History
Gandaulim might have been a spice trading post of the Republic of Ragusa in the early modern period. [1]
In the annals of 1605, Jakov Lukarević noted that Ragusan merchants invested in decorating a local church. [2] Goese historian Gomes Catão documented the town to have a population of 12,000, where wealthy ladies were carried to the churches by slaves in canopies. [1] Catão also remarked the church to be modeled on an eponymous church in Dubrovnik. [1] These claims have since been adopted into the popular memory of the inhabitants of Gandaulim, and Ragusans are now credited for the very construction of the church; however, the factual accuracy of this remains disputed. [1] [3] [a]
Some historians have used these arguments to make assumptions about the existence of a Ragusan colony. [2] [1] [b] Serbian economic historian Nicholas Mirkovich had lamented in 1943 about the lack of contemporary Ragusan sources to draft a history of their exploits in India. [3]
Interest in the connection was revived in 1999, when Croatian Indologist Zdravka Matišić discovered a reference to ties between Ragusa and Goa by chance while studying Sanskrit texts in India. [1] [4] [5] That same year, Croatian author Karmen Bašić noted that while nothing definitive could be said about Ragusan arrival and departure from Goa, there was a "substantial body of evidence and sources vouching for Ragusa’s presence" and its role in the global spice trade, though the notion of a colony linked to the Saint Blaise (São Brás) church at Gandaulim remained "somewhat of a mystery". [1]
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