Peter Mark. "Portuguese" Style and Luso-African Identity: Pre-Colonial Senegambia, Sixteenth-Nineteenth Centuries. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. x + 208 pp. ISBN 978-0-253-34155-6.
Reviewed by Philip J. Havik (Leiden University, and Instituto de Investigação CientÃÂfica Tropical, Lisbon)
Published on H-Luso-Africa (December, 2004)
Peter Mark's most recent publication summarizes and updates his research on the cross-cultural osmosis that took place in the Senegambian region between the late-sixteenth and the late-nineteenth centuries. Focusing on the area between the Gambia and the Geba Rivers, the main body of data that is presented in six chapters deals with the Casamance region, currently part of Senegal. Supported mainly by French, Portuguese, and English sources, the book sets out by discussing the presence of what are called alternately "Luso-Africans" or "Portuguese," their settlement, trading culture, and identity in an area that was the theater of intensive exchange and interaction.
Mark subsequently proposes a model of identity formation that, rather than being bipolar in the Barthist sense, was flexible in that it responded to the cultural diversity of particular areas and native groups these "Luso-Africans" were related to. The impact of Ba=un, Djola/Felupe, Mandinga, Manjaku, and Pepel communities upon each other and upon "Portuguese" outsiders who settled and traded in the region found its expression in a range of hybrid practices and identities. However, a notable shift occurred from the eighteenth century when French, English, and Dutch newcomers brought about a narrowing of references that challenged the fluidity of identities so characteristic of Senegambian communities including the "Portuguese." As a result the latter began to shed cultural traits that had until then defined their social status, with the question of skin color redefining socially stratified categories that had been based upon profession (trader), language (Creole), and religion (Christian). Eventually in the 1800s "Luso-African self identification" became circumscribed to an "exclusivist" domain dominated by a Christian paradigm.
The five chapters that follow fill in the historical framework of architectural evolution by looking at the multicultural influences upon lifestyles and outlook of these dispersed groups. A discussion of the design of "maisons = la Portugaise" between the Gambia and Geba rivers conjures up rectangular shapes, ample verandas or vestibules supported by posts, white-washed mud walls, and thatched roofs. It well served the interests of what was essentially a trading community, for example, with ample verandas and vestibules that provided shelter and allowed palavers with visitors. The complexity of the "Portuguese" style, which is not limited to the Senegambia, is demonstrated by its Mand= influences but also by its Brazilian ramifications that characterized early times. Hybrid fluidity fed by a remarkable capacity for assimilation was its hallmark. Shifts in representations over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries reinforce the idea of a history of "ongoing identity formations" that are reflected in material culture (p. 86). Mark describes the ins and outs of religious interaction, marital alliances, and mixed manners in order to stress the existence of a broad cross-cultural dynamic that encompassed communities throughout the region. Within this context "Luso-Africans" were gradually absorbed into African societies as their economic position declined from the eighteenth century, a process that varied from place to place and also in terms of intensity and timing.
Towards the close of the nineteenth century the only distinctive marker for the "Portuguese" appears to be their architecture, whereas on all other counts they blended in with their African peers (p. 103). For outside observers spatial organization then expressed not only social stratification and status, but degrees of civilization, in which African disorder contrasted with European alignment. Countering the euro-centric implications of these tropes, the author attempts to demonstrate that the sophistication associated with certain styles had much to do with the emergence of an "architecture of desperation" resulting from an increasingly violent environment. Slave raids and warfare that destroyed entire communities and their habitat forced threatened populations into adopting defensive attitudes that permeated residential patterns, for example with regard to Djola farmhouses in the Casamance. Incredulous observers fail to acknowledge the possibility that such two-story dwellings with columns and arcades could have been built by "savage" Africans, opting for a more "convenient" hypothesis linking them to "Portuguese" protagonists. Thus the growing penetration and dominance of European interests fed a colonial redefinition of culture that failed to recognize the underlying dynamic of interaction on which these societies had been based for centuries.
To its credit the book explores an alternative perspective on the history of a region that has been the subject of scholarly attention since the 1950s, following the leads of Avelino Teixeira da Mota, Jean Boul=gue, George E. Brooks, and Boubacar Barry to name but a few. Its interdisciplinary approach does justice to the social and cultural complexity of the Casamance with which Mark is most familiar. In his previous work the author has accustomed us to an angle that has emphasized the intensity of interaction and concomitant representations. The use of architecture as a thread for the evolution of its populations is both insightful and innovative. Decoding the interaction between settlement and identity enhances our ability to connect with peoples and their environment by providing us with a sense of familiarity with their habitat and habitus. Mark attempts to show that far from being a corporative monopoly of one social stratum, the hybrid material culture it produced was shared by the rural communities that these groups emerged from and interacted with. Rather than "one people, one style," as colonial discourse would have it, what we have here is the less "convenient" but more plausible multicultural response. As the author guides us through centuries of change, the narrowing down of tropes regarding "intermediate" phenomena becomes more tangible as illustrations in the form of etchings and photographs underpin the diversity and diffusion of styles. The scarcity of self-generated documentary sources of the target group is cleverly offset by a range of examples also taken from fieldwork and interviews that strengthen the case for reciprocal change and acculturation.
