The Hands that Shape Us: British and French Colonial Engagement in Africa

 The colonial presence in Africa and its subsequent interactions with colonized societies indeed shifted the course of these nations' histories. From the languages spoken to the inter-ethnic politics that ordered these communities, the colonial engagement seeped into every conceivable crevice of their colonized host societies, and the architecture produced during this time remembers this. However, depending on which colonial European power held preeminence, the resulting impacts varied, but in most cases lead to a hybridized architectural formal expression that combines local aesthetics with imported built traditions.

Russell House, stone nog and brick, Anomabo, Ghana, 2008

In the example presented by Micots, she explores how Ghana’s colonial engagement with the British led to the advent of an architecture of “mimicry” as domestic and even religious architecture dawned the cloak of both British and Afro-Portuguese styles in combination with local Ghanian spatial elements. Mainly through facade and masonry construction where these combined architectural styles manifested. The appropriation of these styles, albeit motivated by a complex amalgamation of sociopolitical and economic rationalism, was largely meant to reflect the airs of modernity and communicate the status and prestige that comes with it.

THE BLANCHOT MOSQUE IN CA. 1910

The French were no different in their colonial influence over Senegal. We can see this reflected heavily in the stylistic similarities of mosque architecture with French cathedral and church architecture. We can see this notably in the example of the Blanchot Mosque in Dakar, erected between the 1880s and 1950s, the mosque dawns a double bell tower (now translated into minarets) to communicate the status and grandeur that a grand cathedral might have to the local population, leading to an enduring impact on the readings and social interactions with mosque architecture in these communities.       

References

Courtnay Micots, “Status and Mimicry: African Colonial Period Architecture in Coastal Ghana” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. 74, No. 1 (March 2015), pp. 41-62 (22 pages)

Cantone, C. (2012) Making and remaking mosques in Senegal. Boston: Brill.