Portuguese colonial architectural archives at the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, mid 19th century - 1975

Abstract

The Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino (AHU - Overseas Historical Archive) holds Portuguese architectural and also engineering archival records created and managed by the Colonial Public Offices seated in Lisbon, dating back to the end of the 16th century to 1975. The archives from the offices that performed duties in the Portuguese colonies remained there, even after their independence from Portugal. Until recently, records dated from the mid 19th century onwards were poorly identified, a panorama that changed over the last decade. These records are related to Angola, Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissao, São Tomé and Príncipe, Mozambique, previous Portugese possessions in India, Macao and East Timor. The AHU hosted two funded projects by the Portuguese Foundation to Science and Technology (FCT) submitted by the Centre for Socioeconomic and Territorial Studies from the Lisbon University Institute (DINÂMIA'CET-IUL). The participation of the AHU in both projects allowed processing these records bulk. The first one was “The Colonial Urbanization Offices”, a three year project which benefited from the collaboration of five archival fellowships during nearly two years. The second project is the “Coast to Coast”, has a similar duration to the previous and will be ongoing until December 2019, with the contribution of an archival fellowship. Two archivists of the AHU participated in these projects as well, supervising the archival processing as researchers.