ABSTRACT
The paramaritime, then, is pertinent for shallow waters, but it also speaks to interstitial watery spaces. The port town is the place where maritime history finds its high water mark and then recedes, but from a paramaritime perspective, it is the starting point for all kinds of new inquiries. Italian Renaissance planners drew idealized diagrams of perfect octagonal port towns enclosing a symmetrical array of streets and squares, with the harbour as an afterthought at the bottom. For rulers, the outward appearance of a port town could send diplomatic signals, establish prestige, or even offer an insight into the regime’s overall stance toward the outside world. Disease formed one of the clearest pretexts for state intervention into the life of port towns. The tidy schema of fort-bazaar-native town seems increasingly inadequate to capture both the social character and economic operations of the ‘colonial’ ports.
