Coast to Coast – Late Portuguese Infrastructural Development in Continental Africa (Angola and Mozambique): Critical and Historical Analysis and Postcolonial Assessment

An in-depth knowledge of the dynamics of colonization from the perspective of Architecture, occupation, exploration and construction of the African territory requires new approaches: the extension of chronological periods analysed (currently dominated only by the study of the Modern Movement), thus including colonial policies resulting from different governments (late constitutional monarchy, first republic and dictatorship); and the analysis of the architectural object within a network (and not as an exceptional work).

Analyzing the pre-independence history of Angola and Mozambique in parallel results from: 1) the historical process of the Pink Map (‘Mapa Cor-de-Rosa’), reflecting the ambition to occupy a territorial strip from the Atlantic to the Indian (Coast to Coast); 2) the centralizing vision of Portuguese colonial management (unlike other European powers). The chronological spectrum of the research was established with the creation of the Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa (SGL) in 1875, demonstrating an important change in Portuguese colonial policies, and updating them in the scientific and physical knowledge of the African territory, along with the other European powers.

The analysis of this fact will break with the current state of the art. The ‘Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino’ has a fundamental part of the documentary nucleus related to the colonial public works of the 19th and 20th centuries. Its archival treatment, cataloguing and description will be undertaken within the project, making the fund accessible to the scientific community (which currently does not happen).

The ‘Projectos e Obras’ fund of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation will also be consulted, which remains unpublished and also requires an appropriate archival description, which this project will also ensure. Both institutions are partners of the project.

The team is made up of Portuguese, Angolan and Mozambican researchers, architects, historians and archivists. External University Institutions – ‘Universidade Técnica de Angola’ and ‘Universidade Eduardo Mondlane’ – assure, in the first phase, support to the consultations to the local archives and part of the fieldwork, playing a fundamental role in the second phase that evaluates the resilience, transformation and adaptation of the existing colonial infrastructures.

The researchers will be assisted by the team of consultants that guarantees a fundamental part of the objectives:
(i) experience of infrastructures project in the colonial period (José Quinhones Levi);
(ii) comparative studies (Johan Lagae, former Belgian Congo, Charles Jenkins, South Africa);
(iii) support for fieldwork and post-colonial analysis (Isabel Martins in Angola, José Forjaz in Mozambique). After the mapping of the three programs, with the support of specialized cartography, documentation will be collected and case studies will be selected, based on specific criteria (strategic relevance, scale, repercussion on the constructed landscape). This is followed by a detailed and historical description with a view to the creation of inventory records in the HPIP of the FCG and to their reference in GIS, accompanied by the verification of the state of conservation and the survey of the post-independence interventions.