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Category: Francesca Vita

  • Material, labour, construction sites. The military reordering of rural areas in Guinea-Bissau (1968-1974)

    Material, labour, construction sites. The military reordering of rural areas in Guinea-Bissau (1968-1974)

    Communication

    Material, labour, construction sites. The military reordering of rural areas in Guinea-Bissau (1968-1974)

    Event: Military History Consortium Annual Conference 2025
    Authors: Francesca Vita
    Date: 4 – 6 June 2025

    Soldiers and population unloading adobe blocks on the construction site, Nhabijões 1970 (Guinea-Bissau). Courtesy of Eng. Simões Santos, 2025
    House under construction, Nhabijões strategic village, 1970 (Guinea-Bissau). Courtesy of Eng. Simões Santos, 2025

    Summary

    In 1968, the Governor-general António de Spínola inaugurated a new phase of the war to ensure the Portuguese rule in Guinea-Bissau. Together with canonical military operations, Spínola’s strategy comprised a vast campaign of “development” programs. This plan, promoted under the slogan “A Better Guinea” (“Uma Guiné Melhor”), comprised the construction of new infrastructures (roads, bridges and wells) and the establishment of new villages in rural areas aimed at regrouping disperse population living in strategic war zones. In five years, the Portuguese army managed to build approximately 60 villages, 11880 houses, 196 schools and 51 sanitary posts. This construction effort was aided by the Engineering Battalion 447 (BEng447) based in Bissau. The BEng447 supervised the opening of new roads, wells and bridges; it coordinated the construction sites of new houses and collective services; it supplied building materials on the ground and it provided skilled labour and basic know-how to construction sites. 

    This article seeks to study the military reordering of Guinea-Bissau rural areas and the strategic villages program (1968-1974) through the lens of material, labour and construction sites, answering the following questions: who built the strategic villages in Guinea-Bissau and the collateral war infrastructure? How did the army organise the construction sites and the labour division? Where did the building materials (zinc sheets, palm poles and adobe bricks) come from? And how did BEng447 supply them on site? What was the human and environmental impact of these military operations?  

    The analysis of materials, labour and construction sites management undertaken under Spínola’s government during the war to implement the vast programme of rural reordering and population control, enables a multifaceted understanding of the last stage of war strategy in Guinea-Bissau, revealing the collateral impact of colonial wars, both in the natural and human environment, which constitutes an overlooked subject of studies.  

    Related Case Studies

    Strategic Villages, Guinea-Bissau

  • The bungalow: counter-histories of a global colonial home

    The bungalow: counter-histories of a global colonial home

    Communication

    The bungalow: counter-histories of a global colonial home

    Event: IASTE 2025 Alexandria: Cosmopolitanism and Tradition
    Authors: Francesca Vita
    Date: 23 – 26 May 2025

    Cuntima resettled village, c.1970 (Guinea-Bissau)
    Enlarged view of Cuntima resettled village, c.1970 (Guinea-Bissau)

    Summary

    In 1984, Anthony King suggested that a certain type of house, the bungalow, was spread across different continents by colonial empires shaping a global culture of dwelling from Britain to India, from Africa to Australia. In the African context, in the first half of the 20th century, the bungalow was mobilized by colonial administrations to steer urbanization processes, responding to the demands of cost economy and construction efficiency. This simple type of house, a detached home raised off the ground with a veranda, provided an effective tool for settling the indigenous population, mostly nuclear family and workers, in the cities according to Western expectations of hygiene standard and the need for inhabitant control. At different stages of the imperial project, the bungalow served the colonial agenda of the “civilizing mission”, the “assimilation policy” and the “socio-economic development” of the indigenous population. Within this framework and based on King’s assumption that the bungalow constituted a ‘tool of empire’, often attributed to colonial and western imagery, this paper seeks to prove whether it also represented a site of cosmopolitanism: a contested site of (colonial and modern) universalism. To this end, this paper aims to collect and discuss case studies in which the bungalow has failed as a global colonial home, in detriment to a cosmopolitan, hybrid and multicultural dimension. Examining the inhabitants’ appropriation of housing projects for the indigenous population promoted by the colonial state in Guinea-Bissau, Angola and Mozambique in the last decades of the Portuguese rule, this paper raises the following line of questions: how did the bungalow at last fail as a global colonial home? Can evidence of resistance and contestation by the inhabitants be found hidden in the colonial archives? How did indigenous customs occur within the colonial constraints of order and control? Did the universal and global home allow for a cosmopolitan version of it? How did the bungalow promote hybrid dwelling forms and practices under colonial rule? By analyzing archival material (e.g., administrative accounts, photographic surveys, study mission reports undertaken during the colonial period) and exploring specific case studies, from rural resettlement program carried out during the liberation wars to the first urban neighborhoods for the African population, this paper aims to reveal evidence of resistance and contestation of the bungalow as a “tool of empire”. Engaging and discussing the notion of global and universal versus cosmopolitan and hybrid, this paper unearths counter-histories of the bungalow as a global colonial home in order to contribute to King’s research about dwelling forms, cultures, and global exchanges.

