Portuguese Style and Luso-African Identity: Precolonical Senegambia Sixteenth-Nineteenth Centuries - Architecture; Art; Social Science
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 how 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.
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