Africana Periodical Literature 
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| Title: | The Evolution of 'Portuguese' Identity: Luso-Africans on the Upper Guinea Coast from the Sixteenth Century to the Early Nineteenth Century |
| Author: | Mark, Peter |
| Year: | 1999 |
| Periodical: | The Journal of African History |
| Volume: | 40 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Pages: | 173-191 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | West Africa |
| Subjects: | ethnicity colonists Portuguese History and Exploration |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/183545 |
| Abstract: | During the late 15th and early 16th century, emigrants from Portugal known as 'lançados' settled along the Upper Guinea Coast from Senegal to Sierra Leone. Descendants of these immigrants and of local African women developed a Luso-African culture that was itself a synthesis of African and European elements. These Luso-Africans, or 'Portuguese' as they called themselves, were commercial middlemen, distinguished by their language, architecture and religion. As each of these characteristics could be shared by members of adjacent African communities, identity transformations in both directions were relatively common. 'Portuguese' identity remained both fluid and contextually defined through the 17th century. During the 18th and 19th century, however, 'Portuguese' were drawn increasingly into a European discourse on identity, one based upon a priori characteristics, primarily skin colour. Forced to respond to this imposed identity, Luso-Africans continued to maintain that they were 'Portuguese'; now, however, they also began to define themselves negatively by reference to what they were not. Notes, ref., sum. |
