Portuguese Style and Luso-African Identity: Precolonial Senegambia, Sixteenth - Nineteenth Centuries

Peter Mark

Indiana University Press, Dec 5, 2002 - Architecture - 208 pages

In this detailed history of domestic architecture in West Africa, Peter Mark shows how building styles are closely associated with social status and ethnic identity. Mark documents the ways in which local architecture was transformed by long-distance trade and complex social and cultural interactions between local Africans, African traders from the interior, and the Portuguese explorers and traders who settled in the Senegambia region. What came to be known as "Portuguese" style symbolized the wealth and power of Luso-Africans, who identified themselves as "Portuguese" so they could be distinguished from their African neighbors. They were traders, spoke Creole, and practiced Christianity. But what did this mean? Drawing from travelers' accounts, maps, engravings, paintings, and photographs, Mark argues that both the style of "Portuguese" houses and the identity of those who lived in them were extremely fluid. "Portuguese" Style and Luso-African Identity sheds light on the dynamic relationship between identity formation, social change, and material culture in West Africa.

Contents

• Introduction: 1
• The Evolution of Portuguese Identity LusoAfricans on the Upper Guinea Coast from the Sixteenth Century to the Early Nineteenth Century: 13
• Sixteenth and SeventeenthCentury Architecture in the GambiaGeba Region and the Articulation of LusoAfrican Ethnicity: 33
• Reconstructing West African Architectural History Images of SeventeenthCentury Portuguese Style Houses in Brazil: 59
• The People There Are Beginning to Take on English Manners Mixed Manners in Seventeenth and EarlyEighteenthCentury Gambia: 81
• Senegambia from the MidEighteenth Century to the MidNineteenth Century: 97
• Casamance Architecture from 1850 to the Establishment of Colonial Administration: 114
• Conclusions and Observations: 144
• Notes: 149
• Bibliography: 189
• Index: 199

About the author

Peter Mark is Professor of Art History at Wesleyan University. He is author of The Wild Bull and the Sacred Forest and A Cultural, Economic, and Religious History of the Basse Casamance since 1500.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Portuguese Style and Luso-African Identity: Precolonial Senegambia, Sixteenth - Nineteenth Centuries
• Author: Peter Mark
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Indiana University Press, 2002
• ISBN: 0253215528, 9780253215529
• Length: 208 pages
• Subjects: Architecture / Buildings / Residential; Architecture / History / General; Architecture / Vernacular; Art / African; Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural & Social; Social Science / Ethnic Studies / General