Colonial Port Cities and Their Legacy

From the 16th century onward, European trading powers established fortified port cities across Asia and Africa chosen for defensible harbors and access to regional trade rather than built on pre-existing major local urban centers. The Portuguese captured Goa, on India's western coast, in 1510 under Afonso de Albuquerque, making it the administrative capital of the Estado da India, while the Dutch East India Company (VOC) founded Batavia in 1619, under the direction of Governor-General Jan Pieterszoon Coen, on the site of the destroyed Javanese port of Jayakarta, establishing it as the VOC's Asian headquarters.