used during the festival for St. Xavier). Many of the demolished structures,

however, were partially preserved leaving symbolic elements such as the votive cross or building

façades. Several of these preserved and partially preserved structures are visible in sketches in

Lopes Mendes’ 1886 work, A India Potugeuza (Fig. 6.2) (for an excellent and detailed outline of

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the “undoing of Old Goa” see Mendiratta (2011)).

Fig. 6.2: Pelourinho Novo in 1886 and in 2012

The festival is very much bound up with the now mythologized image of Goa Dourada,

and it is equally symptomatic of the spatial ideology that holds the city and erstwhile capital of

empire as a place apart from the rural, non-Christian hinterland. In this case, the rural, ‘heathen’

hinterland is metaphorically intertwined with the vegetation growing amongst the urban ruins

that must be cleared to make way for the return of the civilized, Christian population to the

symbolic heart of the Catholic, Portuguese Empire—a center now cast as a romantic ruin of a

bygone and glorious age. The continued references for the need to mitigate the now ruined city’s

rather insalubrious nature and to clear unwanted, unseemly vegetation continue almost unabated

from the revitalization plans of the 1770’s until the 20th century.

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 Even as late as 1949 a plan was published for the sanitation of the old city (“saneamento

da Velha Cidade”) (Dias 1949). This document, written by Col. Doctor Victor Dias who was the

Director of Health and Hygiene Services (Director dos Serviços de Saúde e Higiene), included

references to the necessity of rehabilitating the city because of its symbolic importance to not

just the Portuguese state but also to the world in general. The image in part painted by this

document suggests that the ruined city not only contains admirable monuments to Portuguese

colonialism (“O Monumento admirável da Colonização portuguesa”) but that the city of Velha

Goa is also a testament to how Goans, under the influence of Christianity, overcame the

discriminatory nature of the caste system so prevalent in the rest of India (Dias 1949, 9). 3 As do

the 18th century plans for revitalization, this plan calls for improved circulations and sanitation

through the clearance of vegetation, the capping of many extant wells, and the demolition of

walls and unused ruined structures (Dias 1949, 27-8). Clearly these sentiments and plans draw

on the vision of Goa Dourada that began circulating several hundred years earlier. In addition,

the festival of St. Xavier remains popular to this day, and it still generates a partial

rebuilding/revitalization of the urban landscape, which works to mimic the past urban,

commercial, and cosmopolitan nature of the city by again clearing vegetation and recreating a

large market—albeit now for only the very short duration of the feast.

In the end, the attempts at revitalizing the urban landscape were only marginally

successful in saving or rehabilitating the capital from its ultimate ‘ruination.’ It never became

3
While a full discussion of this document is beyond the scope of this chapter, we must consider that this report was
written at the end of the colonial period, when Portugal was trying to hold on to its colonies in light of increasing
international pressure from the new nation state of India as well as many other countries. It is thus not surprising
that this official document praises the colonial past and its achievements as well as the great harmony of the
Portuguese state in India. At this time the Portuguese were cracking down on anti-colonial rhetoric and imprisoning
those expressing anti-Portuguese sentiments (Kanekar 2011), so these ideas may indeed not reflect the personal
views of the native Goan author Col. Dias. However, they certainly reflect the socio-spatial ideologies propagated
by the colonial administration and the Portuguese state.

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the model of enlightened Portuguese and European urbanism envisioned by the Marquis of

Pombal, and the urban landscape maintained its curving, nonlinear street pattern replete with

large tracts of overgrown agricultural/garden space and vernacular architectural forms. Rural

nature continues to encroach on the ruined urban landscape as evidenced by the periodic calls for

its removal during celebrations of the city’s ‘golden’ past. As discussed above, however,

systematic demolition of monuments and attempts at preservation did occur. But, after the

Pombaline era plans for revitalization in the late 1700’s, the focus clearly shifted to maintaining

the symbolic aspects of monumental, elite urbanism rather than a true rebuilding of the city as an

urban capital. The maintenance of these aspects of the urban landscape and the discourse

surrounding them—encapsulated by Dias’s 1949 plan—worked to instill a sense of a shared,

culturally and racially harmonious colonial past that capitalizes on the Goa Dourada image.

These visions of cultural heritage are now enshrined by Velha Goa’s status as a UNESCO World

Heritage site. Yet, it is interesting to note that there is a general lack of discussion of institutions

and colonial events such as the Inquisition amongst the heritage ruins in Goa. One wonders if

this might take away from the still prevalent (and increasingly lucrative) romantic notions of an

urban, Catholic ruin rising majestically out of the peaceful palm groves...?

Recontextualizing Ruination:

To get beyond—or at least complicate—the dominant narrative surrounding Goa

Dourada and the ruination of the city, it is essential to critically assess both the socio-economic

and material processes happening on the ground in the capital during the beginning of the city’s

decline. However, only a very few historians and no archaeologists have focused on the period of

decline with most studying the heyday of Portuguese power, perhaps unwittingly reinforcing the

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idea of a ‘golden’ era. During the 17th century—the beginning of the supposed downfall of the

city—there was in fact a great increase in both the power and presence of local, often Hindu,

factions within the urban landscape despite the general exodus of Portuguese elites. As noted in

the previous chapter, the outer fortification wall surrounding the city was in part a response the

influx and growing economic dominance of Saraswat Brahmins and Vanias, allowing for the

observation and disciplining of the Crown’s own colonial subjects.

As (Malekandathil 2009a, 30–1) demonstrates, various local merchants were increasingly

settling down in the city and taking important economic roles from as early as the 1630’s,

becoming leading bankers and controlling various aspects of customs (also Trichur 2013, 47).

Pearson (1990, 151) documents the financial decline of seaborne trade and the increasing

reliance on land based estates and agricultural production in the 18th century (also Steensgaard

1985b). In addition, Pearson (1990, 154) argues that by 1700 the urban elite were mostly of

Indian origin. Many of these elite, Indian merchants were involved in local and intra-Asian

maritime trade as well as the increasingly lucrative overland routes leading through the Ghats (as

opposed to European trade in high value commodities) (Pinto 1996). This trend would continue

into the 18th and 19th centuries with Hindu financial support derived from the Saraswat Brahmins

and Vanias largely propping up the Estado da India (Pinto 1990).

While these historical studies in part question the nature of decline experienced by Goa,

they are necessarily focused on the economics of these processes because of the evidence

available in the colonial archives. 4 Trichur (2013) on the other hand notes a post-colonial and

class based reaction to the image of Goa Dourada by both historians and lower caste individuals.

4
Although see Gomes (2011) who complicates the notion of a city in decline through his excellent analysis of the
construction of churches in Goa. In particular, he notes that many of the edifices still seen today in Goa were
constructed in the latter half of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th (Gomes 2011, 3)

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Some historians (e.g. Ifeka 1985) challenge the dominant narratives of the colonial past, pitting

the image of Goa Dourada as a culturally Portuguese/Europeanized and Catholic enclave

separate from India against a notion of “Goa Indica,” which results from the post-colonial drive

to integrate Goa into the nation state by instead highlighting the area’s cultural affinities to the

subcontinent.

However, what has not been questioned to date is the narrative of decline and ruination

concerning the urban landscape itself, largely because European spatial ideologies regarding the

constitution of urban space seem to dominate not only Portuguese colonial administrators and

other elite members of society in the past, but also the majority of scholars working on Goa

today. Thus, the focus of scholars concerned with the rise and decline of the city has entirely

been on the monumental, elite aspects of urban architecture—most often on the many ruined and

partially preserved Catholic Churches that still rise magnificently from the palm groves today—

and the characterization of the city as a ruin remains uncontested and uncomplicated. It is in this

context that archaeological evidence—especially for the period of urban decline through today—

is invaluable in shedding light on the actual production (social and physical) of the ruin of Velha

Goa because it provides an additional, independent data set that can supplement what little is

provided by the historical record. This material evidence can help us understand the processes

and improvisations inherent in changing socio-natural colonial landscapes, and thereby, help us

better understand the continuing legacies of colonial rule.

Archaeological evidence from my survey paints a slightly different picture than that

expressed by the discourse of decline, ruination and abandonment; rather, there is a

transformation of the urban landscape. Large formally built stone houses do fall into ruin, as

suggested by the majority of historical accounts. However, settlement continues, becoming more

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dispersed and integrated with the always present agricultural landscape that existed in the city.

Architecture becomes less formalized, and there is a recycling of stone material from larger,

abandoned state and ecclesiastical buildings. Although, some larger stone homes persist, this

recycled material is incorporated into structures that are partly constructed with mud and likely

roofed with palm leaves or old tiles, and this form of spatial production is consistent with more

vernacular architecture throughout the Konkan region (Gomes 2011). In addition, there is ample

evidence for ongoing, intensive agricultural production and the maintenance of various

monumental, but overlooked, aspects of urban infrastructure. Certainly there was population

decline in the city and buildings were undoubtedly abandoned and fell into disrepair. However,

by considering the interstitial, quotidian aspects of urban spatial production, we can provide a

greater knowledge of the people and non-elite spatial practice so often ignored by the colonial

archives.

Archaeological survey: Evidence for continued occupation amongst the ruins of empire

The evidence obtained from archaeological survey consists of structural remains, the

maintenance of urban infrastructure for agricultural purposes, and associated artifact scatters for

both. However, it must be noted that the archaeological data is not without ambiguity. Survey

data precludes a firm grasp on the temporality of structural remains. In addition, the evidence for

many of the vernacular buildings—constructed largely of mud, recycled materials and palm

leaves—is quite ephemeral. The remains of these structures are therefore often poorly preserved

owing to various site-formation processes, especially the high rates of erosion occurring in

conjunction with heavy monsoon rains, as well as the continual reuse of building materials.

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 The nature of the ceramics collected also does not typically allow for very discrete

relative dates. In the case of locally produced earthenware, there has been little to no work done

on typologies that would help to produce relative chronologies, and the form and fabric of the

earthenware collected during survey exhibits little variation. For more identifiable ceramics that

have been better studied, such as Chinese porcelain, there is the possibility of more exact relative

dates. However, most of the recovered porcelain sherds are likely export forms that could be

Wanli period, kraak style forms or later kraak influenced Kangxi period forms as well as types

that were produced into the late 18th century—e.g. Batavia brown, which has a date range that

extends from the 16th through the 18th century (Madsen and White 2008; Rinaldi 1989). In

general, the sherds typically exhibit very common under glaze blue cobalt decoration patterns on

vessel forms that persist over time.

While some more unique pieces were found, the ceramics were mostly collected from

agricultural surfaces that have undergone continuous modifications—such as the planting of

palm and other tree plantations—as well as erosion and disturbances from recent construction

activities. Therefore, the contexts for use and deposition are largely lacking as well. In most

cases the porcelain only provides a terminus post quem that verifies they were produced

sometime between the 16th and 18th centuries. Thus, all that can be said with certainty is that the

porcelain was by and large produced in China and exported to Goa within the period of

Portuguese occupation. However, as will be discussed below, the stylistic motifs of the

porcelain do suggest a more narrow date range from the 17th to the 18th centuries. Excavation

would be required to provide a firmer context for this date range, but if true, the majority of

ceramics were seemingly imported during or after the colonial elite populations began to leave in

the mid-17th century when the decline and ruination of the city had begun.

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 While archaeological evidence from survey is not without ambiguity, taking into

consideration multiple lines of evidence from residential contexts within Velha Goa is highly

suggestive of a vibrant continued occupation during and after this period of decline. The survey

data discussed in detail below is segmented by common archaeological elements that support this

hypothesis and were found across the site as a whole. Each of these feature types is further

delineated by specific survey areas A–E as discussed in Chapter 3 (see Fig. 3.5). The material

evidence for non-elite, more vernacular spatial practices within the city during or after the period

of decline includes foundations for small one or two room structures (formed in part from

recycled material from larger demolished structures), the general nature and location of ceramic

scatters, the maintenance of various agricultural landscapes and associated materials, and the

repurposing of elite structures.

Non-elite structures

The remains of several (1–2 room) structures that are indicative of smaller, non-elite

homes were encountered in several survey areas—as opposed to the more grandiose multi room

structures of the colonial and merchant elite discussed in detail in Chapter 3. However, survey

area D provided the fullest range of evidence for the remains of these structures. The evidence

consisted of not just foundations, but also the presence of small terraces seemingly constructed

for residential purposes.

