Introduction^{Footnote 1}

Guinea-Bissau gained its independence from Portugal in 1973–1974 after more than a decade of armed struggle. Since then, it has been characterized by political instability, authoritarianism, drug-trafficking, and corruption as well as economic flaws and social misery.^{Footnote 2} Various scholars have pointed to the repressive but weak role the Portuguese colonial presence played in laying the foundations for independent Guinea-Bissau’s continuing problems, emphasizing the colonized’s lack of opportunities for advancing in colonial society.^{Footnote 3} The focus of attention has been on the tiny “civilized” (or, in Portuguese, “civilizado”) stratum of the population that held citizenship in colonial times. This group stood in opposition to the majoritarian “indigenous,” “uncivilized” population (“indígenas”), as per the Native Statute (“indigenato”). The “civilized” stratum comprised many creoles – who were believed to be “co-opted” by the Portuguese^{Footnote 4} – while about 98 percent of the total population was made up by “indigenous,” “uncivilized” subjects in 1950. Creole postcolonial “hegemony was rooted in the historical claim of cultural mediation and political leadership,”^{Footnote 5} derived from their dominant role in the liberation movement African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), in post-colonial nation- and state-building, and in civil society.^{Footnote 6} In fact, creoles had been, despite their numerical inferiority, influential and decisive economic and political brokers from the late fifteenth to the early twentieth century.^{Footnote 7} Once independence was achieved, the government formed by the PAIGC merely replicated the inherited colonial patterns of rule. They exploited the country’s interior for the benefit of the urban, often “civilized” and creole stratum of society.^{Footnote 8}

While the discriminatory and exploitative nature of colonialism in general and of the Portuguese variety in particular are well known, this article aims at exploring the discrepancies between the words and deeds of colonial rulers in both Lisbon and Guinea-Bissau in “integrating” into European dominated colonial society those individuals of African background whom they deemed to be “civilized.”^{Footnote 9} In doing so, I will link up with existing academic research on the contradictory and fragile character of Portuguese rule in Guinea-Bissau, illustrating scopes and limitations of colonialism as well as possible margins of maneuver of the colonized.^{Footnote 10} Based on legal documents, historical literature, and ethnographic research, the focus of this paper will be on creoles as one crucial segment of the “civilized” stratum.

Creole identity in Guinea-Bissau encompasses both Cape Verdeans (migrants from the archipelago off the West African coast and their descendants, some of them residing in the country for generations whereas others have fully integrated into society a long time ago) and Kriston (literally “Christians,” derived from Portuguese “cristãos,” meaning individuals of heterogeneous cultural and ethnic origins in Guinea-Bissau who were united under a transethnic Kriston umbrella identity).^{Footnote 11} Although some Kriston were able to maintain influential positions in colonial society from the 1930s, their identity was manipulated and their position weakened by the gradually strengthening colonial state, in a process that had already begun in the nineteenth century. Europeans, Cape Verdeans, and Lebanese thus relegated the Kriston to the second row.^{Footnote 12}

I argue that creole Kriston identity (understood as “today’s presence of colonial social milieus produced by, or stemming from, the first age of colonization”^{Footnote 13}) has undergone various changes over time. The peculiar intersection with other identities^{Footnote 14} (such as African, European, Cape Verdean, and Levantine) and related complex, conflicting processes of outward identitarian delimitation and openness on the one hand, and inward solidarization on the other, has constituted a crucial, permanent feature of creole identity that has ensured continuity and a sense of togetherness among this community.

In the following, I will shed light on the development of creole identity under colonial rule in Guinea-Bissau. I analyze the effects of colonial population measurements and the Native Statute put in place since the early twentieth century. I discuss the consequences of the population’s measurement and its legal division into “civilized” citizens and “indigenous” subjects, clarifying some aspects occasionally overlooked. Against this background, I will also analyze and put into question colonial procedures of classification of colonial Guinea-Bissau’s population, and critically scrutinize the daily-life effects of the colonizers’ obsession with classifying, counting, and legislating. I will also focus on education in colonial times. Many authors have already referred to the low number of learners enrolled before independence, concerning not only “indigenous” subjects but also non-European “civilized” citizens. This lack of (formal, Western) education has been held partly responsible for present-day administrative, political, social, and economic shortcomings in Guinea-Bissau, particularly after independence. Building on existing scholarly works and legal texts, I illuminate the development of the education sector in colonial times, adding some ethnographic data on how the colonial schooling system sought to manipulate the youth. In addition, I will throw a glance at the space for political participation in late colonial times, showing how the severe limitations and the people’s retreat into their private sphere may have fostered their hesitation to articulate political demands.

