Paper short abstract:

Goa’s defensive system developed by the Portuguese, has indelibly influenced the composition of the contemporary territory. Understanding this defensive system implies understanding its significance: an organising, aggregating network of the territory, a defining element of the Goan identity.

Paper long abstract:

Old Goa, this region's capital for three centuries, corresponds to the core of Tiswadi. The island, the base where the Portuguese settled in and from which they pushed forward their frontiers, corresponds to the heart of this territory, the last and fundamental stronghold to be preserved.

Having experienced both shocks and cultural dissemination, resistance and military alliances, battles on land and sea, joined by technological evolution - of weaponry, of naval power and, above all, of answers produced by military architecture, a main mark which subsides in the territory - as time flew by the Portuguese managed to sustain gradual growth, from the Old to the New Conquests, thus indelibly influencing the composition of the contemporary territory.

Currently, understanding the development of Goa's defensive system - at the scale of the fortified structure (the architectural interpretation, the goals, the transformations which took place and their significances) and from the standpoint of the ensemble (mutual relationships based in logics of territorial disposition and organisation, progressive bordering (re)definitions and consequent leading to the creation of new communities or transformation of pre-existing ones) - implies understanding the significance of a network aggregating the territory and, as such, a decisive element in the definition of the Goan identity.