The first of these possible structures (recorded as locus 472_6) was located at the end of

a now unused historic road in survey are D. This particular road—and a roughly parallel road

225
located directly to the east—is visible in maps only until the end of the 17th century 5 (see Chapter

3, Fig. 3.6 for an early depiction of this space and location of corresponding survey area D) but

the area was subsequently shown as either wasteland or agricultural space (e.g. Chapter 2, Fig.

2.7). Locus 472_6 was defined by a small mounded structural terrace 6 measuring 7 meters by

4.5 meters.

Fig. 6.3: Plan of Locus 472 6 and example of associated ceramics

This terrace extended out from the road creating a level plane and was further defined by several

brick alignments and a denser scatter of plain earthenware ceramics, roof tiles, and a few

porcelain sherds (Fig. 6.3). Immediately adjacent to the terrace was a small cistern carved into

the laterite bedrock and constructed of whole and broken laterite bricks. The combination of

these features within the locus are suggestive of a small, single room structure—possibly an

agricultural laborer’s quarters similar to those seen in Velha Goa today.

5
The latest map produced that depicts these two roads is contained in Philip Baldaeus’s work A true and exact
description of the most celebrated East-India coasts of Malabar and Coromandel and also of the Isle of Ceylon,
published in Amsterdam, 1672. A later map by Jacques-Nicolas Bellin from 1750 also shows these roads, but this
map is clearly copied from Baldaeus’s earlier work.
6
Due to their small size and the associated material that indicates former occupation, I have labeled these small
terraces ‘structural terraces’ as they seem to be used primarily for occupational purposes in the past as opposed to
agriculture. I draw this conclusion because of the very small size of these terraces and the fact that they are almost
always outlined by brick alignments and typically have a relatively higher concentration of ceramics, particularly
roof tiles. Of course, mixed uses are certainly possible and as structures fell into ruin, they often became convenient
locales for the expansion of agricultural practices.

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 Fig. 6.4: Plan view (top) and photo facing east (bottom) of locus 474_4

Dating these somewhat ephemeral structural remains is largely impossible with survey

data alone, and it is entirely possible and they in fact may be from the period of Portuguese

dominance in the regions as opposed to the later period of decline. None the less, their small size

and discrete nature suggest non-elite structures that again do not conform to the descriptions of

the larger elite homes discussed in Chapter 3, and are only typically mentioned in passing in the

227
historical record during the period of decline. In addition, the brick alignments that served as the

foundation of these small structures often consist of whole laterite bricks, brick fragments, and

occasionally a piece of grey broken limestone or basalt. Limestone and basalt are not a native

stone to the region, and the grey limestone in particular was almost always imported from

Bassein after the Portuguese took control of that area (Rossa 1997, 46). As such, these harder

stone materials were highly valued imports and typically only seen in Velha Goa in the facades

of major colonial or ecclesiastical institutions such as the Basilica de Bom Jesus. The

incorporation of fragments of this material in brick alignments and various standing walls

indicate that this material was reused from other structures, and were thus constructed after more

substantial buildings became ruined in the city.

A similar combination of features was documented in other areas throughout Velha Goa.

Elsewhere in survey area D, locus 472_2 contained brick alignments and associated ceramic and

roof tile scatters on a small terrace nearly identical to that encountered in 472_6. In addition,

survey area C contained a better preserved structure documented as locus 474_4, which was

clearly constructed of reused laterite bricks and brick fragments (Fig. 6.4). The maximum

measurements of this small structure (approximately 7 meters by 5 meters) were also similar in

size to those encountered in survey are D. While distinct structural remains such as 474_4 were

not ubiquitous, the presence of various short brick alignments and associated dense scatters of

roof tiles and ceramics located on similar small terraced areas were encountered in every survey

area. This evidence suggests that these somewhat ephemeral structures may have been much

more common throughout the site but that they were not visible to archeological survey.

The most convincing—albeit more recent—evidence for this type of non-elite, post-

ruination occupation occurs in survey area D in locus 474_11. This small structure is located,

228
 not immediately adjacent to the extant

roads as are the elite homes, but rather in

the midst of the urban agricultural

landscape. As discussed in more detail

below, this location—adjacent to

agricultural fields and taking advantage

of extant landscape features such as high

ground—is more characteristic of the

Fig. 6.5: Plan view of locus 474_11
typical settlement pattern seen outside of

Goa both before and after Portuguese occupation (Gomes 2011). The structure itself is clearly

constructed from reused laterite bricks and brick fragments and generous amounts of mud

mortar. Locus 474_11 consists of two rooms and several other domestic features (Fig 6.5 and

6.6). Near the entrance and along the side of the building are stacked a large amount of roof tiles

stamped: Prabhat Tiles, Mangalore. The modern Mangalore tile industry began in the 1860’s

with establishment of a factory there by the Bassel Mission, and the production of these flat tiles

continues today (Madhyastha, Rahiman, and Kaveriappa 1982, 266). While the exact production

date for the stacked tiles is unknown, they were clearly machine-made almost certainly in the

20th century, suggesting that this particular structure was abandoned fairly recently. However,

the layout, associated ceramic scatters, and construction are nearly identical to the previously

mentioned loci in survey area D, suggesting that this later building had many similarities to those

less well preserved structures. Several other abandoned 19th or 20th century structures with a

similar material profile were also encountered during informal walking survey conducted in

survey area E.

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 Fig. 6.6: Photos of locus 474_11

Top: Remains of structure built with rough laterite bricks and mud mortar. Right: Adjacent
grinding stone and grinder fragment. Left: Pedestal for a cross or tulsi vrindavan¹ located
outside entrance to structure.
1. Small crosses or tulsi vrindavan are common in front of Hindu homes throughout Goa. Tulsi vrindavan
consist of a small masonry pedestal topped by a tulsi plant (Ocimum tenuiflorum or ‘holy basil’). They typically
have a small shelf at their base (as seen in the above image) where a candle or small oil lamp is placed during
daily pujas or prayers.

Agricultural production

Directly adjacent to the evidence for non-elite structures were other landscape

modifications that have both agricultural and residential functions. Specifically, there are a

230
series of cisterns and wells scattered throughout the city. Many of the larger shaft wells are still

maintained in various states of repair today, as discussed in chapter 3. Besides these large shaft

wells, however, numerous small cisterns are present throughout every surveyed area. The

cisterns ranged from approximately 2 meters in diameter to 3.5 meters in diameter. The bottoms

were typically cut directly into the laterite subsoil, and when preserved, had several courses of

laterite bricks on top. In addition, fragments of lime plaster on several cisterns indicated that the

interior spaces were often sealed by the addition of plaster unlike the bare surfaces of the shaft

wells. Although the bottoms of all of the cisterns encountered were covered in rubble and soil,

they did not appear to have a depth greater than a few meters (e.g. Fig. 6.7).

Fig. 6.7: Examples of cisterns encountered during survey

One example of what appears to be a mostly intact cistern was, however, encountered. This

cistern was domed at the top with laterite bricks, creating a bell shape with the lower portion

partially carved directly into the lateritic subsoil. From the top of the opening to the bottom, the

chamber measured 3.1 meters, although there was some debris covering the bottom, so the

absolute depth was impossible to determine. Safety prevented any direct measurement of the

diameter, but overall the shape and construction of the chamber appeared similar to those more

ruined examples already mentioned.

The water in cisterns is used for a variety of purposes, but in many contexts they are used

primarily for washing. The water from cisterns is typically preferred for washing clothes (among

231
other things) over well water because of the heavy mineral content typically found in well water.

The “hard” water from wells decreases the effectiveness of soap, whereas the low mineral

content in rain water makes the soap more effective and is less likely to leave iron oxide stains

(Mansberger 2003). The high iron content in Goa’s lateritic soil and the likelihood that the

cisterns were sealed with plaster, unlike the wells, suggests that there may have been similar

considerations in the city. This interpretation is partially supported by Linschoten’s (van

Linschoten 1598, 1:183) account of the town: “They have but little fresh water, but only one

Well called Banganiin, which standeth about a quarter of a mile without the Cittie, wherewith the

whole towne is served...for water to dresse meat, wash, and doe other thinges withal, they

commonly have Wels within their houses.” The same is stated by Pyrard (Pyrard 1619, 71) who

also states that the house wells are only for bathing, washing and cooking. As still today many

Goan homes incorporate and use a cistern for similar purposes (Dr. S. V. Rao personal

communication), it stands to reason that the historical description of ‘wells’ by Linschoten and

Pyrard also referenced the many cisterns in the city.

In addition to the evidence for cisterns and wells, the survey documented abundant

evidence of small scale agricultural processing which is often associated or directly adjacent to

the remains of the non-elite residential material. In particular, several clumps of bamboo were

observed throughout survey area D. Bamboo has a long history of small scale production in Goa

and other parts of India, and it is commonly grown in small clumps in home gardens or on

village peripheries (Nath, Das, and Das 2009, 163). As such, it is a good indication of past

occupation. However, the most common evidence was related to the processing of one of the

regions primary cash crops: cashew (Anacardium occidentale) and known locally as caju or kaju.

Indigenous to Brazil and imported most likely by the Portuguese, harvesting and processing the

232
cashew is labor intensive, and in Goa, this is predominantly done by hand. Each single cashew

‘apple’ produces only one cashew nut, which is surrounded by a hard and toxic shell that must be

removed. The fruit itself only keeps for approximately 24 hours, so it is consumed locally if at

all while the nut is often exported (Azam-Ali and Judge 2001).

In Goa, the cashew apple is used extensively for the production of a local alcoholic drink

known as feni, with the production of the drink traditionally undertaken by individual farmers in

small batches. The liquor is made from the juice of the fruit, which is pressed immediately after

harvest, and is then distilled typically on site (personal communication Jack Sukhija). After

being pressed and collected, the juice is fermented first into a cashew wine called urak which in

turn undergoes distillation to make feni. Today, the entire industry is still dominated by local,

labor intensive, and small-scale production with over 65% of distillers involved in agriculture as

their primary occupation, and this production takes place either in the orchard itself or at

residences located adjacent to them (Mukhopadhyay, Maurya, and Mourya 2008).

Archaeological survey evidence from Velha Goa revealed past similar, small-scale, and

localized production practices. In survey area D, several caju processing sites were found

directly adjacent to the remains of the small non-elite structures discussed previously (474_11

and 474_6), and similar sites were found throughout the city. These processing facilities are of

two types. The first type (type-1) takes advantage of naturally occurring laterite outcrops. These

hard surfaces are excavated into shallow depressions or basins known as kolmbi that measure a

few meters to a side, taking advantage of slight natural slopes. At the end of each basin, which

forms a funnel at its lowest point, a small pit is excavated.

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 Fig. 6.8: Examples of feni processing sites
Top: Type-2, Locus 474_11 photo (left) and plan (right)
Bottom: Type-1 from survey area D (left) and B (right)

The fruit is placed in the basins and would have been mashed by stomping—similar to traditional

techniques for producing wine—leaving the juice to run toward the pit where a vessel is

positioned to collect the liquid (Mukhopadhyay, Maurya, and Mourya 2008, 15). The second

type (type-2) of processing site encountered in survey area D is identical in form, but instead of a

shallow excavated basin, as in the majority of processing sites in Goa, the juicing platform is

234
constructed of reused bricks and pavers taken from ruined structures (Fig. 6.8). The type-2

processing facility pictured in figure 6.8 was also located within 20 meters of the structure

recorded as locus 474_11 shown above, thus fitting within the general pattern of feni production

seen in the region.

Survey area B also contained numerous examples of feni production features. Most often

these were juicing features of the first type, consisting of basins carved out of laterite outcrops.

However, a third type (type-3) of processing feature was also documented in locus 557_3.

Instead of a small basin, a large block of laterite was hollowed out and a small drain was cut in

the bottom. The laterite was clearly

sealed using the traditional lime mortar,

creating something resembling a modern

washing tub (Fig. 6.9). In survey area B

there was a high degree of on-going

intensive agricultural production in some

sections, and in others, the undergrowth

was so thick that any other associated

remains such as occupational features

were either obscured or destroyed (if

they existed). However, there were still Fig. 6.9: Fragment of type-3 feni processing site
(carved laterite basin or trough)
the remains of many cisterns throughout

the area, and the ceramics that were associated with locus 557_3 were similar to those found in

locus 474_11 and were seemingly for both domestic and agricultural purposes—as I discuss in

detail below.

