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

THREE. Reconstructing West African Architectural History: Images of Seventeenth-Century “Portuguese”-Style Houses in Brazil

T H R E E Reconstructing West African Architectural History: Images of Seventeenth-Century “Portuguese”-Style Houses in Brazil The basic form of “Portuguese”-style architecture was not unique to West Africa. In the eighteenth century, similar structures were built as far away as the Indian Ocean. An early-eighteenth-century report from the French island of Réunion reflects the extraordinary geographical range of this style, or at least of the appellation “Portuguese,” since the parameters of that term varied, united by the common feature of a veranda: “The distinguishing elements . . . among others, are the veranda, a sort of portico that forms the entry to the house, in the Portuguese manner.”1 Even within the more limited geographical area of the Upper Guinea Coast, both the form and the materials used for “Portuguese”-style houses varied over the three centuries during which their existence is documented . Certain features, however, were fundamental to the idiom. The houses were square or rectangular, they were usually whitewashed on the exterior, and they always had either a porch or veranda or a smaller, semienclosed vestibule by the entrance. Construction materials varied according to the wealth of the owner and the use of either local or imported material. Thus, roofs might be thatched2 or made of tile. In Senegambia, walls were generally of banco (dried clay earth or mud) or dried bricks or, occasionally, of wattle and daub or even wood, but rarely, at least until the nineteenth century, of stone. Another variant of the “Portuguese” house is detailed by Thomas Astley , whose 1745 description derives from Moore and Labat: Their houses have nothing but the ground for a floor, which however is raised 2 or 3 feet to keep them dry. They build them pretty long, dividing them into several rooms, with small windows, on account of the heat. They have always a porch open on every side, where they receive visits, eat . . . and do all their business.3 The common characteristic that defined “Portuguese”-style houses both in Réunion and in West Africa was a porch. Yet even this feature varied from a small vestibule to a veranda running the length of the building. In the West African version, porches, where present, were supported by forkillas [forkhilas]. In The Gambia in 1732, Francis Moore observed: [The French] have two or three very handsome houses built of clay, like unto the Portuguese houses, with walls about 10 feet high, covered with thatch, being supported by strong forkillas and a space left between the walls and the roof to let in the air.4 The space Moore refers to enabled night air to circulate through and cool the dwelling. Similar construction techniques are used even today by the southern Jolas (whose seventeenth-century ancestors were called Floups). The roof is raised up on stakes that are anchored in the top of the banco walls. A photograph taken in the Buluf (northern Jola) community of Elana about 1955 shows how the system effectively suspends the roof above the structure of the house itself. This permits circulation of air around the top of the house (Figure 7).5 The “Portuguese” style was not monolithic; rather, it varied with time and in different geographical locations. The wide diversity of features associated with “Portuguese”-style houses suggests that the historical study 60 “portuguese” style and luso-african identity 7. House in Elana showing suspended-roof construction, circa 1955. Courtesy of Louis-Vincent Thomas. of these buildings should specify both the geographical region and the period under consideration. References to “Portuguese”-style houses in different regions that are unsupported by detailed descriptions or by other evidence do not necessarily refer to the same architectural style. Where similar buildings were constructed in areas geographically distant from one another, only the existence of direct historical connections between the two regions establishes the probability that the buildings were in fact related to each other. The history of maisons à la portugaise is further complicated by the fact that no detailed seventeenth- or early-eighteenth-century illustrations of these structures in West Africa are known. None of the early Portuguese or Cape Verdean chroniclers illustrated their writings. The first traveler who illustrated his work with reasonably well-executed drawings was Jean Barbot.6 Several of his drawings depict coastal settlements. A few of these, although they are not sketched with an eye for architectural detail, show buildings that may be in...