    Click here for more information.

    Related Case Studies

    Strategic Villages, Guinea-Bissau

  • Colonial Public Works: Architecture Beyond Labor Subalternity

    Colonial Public Works: Architecture Beyond Labor Subalternity

    Panel

    Colonial Public Works: Architecture Beyond Labor Subalternity 

    Event: The Society of Architectural Historians 78th Annual International Conference
    Authors: Ana Vaz Milheiro / Francesca Vita
    Date: 30 April 2025 – 4 May 2025

    Session Speakers: Jingliang Du, Sarah Melsens, Romain David, Brian McLaren and Maggie Freeman

    Summary

    The history of architecture and urban planning in former colonized territories has been shaped by canonical narratives and single agents (Lagae&Boonen, 2020). The question of architectural authorship has been at the center of most colonial studies, whether they focus on the designer, the engineer, the owner, or the political-administrative decision-maker who approved the territorial infrastructure, the urban settlement, or the building. “Can the subaltern speak” (Spivak, 1988) overcoming the architectural history focused on the designing elite? We welcome scholars to critically engage with the representativeness of labor subalternity and its importance throughout the process of architectural design and construction, questioning: who were those workers whose role was crucial to the colonial sphere, but who remained underrepresented in the history of colonial architecture? How did their labor, presence and skills influence the building site, construction methods and the project/design?
    This session intersects the history of colonial architecture and the theme of labor, encouraging scholars to submit papers that address the agency of labor in the Public Works Departments during the late colonial period, between the 19th and 20th centuries. Contributions related to the African and Asian contexts are particularly appreciated, as are those related to the history of colonial architecture focusing on the relationship between project design and unskilled labor and analyzing the impact of subalternised collective subjects (workers) who remained largely “hidden” in both colonial and postcolonial narratives. This session seeks for papers that explore the liaison between architecture, colonialism and labor, addressing: i) construction methods and skills; ii) construction sites; iii) authorship; iv) gender and race; v) division of labor. Researches based on both case studies and methodological approaches to the theme are welcome to enable a discussion on the impact of labor within the colonial architectural effort and how to approach it from a theoretical perspective.

    Presentations

    • Beatriz Serrazina (Dinâmia’CET-Iscte), Building the Benguela Railway: laborers and construction skills
    • Sarah Melsens (French National Centre for Scientific Research). Shivaji Bridge’s Construction Workers: Redressing Archival Absence
    • Maggie Freeman (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Architectures of Control and the Labor of the Controlled in the British Mandatory Middle East (1920-1948)
    • Brian McLaren (University of Washington). Architecture and Indigenous Labor in the Libyan Coastal Highway
    • Romain David (Harvard University). NEDECO 1952-1959: Unskilled Intellectual Labor and Postcolonial Experts in Colonial Nigeria
  • “Uma Guiné Melhor”: the psychological action and the spatialization of population control in rural areas. The strategic villages in Guinea-Bissau between 1968 -1973

    “Uma Guiné Melhor”: the psychological action and the spatialization of population control in rural areas. The strategic villages in Guinea-Bissau between 1968 -1973

    Journal Article

    “Uma Guiné Melhor”: the psychological action and the spatialization of population control in rural areas. The strategic villages in Guinea-Bissau between 1968 -1973

    Journal: Africana Studia, No. 39, Paisagens coloniais e pós-coloniais: arquitetura, cidades, infraestruturas
    Author: Francesca Vita
    Date: 2024

    Bajocunda village after military occupation, before António de Spínola’s policy. Source: AHM/DIV/3/47/AP2/19040
    Dwelling typology implemented by the army (1969). Source: INEP/B.1.2/13

    Summary

    In the last decade of colonial Portuguese Guinea (now Guiné-Bissau), the Portuguese government accelerated the process of territory occupation. While colonial administration announced to promote and improve living conditions of the Guinean population, nevertheless the population experienced a violent intrusion in their private and public life by the colonial uthorities. The effective territory occupation and the clash with the rural population started during the War of Independence and especially during the government of Governor General António de Spínola (1968-1972) under the so-called “Uma Guiné Melhor” (“A Better Guinea”) plan. This plan was not only a psychological-propaganda campaign, but also a clear military occupation strategy to achieve the implementation of “strategic camps that imprison” the local population (Ledda, 1970: 119). The aim of this paper is to examine the construction of those strategic camps, to explore the housing typologies and to question the social, spatial and economic impact on the life of the rural Guinean population. This article also aims to frame the controversial messages of the integration policy acclaimed in the “Uma Guiné Melhor” plan by exploring and analysing the strategies of specialization of people in action between 1968-1973.

    Click here for the original publication.

    Related Case Studies

    Strategic Villages, Guinea-Bissau