Peter Mark's “Portuguese” Style is a welcome contribution to the growing literature on the history and development of Atlantic world cultures. In particular, Mark examines the evolution and proliferation of “Portuguese”-style domestic architecture, primarily in Senegambia, but also in other parts of the Portuguese colonial world, including Cape Verde and Brazil. For Mark, “Portuguese”-style is an amalgamation of Jola and Manding architectural forms, and to a lesser extent, those of the Portuguese. This architectural style—sun-dried brick houses, rectangular in shape, with whitewashed walls, and a continuous veranda or vestibule at the entry—was most closely associated with Luso-Africans working as middlemen in the trade between the African interior and Portuguese traders on the coast.

Though the title of the book suggests a broad Senegambian emphasis, and the contents extend across the Atlantic, Mark is most at home in the Gambia and Casamance regions. He provides convincing evidence that long-distance Manding traders conducted much of their business on verandas, probably even before the arrival of Europeans. The Portuguese likely adopted this style, adding their own touches, such as whitewashing the mud brick exterior that was typical of Manding architecture. Eventually, these buildings became a signal form of identity for Luso-African “Portuguese” traders. Adding nuance to this argument, Mark shows that groups like the Floup adapted their architecture to the presence of these Luso-African traders, developing compounds with palisades and labyrinths that protected the interior buildings from slave raids.

In the end, Mark sees “Portuguese”-style architecture as just one expression of the flexible cultural identities that characterized Senegambia. “Portuguese” traders slipped easily between European and African cultural milieus, and various groups of Africans—Manding, Jola, Bagnun, and so on—shared many cultural traits as a result of their long history of interaction and exchange. To this end, Senegambia was truly a “Creole” society. Mark sees the imposition on Senegambia of European racial and colonial categories emerging only in the late eighteenth century.

While Mark's argument for cultural mixing in architecture is an important addition to Atlantic history, his positions on race are less convincing. Like much of the recent scholarship on the Atlantic world, Mark places a positive value judgment on Luso-Africans who identified as “white.” The scholarly trend has been to see these “Atlantic Creoles” as subverting the racial order that would emerge later. What is often missing from these discussions is the way European ideas about “whiteness” and “blackness” were reified, even in these early Atlantic settings. In Senegambia (as in Portuguese Central Africa), “white” Luso-Africans lived in Portuguese-style houses, spoke Creole languages, and practiced some form of Christianity, thereby setting themselves apart from the “heathen,” “black” masses. The fact that these phenotypically black Luso-Africans consciously identified as “white” is patent evidence for the power of race, not a denial of it. Indeed, one could easily argue that Luso-Africans' rejection of their “blackness” and their embrace of “white” exclusionary ideologies actually rendered them unwitting accomplices in their own racial subjugation.

Despite these minor criticisms, Mark's work stands as a significant contribution to the history of material culture in the Atlantic world. It should appeal to art historians, historians, and anthropologists, as well as those more broadly interested in the Atlantic world.