235
Agricultural/landscape terracing and maintenance

In conjunction with the remains of small vernacular architectural features and agricultural

production, the survey revealed the maintenance of a vast system of ‘agricultural terrace’ walls

present throughout the urban landscape and proceeding up nearly every slope. These terraces,

however, differed from what I am calling ‘structural terraces’ (such as that associated with locus

472_6 above). Distinct from structural terraces, the agricultural terraces were much larger (at

times stretching hundreds of meters), generally followed the topography of the hill slopes, were

predominantly defined by wall or brick alignments only on the downhill edge of the terrace, and

contained a much lighter scatter of ceramics.

This more extensive and integrated terrace system was evidently created to contain

erosion on the steep slopes surrounding the civil-ceremonial core of the city and created level,

stepped surfaces, which would have been useful for both agricultural and occupational purposes

(e.g. Fig 6.10, 6.11). Due to heavy rains and erosion these walls would almost certainly begin to

collapse without continuous repairs. All of the terrace walls encountered during survey contained

evidence of maintenance, rebuilding, and/or ongoing erosional features such as washes and

scattered debris from past collapses. An added benefit of the terrace walls, which were

originally created as part of the urban expansion of the city, is their ability to control runoff.

Trichur (Trichur 2013, 76) notes that the introduction of cash crops such as cashew on hillsides

contributed to overall soil degradation in Goa. This degradation occurs because the cashew tree

has phenolic byproducts that kill all of the underbrush that naturally occurs in the forested areas.

The loss of this vegetation increases the speed of rainwater runoff, which affects both the water

table and soil fertility.

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 Fig. 6.10: Example of terrace systems in survey area B (top) and C (bottom)
However, the maintenance of the terrace walls would have in part helped to mitigate this runoff

and perhaps indicates one reason why the terrace system remains so intact. The terrace walls

encountered in survey were thus not merely a relic of past occupation. Rather, they are a

dynamic aspect of the urban landscape that has required significant amounts of labor to maintain

237
over many years.

Fig. 6.11: Examples of terrace

walls

Associated ceramics

Ceramics were collected in various, judgmentally selected locations throughout the

survey areas. As discussed in detail in Chapter 3, collections were undertaken to ascertain both

the general distribution of ceramics across the site and the types of ceramic that were in direct

association with recorded loci. This section will focus more specifically on the ceramics

collected in association with the loci mentioned above and that provide data for occupational and

agricultural practices occurring in the late 17th through to the 20th century. In general, the

238
ceramics fall into two broad categories: Chinese porcelain and locally produced earthen wares 7

(for a full discussion of the methods of ceramic analysis and relevant selected results see

appendix A).

Chinese porcelain is ubiquitous across the site and sherds were found in all but a few

surface collection units. We can assume that the porcelain was for domestic purposes because

the vessels were imported and more expensive than locally made earthen wares. In addition, the

predominant vessel forms consisted of small and medium sized bowls, tea cups, and plates. As

discussed, however, the specific contexts for use of these particular ceramics are largely lacking.

Due to various site formation processes (erosion, new construction, on-going agricultural

production, etc.), it is impossible to definitively associate many of these finds directly with the

non-elite architecture discussed previously. Although, the presence of so much porcelain across

the site suggests that there was a relatively wide access to these wares and that its consumption

would not have been limited to colonial and ecclesiastical elite households. Pyrard’s early 17th

century account of Goa in part supports this notion: While discussing “Gentiles” (meaning

Hindus) and the types of ordinary table wares that are available in Goa he states, “They have no

glasses, except what are brought from these parts or from Persia, and that is but little, and

moreover not much esteemed, as they get the pourcelines [sic] of China at small cost” (Pyrard

1619, vol. 2: 74 italics in original). The history of the production of Chinese porcelain during the

last 500 years is well known, and the decoration and form of the vessels collected during survey

can provide an idea of the relative dates during which these vessels were produced.

7
There are several singular finds that do not fit within these categories and have different proveniences beyond Goa
and China—originating in places such as Portugal, Thailand, or Persia. However, when these are identifiable, they
generally fall within the relative date ranges available for the more robust Chinese porcelain data sets.

239
 As mentioned, all of the porcelain sherds exhibited a very consistent range of stylistic

attributes and vessel forms, so only a few representative pieces are discussed in detail here (for

detailed information on various porcelains collected see Appendix A). One of the better

preserved sherds from locus 474_11 has the following characteristics: underglaze blue and

white, animal in landscape motif, differential loading of the brush

to produce shading in the blue paint, indications that the plate had

decorated panels on the border of the dish, and solid blue bands on

the reverse (Fig. 6.12). This combination of characteristics

suggest the plate was either kraak ware dating to the 17th century

but possibly later Kangxi period export wares that were exported

from the late 17th century to the mid-18th century (Corbeiller and

Fig. 6.12: Porcelain Frelinghuysen 2003; Madsen and White 2008). However, the
example from survey
area D other examples from the locus suggest the later (Kangxi period)

dates may be more accurate. For example,

another surface collection unit within locus

474_11 contains a porcelain base that has a

floral decorative motif surrounded by a blue

trellis pattern and a Batavia brown englobe on

the reverse (Fig 6.13)—three stylistic attributes

Fig. 6.13: Porcelain example from
that all overlap most commonly in the early to survey area D

mid-18th century Kangxi period (Madsen and White 2008, 57).

Nearly all of the porcelain found across the site exhibits a similar range of characteristics

with only a few exceptions. For example, the porcelain from various surface collection units in

240
survey are B is nearly identical to those larger pieces found in survey are D (Fig 6.14). While the

specific dates cannot be determined, it appears that the majority are either 17th century or 18th

century (and some possibly later) wares. Again, the porcelain only definitively provides a

terminus post quem that indicates that large amounts of porcelain arrived in Goa sometime

during the 17th or 18th centuries—although again 16th century dates are are certinaly possible for

many sherds. Regardless, this date range is highly suggestive of a fairly robust occupation within

the city during the period of decline, which began during the mid-17th century.

Fig. 6.14: Porcelain examples from survey area B

The other ceramic data consists of plain earthen wares, which by both weight and count

were by far the most common type of ceramic encountered during survey. No significant

241
previous work has been done on these locally produced wares, so the typologies I establish here

and discussed in more detail in the appendix should be considered preliminary as they are based

only on surface collections. Unfortunately without controlled stratigraphic excavation, the

earthen wares do not provide much evidence for variation over time or any other possibility for

relative dating on their own. However, sherds within this category were always found in the

same collection units as the previously discussed porcelain, so they can be assumed to be from

roughly similar contexts and periods.

While the preservation of the sherds is often exceptionally poor, it was still possible to

determine various vessel types from a range of diagnostic rim sherds. The earthenware ceramics

were delineated into separate categories based on surface treatment and fabric following similar

methods used by Carla Sinopoli in her work at Vijayanagara (Sinopoli 1986; Sinopoli 1991).

While many sherds were eroded to such

an extent that placing them into a

discrete category based on surface

treatment was impossible, nearly all of

the identifiable sherds fell into three

groups: plain redware, red slipped

redware, and black slipped redware.

The vessel forms identified consisted of

Fig. 6.15: Example of ceramics still produced in
Goa
narrow necked jars of various sizes

(approximately 10 cm–35 cm diameter openings) and small and medium sized bowls

(approximately 5 cm–25 cm in diameter). These common forms indicate both agricultural and

242
residential uses, and they are generally consistent with ceramic types still occasionally sold

today 8 (Fig 6.15).

The range of earthen ware sherds associated with locus 474_11 was again very

representative of the site as a whole, and data from this locus are displayed here for illustrative

purposes (Fig. 6.16). Many of the ceramics recovered in the vicinity of the small structure and

feni processing site in locus 474_11 also resemble some of the ceramics used in traditional feni

stills (Fig. 6.17).

Fig. 6.16: Rim types from locus 474_11

8
While some small scale potters still operate today as a cottage industry, the majority of production seems to have
shifted to mass produced table wares and jars often of plastic or metal. Although, many of the same shapes are still
produced using these new materials. For example, feni is still processed using a standard cauldron (Bhan) that was
made of clay in the past, but now copper is the preferred material (Mukhopadhyay, Maurya, and Mourya 2008, 15).
In addition, a plastic version of the standard narrow necked jar used for carrying water is found at any market place
in Goa and common throughout the subcontinent.

243
 Fig. 6.17: Traditional feni distillation past and present

Reuse of structures

The final piece of archaeological evidence that causes us to rethink the narrative of

abandonment and death that surrounds the city is the reuse of former elite or large administrative

structures. While the example presented here is the only structure of this sort encountered during

the survey it is likely that past practices in the city incorporated similar abandoned elements into

more quotidian structures. The structure was encountered in the area of the former Portuguese

Arsenal, located directly north of survey are C. As discussed previously, the Arsenal was in

operation until it was officially closed in 1856, after which it began to fall into ruin (Mendiratta

2011). The small structure that remains in the area today was clearly part of a larger building

that has completely disappeared. However, this small part of the larger building was maintained

and periodically updated. Today, it sits amongst an active coconut plantation that occasionally

doubles as a car park during the St. Francis Xavier festival.

244
 Fig. 6.18: Plan view and photo of locus 542_3

The building contained two partially preserved rooms, a smaller vestibule located at the

entrance, and what seemed to be a small garden area directly to the south. The structure appears

to have been modified by filling in the large arches with reused bricks to form the room blocks

245
(Fig 6.18). In addition, the remains of the walls that would have originally continued beyond the

current footprint of the structure were visible on the exterior walls. It is unclear when the

building was finally abandoned, but the front vestibule contained a newer coat of cement plaster

and a small fragment of plastic plumbing visible embedded in an interior wall, suggesting that it

was partially maintained and used at least into the 20th century.

Discussion

As mentioned, the nature of survey data and taphonomic processes at the site precludes

exact dating of the archaeological materials discussed above. Taken as whole, however, they

reveal the nature of occupational practices both during and after the period of decline and

ruination in Velha Goa. There are clear data showing the remains of non-elite structures

associated with ceramic scatters from which the porcelain dates to the 17th and early 18th

centuries. In addition there is ample evidence for continuous and on-going agricultural

production, which includes the maintenance of large system of terrace walls—a monumental

landscape modification that rivals the churches in size and extent—but is wholly ignored in the

historical record.

Glimpses of the types of occupation occurring in the city post-decline persist today. Of

note, across the street from locus 557_3 a local farmer was living in a small two or three room

structure with his family. The structure was built of reused laterite bricks and heavy amounts of

mud mortar, and it was roofed with both ceramic tiles and palm fronds. In addition he was hand

collecting and processing caju in a laterite basin immediately adjacent to his home, which was

identical to the type-one basin encountered during survey. Survey area E also contained a group

of approximately 10 currently in-use, small day laborer residences that are not noted on any

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maps of Goa today. These small houses are one or two room structures built of recycled

materials including laterite bricks, mud, corrugated iron sheets, tiles, and palm fronds, and their

dimensions appeared to be roughly similar to non-elite structures measured during

archaeological survey. While not wanting to make claims for direct correlations or analogies

between contemporary and past practices, there are at least clear resemblances between the

spatial and material signatures of contemporary residential/agricultural practices in Velha Goa

and the archaeological survey evidence for agricultural and occupational production of the past

300 years.

If these contemporary practices are considered alongside the archaeological data, a new

image of Velha Goa emerges. It is not a ruined, abandoned, and dead city, rather it is an urban

space transformed. The urban areas beyond the church compounds were indeed partially

maintained for very pragmatic purposes. The more formally constructed large elite homes fell

into ruin and this particular segment of the population abandoned the city—as amply reflected in

the historical and archaeological record (not to mention the current configuration of the former

capital). Yet, the agricultural and laboring population seemingly remained, and settlement

continued, becoming more dispersed. What was created instead was a much more integrated

urban agricultural landscape that took advantage of existing urban infrastructure.

This new understanding of the transformation of Velha Goa, rather than its death, calls

for a reassessment of the historical record and the received narratives discussed at the outset of

this chapter. As seen in previous chapters, the city never wholly conformed to the colonial elite

and European imaginaries of urban space, nor did the city necessarily conform to somewhat

similar South Asian imaginings of urbanism. In particular, the landscape always supported a

large amount of agriculture, and rather than being truly urban, seemed to resemble in part an

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assemblage or agglomeration of country estates. That is not to say that Goa at its height did not

possess some of the more traditionally conceived elements of urbanism such as an increased

population density and a large amount of built structures (both monumental and more quotidian).

