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

by Peter A. Mark

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253109552
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	12/05/2002
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	3 MB

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.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Table of Contents:

AcknowledgmentsIntroduction

1. The Evolution of "Portuguese" Identity: Luso-Africans on the Upper Guinea Coast from the 16th to the Early 19th-Century2. Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Architecture in the Gambia-Geba Region and the Articulation of Luso-African Ethnicity3. Reconstructing West African Architectural History: Images of Seventeenth-Century "Portuguese" Style Houses in Brazil4. "The People There Are Beginning to Take on English Manners": Mixed Manners in Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth-Century Gambia5. Senegambia from the Mid-Eighteenth Century to the Mid-Nineteenth Century6. Casamance Architecture from 1850 to the Establishment of Colonial Administration

Conclusions and ObservationsNotesBibliographyIndex