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Unqualified Labor in Portuguese Colonial Architecture
Researcher Dinâmia'CET‑Iscte
This ERC allows us to explore a new theme: unqualified colonial labor from the construction site, from laborers, women who carried sand, and stonemasons – men, women, and children who did work seen as unqualified
How does this European Research Council (ERC) grant impact your work and what will it be used for?
This funding is crucial. Until now, the funding I had, except for fellowships to work in institutions and advanced study centers, was always national funding. This ERC Advanced Grant is the largest financial support that can be given to an individual researcher. It will allow me to do something I never managed to do before: dedicate myself 100% to research. My work as a professor is very engaging, and research always seemed to be left behind.
At Iscte, I have been building a team with very diverse people, mostly composed of women. Since 2010, we have won projects related to the geography of former Portuguese colonial Africa, always within our disciplinary area, architecture. In these projects, we have introduced themes that have become very pertinent, such as housing.
This ERC allows us to explore a new theme: unqualified colonial labor from the construction site – laborers, women carrying sand, stonemasons – men, women, and children doing work considered unqualified.
Although there is much research on labor in the former Portuguese colonies – mostly related to the primary sector, agriculture, industry, and mining – there has not been much attention paid to the workers in public works, who built railways, ports, roads, and public buildings. These infrastructures kept the colonial machinery active and successful.
Which countries does the project focus on?
The project addresses African countries colonized by the Portuguese: the two insular ones – Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe – and the three continental ones – Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique.
We are interested in understanding how architectural design was impacted or influenced by these workers, apparently with no specific resources or expertise.
We have an idea of how engineers and architects working on public works operated, how they made decisions, what type of architectural culture existed at the time, their place in the hierarchy, and their relationship with politics. However, we had never questioned the impact of these unqualified workers. Did architects take into consideration the know-how of these workers? Or did they start from scratch without considering their knowledge?
In summary, the project will study the impact of unqualified workers from the colonies on colonial construction projects?
Yes. When Portuguese architects migrated to Africa, they did not know what techniques the local populations could offer and what resources they had for their work/projects. This context gap, by itself, is already interesting.
Our question is about the hundreds or thousands of people recruited to build a railway line, for example, in a large-scale recruitment. We do not know what impact these masses of workers had on the design of the works and transport infrastructures.
Even though people worked under compulsory labor – a modern form of slavery – these communities and groups of workers also offered resistance (to the colonizer). They knew the land, and there are narratives of escapes, etc.
This research is done over the long term, not in a short time. We start by studying the materials from colonial administration offices.
Then, we study colonial public works, the reports of inspectors, and in these documents, the issue of labor was never very clear. Sometimes, it was mentioned that workers did not master a specific technique, so the project had to be adapted.
What will your approach be in terms of methodology?
We created a kind of key to understanding. We proposed to the European Commission to study based on key words: Subalternity; Politics; Race; Gender; Conflict; Resilience (of communities).
Subalternity is a concept already well-established in post-colonial studies. In classical studies, subalternity is presented as a disadvantage, but recently, it is more viewed as a form of resistance (because it can require the other to adapt; otherwise, nothing happens, and the colonizer needs the masses of workers to fulfill their colonial project).
Another key word is the issue of politics (work policies) linked to the colonial environment, which are diverse: there is rural labor, in mines, etc., and there are also diverse views of what a work regime was like in Cape Verde or Angola, for example, since they are different colonies. At a certain point, in Cape Verde, there were no men, and it was the women who worked on the construction sites. Meanwhile, in Angola or Mozambique, women also worked, but they were hidden within family units. The man was the one who received the salary for the family unit, so the women disappeared from the records.
And regarding the other three key words of your analysis, can you elaborate?
The fourth key word concerns gender: what is the role of women? For example, in Cape Verde, at a certain point, there were no men – who went to the plantations in São Tomé or to the other colonies – so it was the women who appeared as labor.
Another key word is conflict. Much of the awareness of independence had to do with labor conflicts, where colonized people were mistreated. Many of these conflicts were initially triggered by strikes at ports (in Guinea-Bissau) or because people were being forced to work for free (in São Tomé). We need to understand these conflicts to see how they impacted colonial society itself. Mass labor in public works required a lot of people, who were diverted from the agricultural and mining sectors, which led to dissatisfaction within colonial society.
The final parameter is resilience: the resistance capacity of many of these communities when recruited, learning techniques that were not their own, etc.
These are the six key reading words of the project.
How will you develop the research?
The first part involves archival work, identifying the main case studies. We have already identified fifteen archives and gathered a lot of information from previous research projects, the Historical Overseas Archive, Torre do Tombo, the Historical Military Archive. There are also similar archives in Africa. Since 1960, with the new organizational laws of the Overseas, the colonies became much more autonomous in terms of public administration. There is a lot of material that only exists in these countries. The second part is to consolidate the case studies and begin to trace the profile of the workers and these construction sites.
Then, we want to work with oral history from these communities: collect possible testimonies where labor recruitment occurred. The construction of the narrative around this process may help our colleagues in architecture, who work with communities with many limitations in funding. We believe that knowledge from populations without construction expertise can contribute to spatial design.
We believe that the knowledge of populations without expertise in construction can contribute to spatial design
What are the time parameters for this research?
Basically, we go from the end of the Constitutional Monarchy, starting with the Berlin Conference, to two or three years after the independence of these countries (1978-79).
For this work, which covers various thematic intersections, did you assemble a multidisciplinary team?
Yes, a team with great expertise on African territories.