As I argued previously, it was indeed the concentration of row-house like structures that lined the

street that gave the city a façade of urban density especially as one moved away from the civil-

ceremonial core at the north end of the Rua Direita. Thus, from a phenomenological point of

view, the experience of the city was one of a densely built, urbanized landscape when

encountered from the street side. However, as soon as these larger, formally built stone

structures along the streets literally began to crumble in the latter half of the 17th century, so too

did the image of the urban environment, leading to the narratives of ruination and the

memorialization of a now vanished Goa Dourada. The ‘natural’ agricultural space began to

appear more and more prominent as did those residents who worked these fields and/or lived in

more ephemeral, less formal vernacular structures. Taking into account the archaeological

evidence thus forces us to reexamine the archive in light of evidence for on-going non-elite

occupation and spatial practices during and after Velha Goa’s ‘ruination.’

Several factors suggest that this population of laborers would have been somewhat

substantial in the 18 and 19th centuries. The colonial administration did not officially move to

Pangim until 1843, and several administrative buildings were partially maintained into the 19th

century such as the Palace of the Viceroys (where audiences were held as late as 1812), the

Senate (Camara) building, and the House of Mercy (Casa de Misericordia) (Cottineau de

Kloguen 1831, 57). In addition, there were several large religious institutions that remained

active even beyond the suppression of the religious orders in 1835—many of which double as

still functioning Catholic Churches and as tourist attractions today (e.g. the Sé Cathedral, the

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Basilica de Bom Jesus, and the Convent of Santa Monica). Finally, the colonial arsenal

remained open in Velha Goa until 1856 and included various industrial operations such as a rope

factory (corderia)—pictured prominently on Machada’s 1774 map for revitalization. Fonseca

(da Fonseca 1878, 241) states that as late as 1841-2 the Arsenal alone still employed an

estimated 475 people. These institutions existed in Velha Goa well into the period of ruination

when the city was claimed to be all but abandoned by the various European travelers passing

through (e.g. Burton 1851; Cottineau de Kloguen 1831). Beyond those who would have been

working the always extant agricultural landscapes in Velha Goa, all of the remaining

administrative and ecclesiastical institutions would have required a cadre of laborers for tasks

ranging from general upkeep and maintenance to domestic service. It is likely that many of these

workers lived nearby especially owing to the cost and difficulty of travel in the region.

The historical record also provides a few specific yet overlooked references to this non-

elite population as well. For instance, Kloguen writes in melancholic terms of the great

desolation of the ruined capital—as do all 19th century European visitors to the city. However he

states, “The bazaar, built in the form of a cloister, in the centre of town, is very mean…the

buildings are become the retreat of beggars, thieves, and the few native travelers that pass

through Goa” (Cottineau de Kloguen 1831, 58). Before the spate of 19th century travelers’

accounts similar to Kloguen’s, the then governor of Goa, D. Frederico Guilherme de Souza,

wrote to Lisbon in the early 1780’s that most of the districts in Old Goa were covered in palm

groves and that the houses were mostly in ruin. However, he goes on to state that there are 87

old homes in addition to a number of unfinished new residences and “scattered without any order

350 small houses or earthen huts covered in palm leaves, in which live palm farmers, taverneiros,

Kaffirs, mulatos, and other poor people” (A. B. de B. Pereira 1931, 165), translation my own).

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These passing references in the historical record become even more significant viewed alongside

the archaeological data for continued occupation. The picture that begins to emerge is not one of

total ruination but one of a rather substantial, non-elite population carrying on amongst the ruins

of empire in Velha Goa.

Conclusion

Complicating the nature of the decline and ruination in Velha Goa has wide implications

not only for the historical imagination of the urban landscape during and after the period of

decline, but also for the way the space is used today. As Dawdy (Dawdy 2010, 772) states,

“Studying why and how ruins are not only made but also erased, commemorated, lived in,

commodified, and recycled can tell us at least as much about society as the processes that created

the original edifices...To ignore these chapters is to ignore a substantial part of urban

experience.” In this way, the archaeological evidence and a rereading of the archives reveals the

growing prominence in the city of the non-elite occupants and the semi-illicit, less ‘tasteful’

economies of the city’s residents during its period of decline—Klogeun’s ‘beggars, thieves, and

travelers’ and Souza’s ‘poor people’ quoted above. The archaeological evidence suggests that

what actually declined and fell into ruin in Velha Goa were the European or Europeanized

population and their forms of spatial practice—that is, the formally built stone homes and large

edifices of the administrative, ecclesiastical, and merchant elites—despite efforts at

revitalization. What remained was an integrated form of urban agriculture and settlement that

took advantage of existing pieces of urban infrastructure, thus revealing the improvisation

inherent in colonial situations and the failure of top-down attempts to design and/or revitalize the

urban landscape.

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 The establishment of Velha Goa as a UNESCO world heritage site provides a

contemporary example of the attempt to rehabilitate and reimagine ‘Goa Dourada’ by preserving

a past legacy of colonial grandeur and cultural harmony, which resulted in the impressive Indo-

Portuguese architectural style of the churches in the city. This designation suggests that many of

the past practices of the colonial administration that stemmed from the imagination of how a

capital of colonial empire should appear are still prevalent in the current government’s

understanding of the preservation of this space. However, the UNESCO designation ignores not

only the brutal legacy of the Inquisition (of which little mention is made either on-site or in the

official tourist literature), but also the non-elite, semi-illicit spatial and economic activities that

contributed to and still contribute to the city’s spatial configuration and function. It does so

through a singular focus on elite church architecture, fixing the temporality of the space into the

period of Portuguese and Catholic colonial dominance (cf. Gordillo 2014) . At the same time, it

ignores non-elite spaces from the past and makes contemporary non-elite spatial practices

amongst the ruins largely illegal.

While nominally designation as a UNESCO site is meant to curb the construction of any

new buildings within a certain range of the monuments, there is a continued and rampant new

urban development in Velha Goa that is currently causing the loss of untold cultural heritage—

regardless of the good intentions of those working at the Goa Circle of the Archaeological

Survey of India and in local heritage preservation groups. These new elite residential structures

and businesses are built predominantly by non-Goan day laborers living in small, ephemeral

‘huts’ and worker shanty towns, which are subsequently displaced upon the completion of each

project. However, many of these workers do not simply leave the state—as might be preferred

by the government. Instead, they often move onto new construction jobs or participate in the

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tourist economy in various, sometimes illegal ways. This new cycle of development in Velha

Goa suggests that both the continued power of elite factions to effect urban change and their

continued disenfranchisement of non-elite populations remain largely unchecked today. While

the focus on this chapter has been on the ruins and ruination of Velha Goa’s past occupation—

which reveals the ‘underbelly’ of urban existence and the persistence of non-elite spatial

practices in the unmarked spaces of the city—the contemporary situation in Goa reminds us that

these practices of domination and resistance perdure in similar forms today.

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 Conclusion

After the fashion of a cathedral’s ‘nave’ or ‘ship,’ the invisible fullness of political space (the
space of the town-state’s nucleus or ‘city’) set up its rule in the emptiness of natural space
confiscated from nature. Then the force of history smashed naturalness forever and upon its
ruins established the space of accumulation (the accumulation of all wealth and resources...)
(Lefebvre 1991, 49)

As a whole, I have attempted to analyze the production of space in Velha Goa through

multiple registers: I have examined both conceptual spaces and physical spaces examining how

these two aspects of space interact and mutually constitute each other. In so doing, I used the

historical archives to build a broad understanding of elite conceptions of urban space. These

discourses were in turn compared to data on the physical spaces of the city derived from

archaeological survey, which focused on spatial practices outside of the administrative and

ecclesiastical centers of power. The tensions and synchronicities between these two data sets

were interrogated to provide a better understanding of the changing nature of the colonial

encounter and the development of urban space in Velha Goa.

To better understand the conjunction between conceptual and physical spaces in the

city—which included a deep consideration of the natural world, the production of knowledge,

and urban governance—I first built a theoretical understanding of an urban political ecology in

Chapter 1. I then argue in Chapter 2 that analyzing the maps of the city as representations of

space par excellence, we begin to see a somewhat consistent conception of urban space held by

the colonial elite administration. This imagination of the urban considers the city to be a place

categorically separate from the rural, natural environments of its hinterland. Colonial encounters

in particular reinforced a developing notion of nature as an object that can be defined, measured,

and quantified—again as discussed in Chapter 1. As an object with definite parameters, it could

then be better controlled and exploited, or in the case of establishing a colonial capital like Goa,

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reshaped to fit colonial ideals of properly ordered, civilized space. Thus, especially in colonial

locales, the hinterland surrounding a newly established capital is perceived to be unruly, pagan,

and in many ways dangerous and in need of further reform.

However, in Goa the physical space of the city itself challenged these conceptions of

urban space as they reinforced the need to reform them. The later 18th century maps of Velha

Goa reveal that the formal, constructed elements of the city were falling into ruin as it was

engulfed by an unruly and dangerous nature. As these maps were produced for plans to revitalize

the city, they also show an increasingly articulated, ideological view of how a properly

constituted colonial capital of empire should appear. These plans were particularly concerned

with the increasing encroachment of native vegetation on the formally constructed Europeanized

buildings—the very symbols of political and ecclesiastical domination—but also with health,

sanitation, and with various forms of circulation. In many ways, the native vegetation and

unhealthy environment could be read metaphorically as the encroachment (economic and

otherwise) of the ‘native’ population as well. However, the analysis of the physical constitution

of the city as revealed through archaeological survey in Chapter 3, suggests that the city never

conformed to these colonial ideals, that it was always full of both vegetation (albeit reconfigured

to exploit its productive capacities as urban agriculture) and native people, which included more

locally derived, less formal forms of spatial practice.

I continued to build support in Chapter 4 for the development of an elite spatial ideology

by examining how these same understandings of urban space became expressed politically,

comparing the differences between city and country governance. These comparisons also

revealed, however, the very complex nature of colonial rule. They revealed the many competing

elite factions involved with colonial governance and their sometime contradictory approaches—

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despite at times sharing the same underlying spatial ideologies. I also attempted to show the

pragmatic approach to governance typically taken by the colonial administration and how local

realities influenced both spatial practice and its conceptualization. These tensions and

resistances caused great insecurity for the colonial rulers in conjunction with both increasing

competition from geopolitical rivals and the rise in socio-economic power of indigenous

merchant elites—an insecurity that was physically manifest through the construction of the outer

fortification wall examined in Chapter 5.

The examination of the outer fortification wall of Velha Goa elicited comparisons to

South Asian forms of urbanism and settlement. I argued that there are many parallels between

not just European urbanism, but also South Asian urban centers in terms of urban design and

form, in the social and physical organization of urban denizens, and in some of the symbolic

referents of monumental urban structures—all of which would have been critical to inscribing

legible forms of rule on the landscape to both European and South Asian communities. These

similarities included long held conceptions of a separation between the urban and the rural.

However, the complex nature of urban settlement in South Asia again complicates these

conceptions of urban space. In particular, there is a long history of urban gardening or

agriculture in South Asia—something seen in the Mughal north, on the Deccan, and especially in

the types of space surrounded by Vijayanagar’s outer fortification wall. This dispersed more

integrated urban cum agricultural landscape had direct parallels in Goa. And, it is not wholly

unexpected considering the colony’s close trading ties and political connections to various South

Asian polities and the general pragmatic and improvisational nature of colonial rule.

Chapter 5 continued by arguing that these aspects of the city, in particular the integrated

urban agriculture that created a more dispersed from of urbanism, had equally deep parallels to

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the local Konkan system of settlement—a system of settlement that was in many ways anti-urban

in relation to the conceptualizations of urban space by the colonial elite. That is, the typical

settlement pattern of the southwest coastal region of peninsular India is one in which outside of

the trading centers located on the coast, settlements were typically non-agglutinated. Homes

were dispersed amongst the fields on high ground and religious buildings usually centered on

some significant natural feature such as a hill top. This pattern was clearly recognized by the

Portuguese colonial administration and the Catholic Church. They built their churches, not in the

center of towns, newly created or otherwise, as in the Americas, but rather most often in visually

dominant locations across the landscape and often on the rubble of destroyed Hindu temples.

