Goa & Mumbai as the Margins of Society
The Portuguese spent the majority of their time and effort in India gaining control of strategic port cities, rather than extending their control to the interior of the subcontinent. However, this is not to say that the Portuguese did not exert their influence heavily in these coastal port cities.
Goa is the classic example of Portuguese rule in India. Conquered and annexed from local tribes in 1510, the city of Goa became a major strategic port city for the Portuguese traders (1). Its location on the western coast of India made it a quasi-halfway point for the long journey from Western Europe to Eastern Asia. In this Portuguese map of Goa from 1630 created by an unknown author, we see that all of the location names on the map are in Portuguese rather than local dialects. The European influence is clear as we can see many churches, forts, and protective walls detailed in the map.
Unlike Ataide’s map, structures are drawn in this Goan map, and we can see just from the Western architecture of the structures the strong influence of the city’s rulers. Despite the highly detailed depiction of Goa, in a seemingly Portuguese fashion, once the cartographer finished drawing the city they seem to have left the surrounding areas completely blank aside from a few location names. The influence of the Portuguese in Goa was so heavy that the state of Goa actually remained a colony of Portugal until it was invaded and annexed by India in 1961.
Another major Portuguese holding on the West Coast of India is the city Mumbai, known to the Portuguese as Bombaim. Conquered from local tribes in 1534 (2), the city originally consisted of seven islands, as seen on the stamp with a 1635 map created by Pedro Barreto de Resende. The city of Mumbai is treated by de Resende similarly to the map of Goa, where Portuguese buildings and structures are detailed on the map within the city, but the area directly outside of the city is drawn empty and full of trees. Clearly since the Portuguese drove out local tribes from the city there was in fact some sort of civilization in the area, but de Resende chose not to include that on his 1635 map.
The Portuguese brought Catholicism with them to Mumbai, specifically Jesuit missionaries. These missionaries set to work converting local Indians and building churches. Two major churches from the sixteenth century, St. Andrew’s and St. John the Baptist, are ancient Jesuit churches that still exist in Mumbai today. The Jesuit and Catholic influence of the Portuguese spread throughout Mumbai and other coastal cities (2), but as we can tell from the maps, this influence really only focused on the coasts and shorelines. Even today there are enclaves of Catholocism in Mumbai.
The Portuguese conquered and gained control of sea ports and established their culture in these places, but they did not pay much attention to spreading their influence to the interior of India. Using Goa and Mumbai as examples, we see how tenuous the hold of a colonizing state can be when the rulers live on the margin of the state and do not try to connect with their populace. The city of Goa remained a hold out for Portuguese culture for an extraordinarily long time, but the areas surrounding Goa and Mumbai did not connect with a foreign power ruling them from the margins. The remaining legacy of the Portuguese on the West Coast of India is generally constrained to several ancient Catholic churches.