12/06/2026
Forts on Paper: Portuguese Iconography
These images served as:
· Architectural records of how European military design adapted to Asian and Arabian coastal environments.
· Visual documentation of cross-cultural contact zones—places where different societies met, traded, or conflicted.
· Cartographic tools that helped map strategic points along Indian Ocean trade networks.
More than illustrations, these images preserve the memory of forts and the stories they continue to tell through time.