Chapter 6 concluded these arguments with a turn to the period of ruination and decline of

Velha Goa. I argued that the more ephemeral, non-elite forms of occupation became much more

visible in the colonial capital as the façade of the formally built aspects of the city begin to

crumble. I suggested that this process of decline had a long history, but nonetheless the city

continued to have a vibrant elite occupation even after state power was officially moved to

Panaji in 1843. This occupation, however, more closely resembled the local dispersed patterns

seen in the Konkan region as a whole, while it continued to take advantage of certain aspects of

the monumental urban landscape for agricultural purposes—namely the large terrace system.

Despite the continued occupation by these non-elite residents, nearly every historic account

suggests that the city was dead and almost completely abandoned with the exception of a few

solitary priests wandering amongst the romantic ruins of empire.

These accounts harken back to the image of a ‘Golden Goa’ now ruined (which as I

argued never existed in quite the way it was and still is imagined), and the periodic attempts at

revitalization specifically call for the construction of stone buildings and the removal of the

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encroaching, ‘native’ vegetation on the symbolic heart of the illustrious Portuguese Empire in the

East. These plans, images, and travelers accounts all reinforce a now fully articulated,

ideological understanding of an urban capital of empire that no longer exists. They paint a

picture of a capital that once consisted of formally built and rationally organized stone homes

replete with a particular type of colonial subject. However, at the same time, the

conceptualizations of the city over the course of colonial occupation completely elide the activity

and spatial practices of the non-elite population that lives—and always did live—in Velha Goa.

Final reflections...future work

Thus the archaeological data in conjunction with a rereading of the historical archives

reveal deep tensions between elite discourses and the actual formation and use of the urban

landscape. I expose spatial ideologies in both the historical and primary archival literature

regarding the constitution of Velha Goa and the particular type of urbanism that the city exhibits.

However, sometimes implicit in this work may be the idea that I am somehow providing a more

‘real’ empirically based study that is somehow more ‘true’ than what has gone before. For

example, in the context of my analysis of the maps of Velha Goa, I provide a beginning point

from which to proceed with the analysis of the development of a spatial ideology because maps

themselves are the definition of Lefebvre’s (Lefebvre 1991) ‘representations of space.’ I do this

in part by using maps I myself have created, which suggests my maps are again somehow more

empirically accurate.

However, suggesting that I am providing a better or more truthful account of the past than

previous works is not in fact my intent. I have used words such as ‘complicate’ for very specific

reasons. I am not attempting to provide a more ‘truthful’ depiction of space in Velha Goa.

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Rather, my point is to create a different narrative, an expanded discourse on the history of the

city, and to complicate those that exist. If I am to take my understanding of ideology gleaned

from Comaroff and Comaroff (J. Comaroff and Comaroff 1991a; J. L. Comaroff and Comaroff

1992a) seriously, however, then I have to admit that my own discussion here is itself an

articulated (and hopefully articulate) spatial ideology of sorts. As such, any ideology reveals its

own assumptions and biases about the world and thus they become open to critique.

As I have shown, the predominant perspectives on Velha Goa, Portuguese colonialism,

and the decline of both the urban landscape and empire are taken most often from a top down

point of view, from the eyes of the colonial elites and the documents and buildings they left

behind. I am, however, providing a different vantage point on Velha Goa, without making

claims that my depictions and understandings of the urban landscape are any more correct than

say Linschoten’s maps, or the wealth of historical literature that describes the rise and decline of

the urban environment. As I argue it does indeed decline—albeit from a particular perspective.

Instead, I provide a better understanding of non-elite spatial practices, a more ground-up

perspective on the history of this particular Portuguese colonial capital of empire. More

generally, I want to complicate our contemporary understanding of the processes of colonialism

and the development and constitution of urban space through a deeper consideration of both the

inseparability of the natural world and urban space and the related deep history of urban socio-

spatial problems that we still encounter today. Thus, I am providing a more complicated

narrative, in many ways a new spatial ideology that is again open to reformulations in the future.

This perspective is indeed something that is often part of and, I argue one of the great strengths,

of anthropological and archeological research: to continue to complicate, expand, and at times,

critique the dominant narratives and discourses received from the past, but to also at times

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question the very epistemologies upon which these narratives are built. These critiques remain

necessary because, as I will discuss briefly below, many of the same issues I have analyzed in

this research remain particularly salient to post-colonial locales and urban spaces in general.

Modern landscapes

Returning specifically to the quote by Lefebvre that opens this conclusion, it resonates

particularly well with the some of the issues I examined in the course of this work. The quote is

written, however, in the context of the transition from medieval space to capitalist space in the

West. Lefebvre (Lefebvre 1991) argues (following Marx) that these new centers of accumulation

eventually disassociated labor from its products, and hence became abstract social labor. He

argues the currently dominant mode of production secretes its own spatial formations (and must

do so if it is to be dominant in the first place), and thus abstract social labor also creates abstract

space. In Lefebvre’s argument capitalism created abstract space, a space that is violently

appropriated through its rationalization and goal of forced homogeneity—it is space built on the

world of commodities, of money, and the state (Lefebvre 1991, 49). The type of abstract space

he describes at length is seemingly similar to what Foucault (Foucault 2007) argues when he

describes the post Enlightenment shift in governance from disciplinary mechanisms of

governance to mechanisms of security—that is, mechanisms of security are in many ways

concerned with abstraction in a similar way. By taking populations as a whole and relying on the

production/maintenance of certain norms of action (commonly held beliefs that are largely

unquestioned), by using statistics and population dynamics, and by considering a milieu, the

object of state governance shifts and becomes more abstract at the same time that it is perceived

to be measurable and quantifiable.

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 This form of governance, as Foucault argues, also has corresponding spatial correlates

that are equally related to urban from. The security state’s urban landscape is one that facilities

circulations (mostly of goods or commodities) but also people, it is rationalized space aimed at

efficient governance (cf. Scott 1998). It takes into account the whole ecological milieu of people,

places things and their relationships, which is itself a particular kind of abstraction. It assumes an

abstract consistent whole embodied by a territory; it homogenizes people through their

constitution as a population as it homogenizes space through its rationalization.

While not the central focus of this dissertation per say, the analysis of the historical

processes surrounding the production and decline of urban space can’t but help to be implicated

in these deeper theoretical concerns. How does the history of Velha Goa relate to the rise of

capitalist modernity? Is the decline of the city a case study in the eclipse of the medieval mode

of production and its corresponding space as capitalism came to dominate the world economy?

As Dawdy asks:

Are the differences between ancient and modern cities simply those of scale and tempo,
or are they truly of kind? Are grid patterns and secular subjects such whole new
inventions? Or totalitarian architecture and panoptic public spaces? What would ancient
Greek and Roman urban sites reveal about our own spaces? Or those of Tenochtitla´n and
Teotihuacan? Most archaeologists of antiquity decline to consider the possibility of such
modern phenomena as racialization, capital accumulation, or terrorism in the past—to
look for such things in antiquity is not only anachronistic but also offensive. The past is
not supposed to share these dystopian aspects of our present and recent past. (Dawdy
2010, 765)

While Velha Goa is not an ancient city in this regard, it does in many ways bridge a temporal

gap between studies that focus on the socio-spatial issues of ‘modern’ urbanism and those that

focus on the ruination of urban locales in the more distant past (see Chapter 1). In other words,

this suggests possible complications for the perceived differences in modern and pre modern

urban spaces suggested by Lefebvre and Foucault.

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 This study then, generates additional questions for further research. It asks if the city’s

ruination is a result of the failure of the space (and colonial economy) to adapt to the rise of

capitalism—often embodied by the Portuguese’s greatest European competitors, the Dutch and

English. If so, how do we figure in the rise of Panaji a few kilometers away as the new seat of

political power, which is organized along Enlightenment ideals of rationality complete with a

wide open gridded street plan and various open squares (Faria 2007)? My work thus points to

problems or potential complications to these understandings of the great transition from medieval

to modern urbanism (or a post enlightenment urbanism) based on new understandings of science

and human populations. Why does the seemingly integrated urban agricultural landscape of

Velha Goa, including the characterization of the city in the 18th century as a ruin, resonate with

contemporary conceptualizations and spatial practices in urban landscapes such as Detroit or

places on the south side of Chicago—spaces which conversely now actively try to reinsert nature

back into the urban landscape, albeit a particular type of structured, controlled, and productive

nature in the form of urban gardens? The spatial production of Velha Goa—both the

conceptualization of the space and its physical manifestation—therefore suggests that some of

the problems and ideologies of ‘modern’ urbanism have deeper historical roots and were in fact

rather commonplace in the past. That is, they may not only be a function of the particular

‘nature’ of modern industrial capitalism and the landscapes that it creates. Whether medieval,

mercantilist, or capitalist political economies, very similar spatial ideologies were/are potentially

at play in the rise and decline of urban spaces, as exemplified in the historical narratives of Velha

Goa’s urban landscape.

To understand these issues more fully in Velha Goa and to make more definitive, data

supported claims requires a better grasp on the temporality and contexts for ruin and decline.

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Moving forward, excavation in the city could provide the needed stratigraphic and temporal

control over material/physical aspects of the space, including greater insight into practices of

consumption and the effect of site formation processes on current material distributions. This

study would also benefit from comparisons to contemporary state interventions and non-elite

practices that are occurring in Velha Goa today. The city is experiencing a resurgence in growth

as the tourist trade continues to capitalize on the ‘ruined’ landscape and exisiting historic

structures in the city. At the same time, state level discourse about the current use and

distribution of the space surrounding these structures largely ignores any non-elite spatial

practices. This elision is especially true regarding the occupation of interstitial spaces in the city

by day laborers, despite their critical role in the tourist economy, agriculture, and building

trade—something briefly discussed in Chapter 6. Finally, a more in depth comparison to other

colonial locales in South Asia and beyond, which again considers both conceptual and physical

spaces and includes archaeological research, would broaden our understanding of the processes

of colonialism and the production of urban space.

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 Appendix A

Discussion of Ceramic Analysis Methodology;

Sample Artifact Analysis for Loci 474_7, 474_11, and 557_3

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Artifact Analysis:

The analysis of material was conducted with future excavations in mind and to provide

basic data on the types of material, their distribution, and the basis for preliminary typologies of

ceramic forms. The vast majority of artifacts recovered consisted of ceramics and construction

material (specifically lime mortar and lime plaster made from local shells) with only singular or

statistically insignificant amounts of bone, metal, glass, and other artifact types. In particular, my

analysis of ceramics was based on methods established by Carla Sinopoli in her ongoing work on

the ceramics of Vijayanagar (Sinopoli 1986; Sinopoli 1988; Sinopoli 1991).

Ceramics

Ceramics were initially sorted by major ware type, separated into diagnostic sherds

(defined as bases, rims, and decorated body sherds) and non-diagnostic sherds, and then

counted and weighed to the nearest gram. All sherds were also photographed individually

(diagnostics) and by collection unit (all sherds) and drawing were produced for rims. The

diagnostic sherds were further individually analyzed using the following metrics—again based

on Sinopoli 1986; Sinopoli 1988; Sinopoli 1991:

I. Major Division:
A. Earthenware
B. Porcelain
C. Glass glazed
D. Lead glazed
E. Tin glazed
F. Stoneware
G. Whiteware
H. Eroded/unknown
I. Other (e.g. Pearlware, creamware, etc..)

II. Named subtype/Identification

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III. Vessel Portion
A. Rim
B. Base
C. Body

IV. Size
A. < 3.0 cm (size 1)
B. 3.0-6.0 cm (size 2)
C. 6.0-9.0 cm (size 3)
D. > 9.0 cm (size 4)

V. Total count

VI. Weight (to the nearest g, if none given less than 1g)

VII. Construction
A. Wheel made
B. Hand made
C. Molded

VIII. Vessel Form (if possible to determine)

A. Flatware, Constricted, Open
B. Cup, plate, jar, bowl

IX. Maximal thickness: (the greatest of 10%, 20 sherds, or all sherds present measured for each
size group to1 mm at the thickest part of the sherd)
A. Range
B. Average (Mean)

X. Rim/base type or description

A. verbal description
1. Rim
2. Lip
B. Rim Thickness: measured at point of maximal thickness (c.f. Sinopoli 1991: 61)
C. Rim angle: measure of vessel orientation at rim, measured from horizontal counter
clockwise (Sinopoli 1991: 61)

XI. Diameter (measured if at least 3cm of rim present, measured on interior edge for rim and
exterior for base)

XII. Color
A. Interior (munsell)
B. Exterior (munsell)
C. Core (if different)

XIII. Interior and Exterior Decoration

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XIV. Charring present (evidence of burning or use for cooking)

XV. Firing (qualitative measure of hardness of ceramic / how easily broken)

A. fine
B. poor

XVI. Paste (qualitative measure of fineness of paste, how well sorted and processed (i.e. how
well levigated or unlevigated)
A. Fine
B. Medium
C. Coarse

XVII. Temper/Inclusions (what temper/inclusions are visible in profile)

XVIII. Size of temper (Wentworth Scale)

Code:
(L) Large 2-1 = Very coarse
(M) Medium 1- ½ mm = Coarse
(S) Small ¼ - ½ mm = Medium
(Ss) Very small 0 – ¼ mm = Fine

XIX. Notes/observations

Construction Materials

Construction materials (azulejos, roof tiles, other tiles, bricks, lime mortar, and lime

plaster) were analyzed using similar methodologies to those for ceramics.

