City in Space and Metaphor

• Published in: Studies in history (Sahibabad) 2009-01, Vol.25 (1), p.13-38
• Main Author: Malekandathil, Pius
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Asia; Banking; Cities; Elites; Empires; Oceans; Power; Trade; Urban Areas
• ISSN: 0257-6430
• DOI: 10.1177/025764300902500102

The physical formatting of a city is done not by accident but by definite purposes and logic that its dominant groups intend to transcribe in space. The Portuguese, who developed Goa as their seat in Asia, transferred a large set of meanings of power into its urban space by resorting to architectural process as a language of domination. Wealth accumulated by casado traders and urban elites was made to get diverted to the erection of elegant and magnificent edifices and structures in the city that would evoke awe and impression among the onlookers in a way that would supplement and reinforce their claims of monopoly and domination in Indian Ocean trade. The structural formatting of the city went hand in hand with the creation of an ethnically exclusive Lusitanian social base at the power centre. The Portuguese city-dwellers, who brought immense wealth to the city out of private trade, formed the foundational base of the Estado da India, as well. In the seventeenth century with the mass exodus of city-dwellers from Goa to the peripheries of the empire following recurring pestilences and attacks from the Dutch and the English, non-Portuguese elements, particularly the Saraswat Brahmins, began to dominate the trade and banking sectors of the city causing eventually a change to happen in the ethnic nature of the social base at the power centre. Consequently the Portuguese authorities wove different metaphors and imageries around the city so as to make it appear appealing and sensitive and to keep the Portuguese residents back in the city, which in turn augmented the ability of the Portuguese state to use the urban space continually for furthering and perpetuating its political control. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]