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T W O Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Architecture in the Gambia-Geba Region and the Articulation of Luso-African Ethnicity One result of the establishment of Portuguese and Luso-African trading communities along the northern Upper Guinea Coast in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries was the development of a distinctive style of domestic architecture. These houses were suited to the climate and they used locally available building materials. The history of Luso-African architecture raises several related questions that are highly significant for the history of cultural interaction between Europeans and Africans. These questions include: What were the respective roles of Africans, Europeans, and Luso-Africans in the development of a distinctive domestic architecture ? Is it possible to discern the influence of evolving Luso-African construction on local African architecture or of local building styles on AfroEuropean construction? In other words, to what extent does architecture reflect mutual two-way interaction between European and African societies ? Not surprisingly, European written descriptions of the Gambia-Casamance -Geba region focus on commercial centers and trade. Villages that contained communities of lançado or Luso-African traders are disproportionately well represented in accounts written by European and Cape Verdean chroniclers. Discussions of buildings and living space are clearly subordinate to concerns about trade in these sources. The one architectural idiom that is most copiously documented, however, is the form of housing that came to be known as the “Portuguese” style, or maisons à la portugaise. The abundant references to “Portuguese”-style dwellings document interaction between local construction techniques and building forms and materials and techniques brought to West Africa from Europe. Nevertheless , several factors complicate the historian’s task. First, with the excep- tion of buildings in the port of Cacheu, none of the seventeenth-century physical structures survive. Second, contemporary written descriptions of local African buildings are almost all cursory, and they are widely separated both geographically and chronologically. In a region of considerable cultural diversity, one cannot necessarily draw conclusions about construction in one locale on the basis of architecture in another community. Thus, any attempt to describe the early evolution of building styles outside of the trading communities will necessarily be hypothetical. With some exceptions, Luso-African architecture is much more fully documented than local African buildings. Manding architecture in Casão on the Gambia River constitutes one important exception; it is described in detail by André Donelha. In addition, the layout of villages and types of buildings are relatively well documented from the sixteenth century for the people known as Floups, who lived near Rio San Domingos (Cacheu), and, from the late seventeenth century, for the Bagnuns (Bainunks) and northern Floups of Vintang and Fogny (north of the Casamance River). This clustering of sources is significant, as the societies that are relatively well documented are culturally and linguistically related to one another. The Floups of S. Domingos—also referred to as Felupes in Portuguese sources—spoke a form of the Jola language (also Diola) of the Bak subgroup of West Atlantic languages. They were closely related to the Floups of Vintang-Fogny—Floops in English records—referred to by La Courbe and Labat.1 The northern Floups, in turn, have a long history of cultural interaction with autochthonous Bagnuns and with the Manding people of The Gambia. From north to south, the Gambia-Cacheu region may be divided into Gambia River, Vintang Creek, and Fogny, roughly bounded to the east by the Soungrougrou River (or Sangrédegou), the Casamance River, the Kasa region, and Rio San Domingos. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Floups were renowned for their refusal to participate in trade with Europeans . One may ask why they, more than other local populations, attracted the attention of foreigners whose primary interest lay in trade. One obvious answer is that Floup architecture so impressed the visitors that those who saw it were moved to write about it. Another possible explanation is that not all Floup groups deserved their reputation for avoiding commercial contact with Europeans. Floup (or Jola) involvement in trade is evidenced, for example, by extensive commercial contact between the nineteenth-century people of Thionk-Essyl, north of the Casamance River and west of Fogny, and the French at Carabane.2 Bertrand-Bocandé (1849) says of the Floups who lived north of Cacheu and S. Domingos, “Almost all of the inhabitants speak Portuguese Creole very well.”That they spoke the local trading language strongly suggests that they were involved in trade.3 The earliest published description...

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