'Um Portuense em África': Notes for a Biography of a Luso-African Archive

Abstract

This article draws on my ongoing research into the life and archive of A. F. F. da Silva Porto (1817–1890), a trader-traveler who lived in nineteenth-century West Central Africa. Comprising a series of volumes of notes and various other manuscripts, the archive is currently in two Portuguese institutions. By historicizing this archive, I unravel Silva Porto’s messy writing process and argue that the volumes known as his diaries correspond to distinct literary projects. I then problematize the classification practices related to the traders in Viye and argue that, as a Luso-African archive, it is a privileged observatory of the dynamics of migration and creolization associated with trade in the region.