Ceramic construction material (primarily roof tiles):

I. Major Division:
A. curved
B. flat

II. Size groups:

A. < 3.0 cm (size 1)
B. 3.0-6.0 cm (size 2)
C. 6.0-9.0 cm (size 3)
D. > 9.0 cm (size 4)

III. Total count

266
IV. Thickness: (the greatest of 10%, 20 sherds, or all sherds present measured for each size
group to1 mm at the thickest part of the sherd)
A. Range; Mode
B. Average (Mean)

V. Weight by size group (to nearest gram)

VI. Color
A. Interior (munsell)
B. Exterior (munsell)
C. Core (if different)

VII. Construction
A. Molded
B. Wheel made
C. Handmade

VIII. Paste (qualitative measure of finess of paste, how well sorted and processed (i.e. how well
levigated or unlevigated)
A. Fine
B. Medium
C. Coarse

IX. Firing (qualitative measure of hardness of ceramic / how easily broken)

A. fine
B. poor

X. Temper/Inclusions (what temper/inclusions are visible in profile)

XI. Size of temper (Wentworth Scale)

Code:
(L) Large 2-1 = Very coarse
(M) Medium 1- ½ mm = Coarse
(S) Small ½-1/4 mm = Medium
(Ss) Very small 1/4-0 mm = Fine

XII. Notes (decoration, maker’s marks, bibliographic reference etc…)

*All other artifacts were described and counted if present

267
 Artifact Analysis Forms
(Showing only relevant attributes)

Locus 474_7
Locus 474_7SC1: Ceramics

Earthenware:
Named subtype

Base/Rim/Body
Vessel Portion

Temper Size
Vessel Form
Total count

Decoration

Decoration

Paste (fine,
Weight (g)

inclusions
Size (1-4)

medium,

Temper/
Exterior

Interior

coarse)
Firing
Plain Laterite sand,
Redware Body 1 29 108 unknown None None Fine medium finely sorted S-M
269

Laterite sand,
Eroded Body 2 unknown matt pressed none Fine medium finely sorted Ss-S
2, 4 mm
parallel
horizontal
incised lines Laterite sand,
Eroded Rim 1 open along rim none Fine medium finely sorted Ss-S
single
horizontal
incised line Laterite sand,
Eroded Rim 1 open along rim none Fine medium finely sorted Ss-S
single Laterite sand,
Eroded Body 1 unknown incised line none Fine medium finely sorted Ss-S
Laterite sand,
Eroded Body 1 unknown combed none Fine medium finely sorted Ss-S
open oval Laterite sand,
Eroded Rim 1 (bowl?) depressions none Fine medium finely sorted Ss-S
 along rim
(i.e. inverted
beads)
Plain Laterite sand,
Redware rim 1 unknown none none Fine medium finely sorted Ss-S
near vertical
comb
pattern
Plain beginning Laterite sand,
Buffware Rim 1 unknown none below rim Fine fine finely sorted Ss

Plain Laterite sand,

Redware body 1 unknown combed none Fine medium finely sorted Ss-S
Plain Laterite sand,
Redware Body 1 unknown matt pressed none Fine medium finely sorted Ss-S
270

Red two parallel

slipped incised lines Laterite sand,
Redware Rim 1 unknown on rim none Fine medium finely sorted Ss-S
Red
slipped singe incised Laterite sand,
Redware Rim 1 unknown line on rim n Fine medium finely sorted Ss-S

Porcelain:

Size
Named Vessel Portion Total Weight Vessel Exterior Interior
(1-
subtype Base/Rim/Body count (g) Form Decoration Decoration
4)

cobalt blue
open paint, flora
UID Body 1 (flatware?) design n
 cobalt blue
open paint, flora
UID Body 1 (flatware?) design n
cobalt blue
open paint,
UID Body 1 (flatware?) likely floral n
open
UID Rim 1 (flatware?) n n
271
 Locus 474_7SC1: Construction Material
Total Weight Thickness Construction Firin Temper/Inclusion
Count: (g): Thickness (cm, range) (cm, avg.) : Paste g s
Roof Tiles:
Curved roof tile
unlevigate
Size 1 (< 3.0 cm) 729 3423 0.4 cm to 1.4 cm 0.87 Molded d poor Organic, laterite
unlevigate
Size 2 (3.0-6.0 cm) 217 4304 0.6 cm to 1.4 cm; 1 Molded d poor Organic, laterite
unlevigate
Size 3 (6.0-9.0 cm) 45 2204 0.7 cm to 1.5 cm 0.99 Molded d poor Organic, laterite
unlevigate
Size 4 (> 9.0 cm) 4 578 0.9 cm to 1.2 cm 1.08 Molded d poor Organic, laterite

Flat Tiles: Count:

272

0.5 cm to 0.7 cm; 0.5 unlevigate

Size 1 (< 3.0 cm) 6 56 cm 0.58 Molded d poor Organic, laterite
unlevigate
Size 2 (3.0-6.0 cm) 5 94 0.5 cm to .9 cm; 0.7 cm 0.7 Molded d poor Organic, laterite
Size 3 (6.0-9.0 cm) 0
Size 4 (> 9.0 cm) 0
Total Roof Tile
Count and Weight: 1006 10659
Other Tiles:
Floor Tiles

Bricks:
unlevigate
2 97 2.6, 2.8 Molded d poor Organic, laterite
Lime mortar N
Lime plaster N
 Locus 474_7DC2: Ceramics

Earthenware:

medium, coarse)

Temper/inclusio

Temper Size (L,

Named subtype

Base/Rim/Body
Vessel Portion

Vessel Form
Total count

Decoration

Decoration

Paste (fine,
Weight (g)
Size (1-4)

Exterior

M, S, Ss
Interior

Firing

ns
laterite
Eroded Rim 1 1 12 unknown N N fine medium sand S-M
lightly incised
line along top of laterite
Plain redware Rim 2 1 61 constricted rim, N fine medium sand S-M
two parallel
Red slipped incised lines laterite
273

redware Rim 1 1 9 open along rim N fine medium sand S-M

Red slipped laterite
redware Rim 1 1 1 unknown N N fine medium sand S-M
 Porcelain:

Size
Named Vessel Portion Total Weight Vessel Exterior Interior
(1-
subtype Base/Rim/Body count (g) Form Decoration Decoration
4)

blue floral design

(center of flower?
tiny bit of blue or Possibly center
green paint flower of
UID Body 1 1 unkown desing unknown bowl/plate)
blue parallel blue parallel
UID Body 1 1 unkown painted lines painted lines
274
 Locus 474_7DC2: Construction Material
Total Count: Weight Construction: Paste: Firing Temper/Inclusions
Roof Tiles:
Curved roof tile
medium to
Size 1 (< 3.0 cm) 146 696 molded course poor laterite sand
medium to
Size 2 (3.0-6.0 cm) 52 1302 molded course poor laterite sand
medium to
Size 3 (6.0-9.0 cm) 1 82 molded course poor laterite sand
Size 4 (> 9.0 cm)

Total Roof tile Total

count: 199 Weight: 2080

Other Tiles:
275

Floor Tiles

Bricks:
Lime mortar y
Lime plaster y
Shell y
 Locus 474_DC3: Ceramics
Earthenware:

Temper Size (L, M, S,

Paste (fine, medium,
Exterior Decoration

Interior Decoration

Temper/inclusions
Named subtype

Base/Rim/Body
Vessel Portion

Vessel Form
Total count

Weight (g)
Size (1-4)

coarse)
Firing

Ss
Plain
Redware Rim 1 1 unknown n fine medium laterite sand S-M
Plain
Redware Rim 1 1 unknown n fine medium laterite sand S-M
Plain
Redware Rim 1 1 unknown n fine medium laterite sand S-M
276

Eroded Rim 1 2 unknown n fine medium laterite sand S-M

laterite sand,
Eroded Rim 1 1 unknown n fine medium mica S-M
single
Eroded Body 1 1 unknown incised line n fine medium laterite sand S-M
3 short
incised
curving
Eroded Body 1 1 unknown lines n fine medium laterite sand S-M
4 parallel
incised lines
(possibly
Eroded Body 1 1 unknown combed) n fine medium laterite sand S-M
raised
Eroded Body 1 1 unknown ridge/line n fine medium laterite sand S

Eroded Rim 1 2 unknown remains of n poor fine sand? Ss

 probably possible
open slip/glaze
(cup?)
remains of
possible
Eroded Body 1 1 unknown slip/glaze n poor fine sand? Ss
Red
Slipped
Redware Rim/lid? 1 1 unknown n fine medium laterite sand S-M

Porcelain:
None

Locus 474_DC3: Construction Materials

Total Count: Weight (g) Construction: Paste: Firing
Roof Tiles:
277

Curved roof tile

Size 1 (< 3.0 cm) 122 526 molded coarse poor
Size 2 (3.0-6.0 cm) 21 462 molded coarse poor
Size 3 (6.0-9.0 cm) 1 67 molded coarse poor
Size 4 (> 9.0 cm)

Total Roof tile

count: 144 Total Weight: 1055

Other Tiles:
Floor Tiles

Bricks:
 Lime Plaster N
Lime Mortar N
Shell N
278
 Locus 474_7DC4: Ceramics
Earthenware:

Temper/inclusion
medium, coarse)

Temper Size (L,

Named subtype

Base/Rim/Body
Vessel Portion

Vessel Form
Total count

Decoration

Decoration

Paste (fine,
Weight (g)
Size (1-4)

M, S, Ss)
Exterior

Interior

Firing

s
laterite
Eroded Rim 1 1 Unknown N fine medium sand S-M
single incised laterite
Eroded Body 1 1 Unknown line N fine medium sand S-M
combed,
repeated sets
of two close-
set parrallel laterite
279

Eroded Body 1 1 Unknown incised lines N fine medium sand S-M

3 parallel laterite
Eroded Body 1 1 Unknown incised lines N fine medium sand S-M

Porcelain:

Size
Named Vessel Portion Total Weight Vessel Exterior Interior
(1-
subtype Base/Rim/Body count (g) Form Decoration Decoration
4)

partial likely
square blue single blue line
makers mark on surrounding large
white, rest of central floral
UID Base 2 1 12 cup base solid blue design
 thick
hashed/geometric
line around rim,
partial possibly
UID Rim 1 1 cup floral design below
thin blue painted
line (tree thick blue paint,
UID Body 1 1 unknown branch?) design unknown
280
 Locus 474_7DC4: Construction Material
Paste (fine,
Total Weight medium, Firing
Count: (g) Construction: coarse) (poor/fine) Temper/Inclusions
Roof Tiles:
Curved roof tile
Size 1 (< 3.0 cm) 89 320 molded coarse poor laterite sand
Size 2 (3.0-6.0 cm) 9 173 molded coarse poor laterite sand
Size 3 (6.0-9.0 cm) 3 241 molded coarse poor laterite sand
Size 4 (> 9.0 cm)

Total Roof tile Total

count: 101 Weight: 734
281

Other Tiles:

Bricks:

Lime Plaster N
Lime Mortar N
Shell N
 Locus 474_7Single Artifact Collections: Ceramics/Glass
Porcelain

Size
Named Vessel Portion Total Weight Vessel Exterior Interior
(1-
subtype Base/Rim/Body count (g) Form Decoration Decoration
4)

blue makers
mark on
white, portion of
cup or characters in large central
UID Base 2 1 28 bowl line flower
thin parallel
lines around
282

base of
vessel,
blue floral scrolled
cup or and partial curving lines,
UID Base 2 1 32 bowl swan clover shape
blue floral
UID Body 1 1 0 cup? design none