In terms of sources, the book relies heavily upon archives in France and Senegal, besides mainly taking its cue from French travel and official accounts. Portuguese references are limited to well known travel accounts for the early period. The lack of archival data from pre-colonial Portuguese establishments in the region such as Ziguinchor, Cacheu, and Bissau, which are regularly mentioned, is particularly felt for the period from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries when the influence of "Luso-Africans" begins to wane according to the author. Given that the Casamance became the theater of an increasing rivalry between the latter, "Franco-Africans," and "Anglo-Africans," it would have allowed for a comparative perspective. What emerges then is a predominantly French perspective upon a hypothetical "Luso-African" identity and its importance in terms of settlement and lifestyle. Given the emphasis on the "Portuguese" characteristics of these groups the author would have done well to include "Lusophone" references for the purpose of cross-checking for a period that is fundamental to his argument. The assertion that European economic predominance translated itself into the dissemination of increasingly rigid colonial tropes that clashed with pre-existing, more flexible and fluid identities blunting the cross-cultural edge of the latter (p. 97) would then, to carry further Mark's line of argument, logically rest upon the demise of a Creole stratum in the Casamance. Comparisons with other neighboring areas where Creole communities formed and survived could have broadened the discussion on the issue for West Africa. The mixed origins of architectural styles of houses in the case of trading posts such as Gor=e and St. Louis in Senegal, and their representation in colonial discourse was recently the subject of a Ph.D. dissertation by Mark Hinchman.[1] In Sierra Leone, the continued existence of such a cross-cultural stratum, the Krio, also ensured the survival of a different logique m=tisse with concomitant architectural styles and trans-Atlantic features as Sylvie Kand= has argued.[2]
But Creole coordinates can also be found even closer to home. After all, Kriol or Kiriol (Guinean Creole) was and still is the lingua franca in the (Lower Casamance) region, as in neighboring Guinea-Bissau. It forms part and parcel of their identity anchored in cultural brokerage. For example in the case of the posts or forkillas as Mark calls them, that supported the characteristic "Portuguese" verandas. The metaphorical significance of firkidja in Kriol, which may have escaped the author, was recently highlighted when used as a powerful symbolic reference during the 1997-1998 war in Guinea-Bissau by the military who routed the then president. Then again the shift towards the sobradu or two-story houses that dotted settlements in the 1800s could also have been more clearly situated in their Creole context. And lastly, the study would also have benefited from a more concerted focus on the role of the grumetes or Kriston who, related by kinship and intermarriage to all reference groups, formed the dynamic core of what is here broadly identified as "Luso-African" or even "Portuguese" (p. 57). Not in the least because nineteenth-century sources tell us that many of the Djola, who acted as the local intermediaries or kamarada for outsider traders such as the private traders and djilas, were well versed in Mand= and Kriol.
If the evolution and dissemination of these styles and tropes throughout the region is to hinge upon a paradigm of cultural m=tissage that emerges from this book, then it could also do with more clearly defined actors and agents. One is left with the impression as the argument unfolds that "Luso-African" or "Portuguese" becomes a rather too amorphous and malleable category. Similar disadvantages are associated with the use of abstract social categories such as "Senegambians." As a result the reader will experience some difficulty in identifying what are essentially the main characters of the book who actually disappear as the narrative progresses, as they and their cultural heritage are absorbed by African societies. The lack of data on the architectural style that the author himself freely recognizes also creates some problems in terms of storyline and does not allow it to function as an alternative vehicle in order to focus our attention. The suggestion that the Afro-Brazilian link was a two-way flux unfortunately remains a hint (p. 80). Those more accustomed to clearly defined subjects and ready-made conclusions will probably be somewhat nonplussed by the stretching of the imagination that the cross-fertilization between architecture and identity appears to require. But is that not what challenging existing paradigms and boundaries is all about?
Notes
[1]. Mark Hinchman, African Rococo: House and Portrait in Eighteenth-Century Senegal (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2000).
[2]. See Sylvie Kand=, Terres, Urbanisme et Architecture "Cr=oles" en Sierra Leone, XVIIIe-XIXe si=cles (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1998).
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Citation:
Philip J. Havik. Review of Mark, Peter, "Portuguese" Style and Luso-African Identity: Pre-Colonial Senegambia, Sixteenth-Nineteenth Centuries.
H-Luso-Africa, H-Net Reviews.
December, 2004.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=10024
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