Gray Stoneware

Size
Named Vessel Portion Total Weight Vessel Exterior Interior
(1-
subtype Base/Rim/Body count (g) Form Decoration Decoration
4)
 lead Body 2 1 74 unknown none none
glazed

Glass
Vessel
GLASS Color Count Manufacture Notes shape/portion
Wine bottle Heavy patina (dark pontil mark
glass green?) 1 hand blown visible push-up
283
 Locus 474_11
Locus 474_11SC1: Ceramics

Earthenware:

Temper Size (L, M, S,

Paste (fine, medium,
Exterior Decoration

Temper/inclusions
Named subtype

Base/Rim/Body
Vessel Portion

Vessel Form
Total count

Weight (g)
Size (1-4)

coarse)
Firing

Ss
constricted
(storage laterite
Eroded Rim 2 1 19 jar?) fine medium sand s-m
284

laterite
Eroded Rim 1 1 8 unknown fine medium sand s-m
parallel incised
lines around laterite
Eroded Rim 1 1 8 unknown base of rim fine medium sand s-m
laterite
Eroded Rim 1 1 4 unknown fine medium sand s-m
laterite
Eroded Rim 1 1 4 unknown fine medium sand s-m
laterite
Eroded Rim 1 1 2 unknown fine medium sand s-m
laterite
Eroded Rim 1 1 11 unknown fine medium sand s-m
laterite
Eroded Rim 1 1 5 unknown fine medium sand s-m
laterite
Eroded Rim 1 1 9 unknown fine medium sand s-m
 laterite
Eroded Rim 1 1 6 unknown fine medium sand s-m
laterite
Eroded Rim 1 1 6 unknown fine medium sand s-m
laterite
Eroded Rim 1 1 4 unknown fine medium sand s-m
unknown
(likely laterite
Eroded Rim 1 1 3 bowl) fine medium sand s-m
laterite
Eroded Rim 1 1 4 unknown fine medium sand s-m
laterite
Eroded Rim 1 1 9 unknown fine medium sand s-m
laterite
Eroded Rim 1 1 2 unknown fine medium sand s-m
laterite
285

Eroded Rim 1 1 3 unknown fine medium sand s-m

laterite
Eroded Rim 1 1 2 unknown fine medium sand s-m
laterite
Eroded Rim 1 1 2 unknown fine medium sand s-m
laterite
Eroded Rim 1 1 2 unknown fine medium sand s-m
laterite
Eroded Rim 1 1 3 unknown fine medium sand s-m
laterite
Eroded Rim 1 1 2 unknown fine medium sand s-m
Red Slipped laterite
Redware Rim 1 1 15 open fine medium sand s-m
Red Slipped laterite
Redware Rim 1 1 7 open fine medium sand s-m
Red Slipped laterite
Redware Rim 1 1 3 open fine medium sand s-m
 Red Slipped laterite
Redware Rim 1 1 2 unknown fine medium sand s-m
incised lines
horizontal to
vessel with
Red Slipped angled hash laterite
Redware Body 1 1 2 unknown marks above fine medium sand s-m
Black Slipped laterite
ware Rim 1 1 7 unknown fine medium sand s-m
Black Slipped laterite
ware Rim 1 1 3 unknown fine medium sand s-m
Black Slipped laterite
ware Base 1 1 8 unknown fine medium sand s-m
unknown
(likely
large
286

storage laterite
Plain Redware Rim 1 1 33 vessel) fine medium sand s-m
laterite
Plain Redware Rim 1 1 3 unknown fine medium sand s-m
laterite
Plain Redware Rim 1 1 2 unknown fine medium sand s-m
laterite
Plain Redware Rim 1 1 4 unknown fine medium sand s-m
open
(likely laterite
Plain Redware Rim 1 1 7 bowl) fine medium sand s-m
constricted
(storage laterite
Plain Redware Rim 2 1 16 jar?) fine medium sand s-m
unknown
(likely laterite
Plain Redware Rim 2 1 25 large fine medium sand s-m
 storage
vessel)
laterite
Plain Redware Body 1 2 5 unknown matt pressed fine medium sand s-m
parallel incised
lines around laterite
Plain Redware Body 1 1 2 unknown base of rim fine medium sand s-m
incised lines
corssing near laterite
Plain Redware Body 1 1 2 unknown perpendicularly fine medium sand s-m
combed lines
horizontal laterite
Plain Redware Body 1 1 6 unknown around vessel fine medium sand s-m
two incised
parallel lines
with angled
287

hashh marks laterite

Plain Redware Body 1 1 2 unknown adjacent fine medium sand s-m
single incised
line nearly
horizontal with laterite
Plain Redware Body 1 1 11 unknown line of vessel fine medium sand s-m
combed lines
horizontal laterite
Plain Redware Body 1 1 3 unknown around vessel fine medium sand s-m
stamped flower,
below combed laterite
Plain Redware Body 1 1 2 unknown incised lines fine medium sand s-m
laterite
Eroded Rim 1 1 9 unknown fine medium sand s-m
laterite
Eroded Rim 1 1 12 unknown fine medium sand s-m
 laterite
Eroded Rim 1 1 6 unknown fine medium sand s-m
laterite
Eroded Rim 1 1 3 unknown fine medium sand s-m
laterite
Eroded Rim 1 1 3 unknown fine medium sand s-m
288
 Porcelain:

Named Vessel Portion Size Total Weight

Vessel Form Exterior Decoration Interior Decoration
Subtype Base/Rim/Body (1-4) count (g)

unknown likely one plain, one w/single

plate or larger blue line , one floral
Body 2 3 17 bowl pattern blue floral patterns
various designs in blue:
unknown likelly floral, plain, single lines,
Body 1 22 18 tea cups, plates unknown same as exterior
black and blue unknown
289

Body 1 5 3 unknown design same as exterior

single black line along
rim with black outlined
floral desing partially
Rim 1 3 4 open (plate?) filled with blue paint same as exterior
Rim 1, 2 3 11 open (bowl) blue floral design same as exterior
various designs in blue: various designs in blue:
primarily singel or floral, single or double lines
double lines along rim, following rim, unknown--
Rim 1 9 19 open three plain, unknown possibly landscape
two plain, rest single various in blue: floral,
Rim 1 7 6 open blue line following rim unknown
two solid blue lines
oneither side and
following base, makers
Base 2 1 16 tea cup mark (chinese character) posterior end of deer
Base 2 1 16 unknown (bowl?) single blue line front end of deer, blue lines
 following base
three parallel blue lines
Base 2 1 12 tea cup around base bird
two parallel blue lines unknown, probable
Base 2 1 11 unknown (bowl?) around base landscape
two parallel blue lines
Base 1 1 5 unknown around base plain
two parallel blue lines
around base, single line
of further decoration unknown, probable
Base 1 1 2 unknown visisble landscape
single blue line
Base 1 1 2 unknown following base Floral
one plain, two blue one plain, two blue painted
Body 1 3 5 unknown painted unknown design unknown design
very detailed/fine painted
290

Body 1 1 3 unknown plain hashed liines, floral design

green floral design, tiny
edge of blue line at shed
Body 1 1 2 unknown edge plain
finely painted blue design
between two parallel lines
along rim (Ch. characters?),
top of rim/lip yellowish
Rim 1 1 1 unknown plain brown
two parallel blue lines floral possible landscape in
Base 2 1 23 unknown along outer edge of base blue
two parallel blue lines
along outer edge of base,
with 4 thin line
unknown (large emenating out landscape, trees, hill slope
Base 4 1 274 bowl or jar) perpendicluar to base with two deer
Body 2 1 8 unknown (see finely painted blue floral none, and only partially
 note) design on whit glaze, glazed
single raised (plastic)
molded line bordered by
blue lines
makers mark (single
group of Chinese
unknown (likely characters), blue paited
Base 3 1 102 bowl) on white dragon in blue on whit
floral pattern in center of
base bordered by circular
Batavia unknown (likely line of hashed design, blue
Ware Base (complete) 3 1 105 bowl) none on white
two parallel blue lines
around outside of base,
unknown (likely thin blue line unknwon blue floral, possible
Base 2 1 28 bowl) design landscape
291

unknown (likely two blue paralle lines blue floral, possible

Base 3 1 51 bowl) along outer edge of base landscape
mkaers mark (6 Chinese
characters) parallel blue
Base 2 1 25 tea cup line around base none
singel thin blue line
along outer edge of base,
unknown (likely thin blue line of unknwon elaborate blue
Base 2 1 11 bowl) unknown design desing, possible landscape
two paralle blue lines
unknown (plate around outer edge of thick blue paint of unknown
Base 2 1 21 or bowl) base design
thick blue lines, fan framed by blue lined
Rim 2 1 16 plate unknown design border
thicker blue paint unknown
Body 1 2 4 unknown blue lines design
 Other: Glass Glazed and Tin Glazed:

Paste (fine, medium,

Exterior Decoration

Interior Decoration

Temper Size (L, M,

Temper/inclusions
Named subtype

Base/Rim/Body
Vessel Portion

Vessel Form
Total count

Weight (g)
Size (1-4)

coarse)
Firing

S, Ss)
white glaze
with light
blue-green
none but paint,
likely glazed unknown
but design, paint
Glass glazed completely 'bleeding' Ss-
(UID) Body 1 1 8 unknown eroded away under glaze fine UID S
292

tiny
floral pattern, fragment of
black outline glaze in fine
Portuguese with blue corner, black (almost
Faience (Tin painted fill painted lines stone Ss-
glazed) Body 2 1 14 unknown on white on white ware) fine UID S
blue floral
pattern, lines
on white
glaze, finely
Portuguese executed no
Faience (Tin blue line on bleeding of Ss-
glazed) Base 1 1 8 unknown white glaze glaze fine fine UID S
Blue -green
glazed large blue-green
(Tin glazed) Body 4 1 194 plate/platter glaze fine fine micaceous Ss
 Locus 474_11SC1: Construction Material
Thickne
Total ss Thickne
Count Weight (range, ss (avg., Constructio Firin Temper/Inclusio Tempe
: (g) mm) mm) n: Paste: g ns r Size
Roof Tiles:
Curved roof tile
laterite sand,
Size 1 (< 3.0 cm) 181 744 7.5-15 10.7 molded coarse poor organic s-m
Size 2 (3.0-6.0 laterite sand,
cm) 37 780 8.0-16.0 12.1 molded coarse poor organic s-m
Size 3 (6.0-9.0 laterite sand,
cm) 5 328 10-14.5 12.4 molded coarse poor organic s-m
Size 4 (> 9.0 cm)
293

Total
Total Roof tile Weigh
count: 223 t: 1852

Other Tiles:
Flat
mediu
Size 1 67 356 6.0-9.0 7.5 molded m fine laterite sand s-m
mediu
Size 2 21 329 7.0-12.0 8.5 molded m fine laterite sand s-m
mediu
Size 3 2 126 8.5-11 9.75 molded m fine laterite sand s-m
Total
weight
Total count: 90 : 811
Bricks:
 laterite sand?
Size 1 15 124 21.5-26 23.75 molded fine poor Mica/quartz ss-s
laterite sand?
Size 2 5 311 23-30 25.6 molded fine poor Mica/quartz ss-s
Lime Plaster X
Lime Mortar X

Locus 474_11SC1: Other finds

PERSONALS and ODDITIES Count
Shell window panes 2

Locus 557_3
Locus 557_3DC1: Ceramics
Earthenware:

Temper/inclus
Vessel Portion
Base/Rim/Bod

Temper Size
Vessel Form

(L, M, S, Ss)
Total count

Decoration

Decoration

Paste (fine,
Weight (g)
Size (1-4)

medium,
Exterior

Interior
subtype

coarse)
Named

Firing
294

ions
y

laterite
Eroded Rim 1 1 7 unknown None None fine medium sand s-m

Porcelain: None

Locus 557_3DC1: Construction Material

Paste
(fine,
Total Weight medium, Firing
Count: (g) Construction coarse) (poor/fine) Temper/Inclusions
Roof Tiles:
Curved roof tile
Size 1 (< 3.0 cm) 139 617 molded coarse poor laterite sand
 Size 2 (3.0-6.0 cm) 10 203 molded coarse poor laterite sand
Size 3 (6.0-9.0 cm)
Size 4 (> 9.0 cm)
Total Roof tile Total
count: 149 Weight: 820

Other Tiles:
Bricks:

Lime Plaster N
Lime Mortar N
Shell N

Locus 557_3DC2: Ceramics

Earthenware:
295

Temper Size (L, M, S,

Paste (fine, medium,
Exterior Decoration

Interior Decoration

Temper/inclusions
Named subtype

Base/Rim/Body
Vessel Portion

Vessel Form
Total count

Weight (g)
Size (1-4)

coarse)
Firing

Ss)
laterite
Eroded Rim 1 1 5 bowl None None fine medium sand s-m

Porcelain: None
 Locus 557_3DC2: Construction Material
Total Weight Paste (fine, medium, Firing Temper/
Count: (g) Construction: coarse) (poor/fine) Inclusions
Roof Tiles:
Curved roof tile
Size 1 (< 3.0
cm) 219 1170 molded coarse poor laterite sand
Size 2 (3.0-6.0
cm) 39 1033 molded coarse poor laterite sand
Size 3 (6.0-9.0
cm) 1 171 molded coarse poor laterite sand
Size 4 (> 9.0
cm)
Total Roof tile Total
count: 259 Weight: 2374
296

Other Tiles:
Bricks:
Lime Plaster N
Lime Mortar N
Shell N

Locus 557_3DC3: Ceramics

Earthenware:

Temper/inclu
Base/Rim/Bo

Temper Size
Vessel Form

(L, M, S, Ss)
Total count

Decoration

Decoration

Paste (fine,
Weight (g)
Size (1-4)

medium,
Exterior

Interior
subtype

Portion

coarse)
Named

Firing
Vessel

sions
black very laterite s-
Eroded body 1 1 27 unknown slip fine medium sand m
 very laterite s-
Eroded body 1 1 10 unknown fine medium sand m

Porcelain: None

Locus 557_3DC3: Construction Material

Paste (fine,
Total Weight medium, Firing
Count: (g) Construction coarse) (poor/fine) Temper/Inclusions
Roof Tiles:
Curved roof tile
Size 1 (< 3.0 cm) 17 78 molded coarse poor laterite sand
Size 2 (3.0-6.0 cm)
Size 3 (6.0-9.0 cm)
Size 4 (> 9.0 cm)
297

Total Roof tile Total

count: 17 Weight: 78

Other Tiles:
Bricks:

Lime Plaster N
Lime Mortar N
Shell N

Locus 557_3DC4: Ceramics

Earthenware:
 medium, coarse)

Temper/inclusio

Temper Size (L,

Named subtype

Base/Rim/Body
Vessel Portion

Vessel Form
Total count

Decoration

Decoration

Paste (fine,
Weight (g)
Size (1-4)

Exterior

M, S, Ss
Interior

Firing

ns
laterite s-
Eroded Rim 1 1 5 bowl None None fine medium sand m

Porcelain:

Size
Named Vessel Portion Total Weight Vessel Exterior Interior
(1-
subtype Base/Rim/Body count (g) Form Decoration Decoration
4)

solid blue line floral pattern

298

around outer in blue

edge of base bordered by
with blue line thick blue
emanating out line or
UID Base 2 1 24 unknown from base banner
etched floral
pattern when
leather dry
then glazed
UID Base 1 1 6 unknown Plain/none overtop
well executed well executed
blue paint, blue paint,
unknown unknown
UID Body 1 2 3 unknown design design
 Locus 557_3DC4: Construction Material

Paste (fine,
Total Weight meduim, Firing
Count: (g) Construction: course) (poor/fine) Temper/Inclusions
Roof Tiles:
Curved roof tile
Size 1 (< 3.0
cm) 72 300 molded coarse poor laterite sand
Size 2 (3.0-6.0
cm) 4 94 molded coarse poor laterite sand
Size 3 (6.0-9.0
cm)
Size 4 (> 9.0
cm)
299

Total roof tile Total

count: 76 Weight: 394

Other Tiles:
Bricks:

Lime Plaster N
Lime Mortar N
Shell N
 Appendix B

Outer Fortification Wall: List of GPS Coordinates and Features

300
 ***All geo-coordinates were recorded using the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM)
coordinate system. The survey area is located in UTM zone 43P.***
Sl. Geo-coordinates of
No. fortification wall and
various features
1 N: 1713025 m E: 381602 to
N: 1712961 m E: 381574 m
2 N: 1712839 m E: 381659 m
3 N: 1712742 m E: 381734 m
4 N: 1712691 m E: 381738 m
Sl. No. Geo-coordinates of
fortification wall and
various features
1 N: 1712665 m E: 381741 m
2 N: 1712504 m E: 381746 m
3 N: 1712476 m E: 381770 m
4 N: 1712283 m E: 381837 m
5 N: 1712278 m E: 381859 m
6 N: 1712228 m E: 381894 m
Sl. Geo-coordinates of
No. fortification wall and
various features
1 N: 1712209 m E: 381810 m
2 N: 1712092 m E: 381996 m
3 N: 1712071 m E: 382001 m
Survey Area A:
Notes
Well-preserved section of wall in Navelkar Hill City,
furthest portion of wall preserved in the northwest
Preserved section of wall begins north of NH4A
Bypass and south of PWD water tank
Triangular shaped platform associated with directional
change in wall—likely poorly preserved remains of a
bastion
End of preserved section of wall north of NH4A
Bypass, wall is bisected by bypass at this point (end of
Area A)
Survey Area B:
Notes
Small section of wall partially preserved by tree roots
directly south of NH4A Bypass
Center of well-preserved triangular or chevron shaped
bastion (bastion Type-1)
Beginning of well-preserved bays along inner face of
wall
Center of Type-1 bastion
Drain located at south end of bastion
Preserved section of wall ends northwest of dirt road
leading from Old Goa to Talaulim
Survey Area C:
Notes
Preserved section of wall continues southeast of
unimproved road leading from Old Goa to Talaulim
Gate located on the northwest side of Type-1 bastion
listed below
Center of Type-1 bastion located where wall turns
from heading southeast to due east
301
 4 N: 1712055 m E: 382257 m
5 N: 1712071 m E: 382466 m
6 N: 1712046 m E: 382527 m
7 N: 1711833 m E: 382649 m
8 N: 1711868 m E: 382720 m
9 N: 1711831 m E: 383117 m
Sl. No. Geo-coordinates of
fortification wall and
various features
1 N: 1711807 m E: 383132 m
2 N: 1711655 m E: 383184 m
3 N: 1711448 m E: 383280 m
4 N: 1711163 m E: 383445 m
5 N: 1711084 m E: 383573 m
6 N: 1710990 m E: 383651 m
7 N: 1710934 m E: 383702 m
8 N: 1710884 m E: 383713 m
9 N: 1710804 m E: 383962 m
10 N: 1710493 m E: 384255 m
11 N: 1710735 m E: 384702 m
Approximate center of partially preserved bastion—
likely Type-1
Gate associated with Type-2 bastion
Wall turns from due east to the southeast
Approximate center of partially preserved bastion—
likely Type-1, located where wall turns from southeast
to the northeast
Between this point and main gate along Rajvithi wall is
poorly preserved and recently disturbed due to
excavation for modern water pipeline with the
continued presence of large naturally occurring,
quarried depressions.
Well-preserved remains of large main gate located
along Rajvithi
Survey Area D:
Notes
Preserved section of wall begins after Rajvithi bisects
wall
Center of Type-3 bastion with well-preserved room
blocks in each wing
Partially preserved bastion—likely Type-3
Partially preserved bastion—likely Type-1
Arched drain providing drainage for nalla or rivulet
bisecting wall
Center of well-preserved Type-1 bastion with
evidence of room blocks in wings
Postern gate and associated Type-2 bastion
Truncated Type-1 bastion with very well-preserved
postern gate at southeastern side of bastion
Center point between two facing Type-2 bastions
Remains of poorly preserved probable Type-1 bastion,
southernmost point of fortification wall
End of definitive evidence for wall but quarries
continue to be visible into village of Assozim
302

Sl. No. Geo-coordinates of
fortification wall and
various features
1 N: 1711437 m E: 385030 m
2 N: 1711447 m E: 385139 m
3 N: 1711474 m E: 385317 m
4 N: 1711505 m E: 385494 m
5 N: 1711552 m E: 385575 m
6 N: 1711644 m E: 385710 m
7 N: 1711710 m E: 385801 m
8 N: 1711739 m E: 385963 m
9 1711768 m E: 386134 m
10 N: 1711796 m E: 386304 m
11 N: 1711825 m E: 386455 m
Sl. No. Geo-coordinates of
fortification wall and
various features
1 N: 1711825 m E: 386464
m
2 N: 1711782 m E: 386646
m much larger
3 N: 1711738 m E: 386854
m
4 N: 1711780 m E: 386823
m with above fort/outpost
5 N: 1711886 m E: 386666
m much larger
6 N: 1711968 m E: 386541
m bastion located where wall turns from roughly west to
7 N: 1712122 m E: 386501
m
8 N: 1712264 m E: 386567
Survey Area E:
Notes
Evidence of wall resumes just west of railway tracks
to the west of Assozim
Center of Type-4 bastion
Center of Type-4 bastion
Evidence of wall disappears at the western outskirts of
a small village
Evidence of wall resumes to the east of the village
near a modern sluice gate with evidence of a partially
preserved older sluice gate (likely corresponding to
depictions in the historical maps produced by
Carneiro—see Interpretation below)
Center of Type-4 bastion
Center of Type-4 bastion
Center of Type-4 bastion
Center of Type-4 bastion
Center of Type-4 bastion
End of area E, wall continues unbroken into
Mangurial area
Survey Area F:
Notes
Center of Type-4 bastion
Center of rectangular bastion similar to Type-4 but
Approximate center of fort/outpost located in Mangurial
Northern end of well-preserved main gate associated
Center of rectangular bastion similar to Type-4 but
Poorly preserved section of wall but possible Type-4
the northwest
Poorly preserved Type-4 bastion
Poorly preserved Type-4 bastion
303
 m
9 N: 1712423 m E: 386646
m
10 N: 1712585 m E: 386720
m
11 N: 1712751 m E: 386804
m
12 N: 1713191 m E: 387382
m directly north of NH4A
13 N: 1712899 m E: 387792
14 N: 1713058 m E: 387875
m fortification opposite Banastarim Fort
15 N: 1714131 m E: 387237
m
Sl. No. Geo-coordinates of
fortification wall and
various features
1 N: 1716219 m E: 385480 m
2 N: 1715504 m E: 385698 m
3 N: 1715440 m E: 385755
4 N: 1715511 m E: 385982 m
5 N: 1715565 m E: 386195 m
6 N: 1715556 m E: 386456 m
7 N: 1715529 m E: 386544 m
8 N: 1717576 m E: 386392
9 N: 1715513 m E: 386624 m
10 N: 1715442 m E: 386723 m
11 N: 1715321 m E: 386686 m
12 N: 1715197 m E: 386602 m
13 N: 1714734 m E: 386684 m
14 N: 1714610 m E: 386744 m
Poorly preserved Type-4 bastion
Poorly preserved Type-4 bastion
Poorly preserved Type-4 bastion
Possible preserved section of wall circling khazan
Northern end of earthen embankment with laterite block
wall fall directly south of NH4A along Cumbarjua canal
Old Banastirii Bridge and associated remains of large
Southeastern edge of Sygenta Chemical factory property
Survey Area G:
Notes
Northeastern most preserved portion of the wall
located at Daugim ferry landing
Possible Type-4 bastion but very poorly preserved
Well-preserved, arched drainage feature—not
currently in –use
Center of well-preserved Type-4 bastion
Center of well-preserved tyupe-4 bastion with second
tier partially preserved
Center of very poorly preserved bastion—likely Type-
4
Center of very poorly preserved bastion—likely Type-
4
Modern sluice gate
Center of very poorly preserved bastion—likely Type-
4
Main gate at Daugim (Passo Seco or ‘dry passage’)
Center of very poorly preserved bastion—likely Type-
4
Center of very poorly preserved bastion—likely Type-
4
Center of very poorly preserved bastion—likely Type-
4
Center of very poorly preserved bastion—likely Type-
4
304
15 N 1714519 m E: 386794 m Somewhat better preserved rectangular bastion—
likely Type-4
16 N 1714486 m E: 386804 m; Two small (approximately 50cm wide) drains along a
N: 1714501 m E: 386797 m well-preserved upper portion of wall
17 N: 1714390 m E: 386874 m Center of very poorly preserved bastion—likely Type-
4
18 N: 1714292 m E: 386947 m Northeastern edge of Sygenta Chemical factory
property, clearly destroyed at this point from
construction of large holding tanks and other factory
buildings

305
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