The Kriston

Kriston communities began to emerge in a number of trading posts (known as praças) in the littoral and riverine regions of Upper Guinea during the sixteenth century. Here, people of various geographic, cultural, social, and professional backgrounds met and intermingled, among them Europeans, Cape Verdeans, and Africans. While a new shared culture and identity developed among them, Kriston have also been persistently characterized by their peculiar intersection with other identities. Some of the trading posts later developed into (semi-)urbanized, small towns, among them Bissau, Bolama, Cacheu, Geba, and Farim. Contact and exchange by Kriston with the population in the hinterland has always remained very intense.^{Footnote 15} Only in town, facilities associated with European colonialisms like public administration, churches, and primary schools (the latter reserved to a minority) existed.

The separation of subjects from citizens in Guinea-Bissau intensified from the late nineteenth century onwards, as Portugal started to gain effective control over the entire territory. After the 1920s, creole identity came increasingly under pressure from colonial rule. In this vein, the use of popular terms like “grumete” (literally “cabin boy”) and “tungumá”^{Footnote 16} was discontinued, and new notions and categories of identification entered the stage.^{Footnote 17} Augel locates the final “making-up” of officially recognized, normative “tribal” categories in Guinea-Bissau in the 1940s, after complete colonial control over the territory had been finally assured.^{Footnote 18} This consolidation of identity was not confined to the normative sphere; rather, separate Manjaco, Mancanha, and Pepel ethnonyms (ethnic groups that, by then, had been regarded as one “tribe”) as we know them today had developed only by about 1930^{Footnote 19} – even though, for example, the Pepel ethnonym has been recorded since the sixteenth century.^{Footnote 20} It remains to be shown what role, if any, the colonial state played in fostering the formation of these new identities.^{Footnote 21} The census of 1940 was the last one that offered a cristão(“Christian”)-category for the African population.^{Footnote 22} “Cristão” – as Portuguese equivalent to “Kriston” – used to not only refer to adherents of the Christian faith in a religious sense but referred in particular to creole identity (in a more exclusive, ethnic identity related sense). It sometimes continues to do so today under certain circumstances, particularly if combined with specific geographic additives (i.e. a Kriston “de,” i.e. “from,” Bolama, Cacheu, Geba, or any other former trading post and centre of creole culture) or if a reference to one of the well-established creole families is added (e.g. “from the Barreto family”), for instance.^{Footnote 23} The census of 1940 listed 1,640 individuals as cristãos. However, it remains unclear if the category of individuals that were classified as such included creoles exclusively, or if it also encompassed non-creole Christians as well. From the 1950s onwards, creole self-designations like “Kriston” or “Cristão” (in ethnic terms), respectively, appear to have incrementally receded into the background in popular use, though without vanishing completely.^{Footnote 24} These changes may have been influenced by colonial censuses and classifications, notably by identity cards in which the ethnic affiliation of non-citizens was stated. Possibly, this practice strengthened the self-identification with one of the legally-officially recognized ethnic groups (e.g. Pepel, Manjaco, etc.) among creoles. At the same time, ethnographic findings suggest that those Kriston who qualified for the civilizado status (i.e. citizenship as opposed to subject status) may have tended to more align with colonially desirable Portuguese identity, as Kriston identity became identified by colonial authorities with “pagan” culture.

These developments have to be seen in a broader context. Around 1900 the Portuguese administration started to implement legal classifications of the population which sought to differentiate between citizens and subjects, officially aiming at the assimilation of Africans to European values. Thus, after a certain delay, Portugal followed the path of assimilationist colonial powers like France, by introducing a system of legal classification of inhabitants of colonial territories.^{Footnote 25} However, it has to be questioned to what extent the increasingly extensive legal provisions affected reality in those early days, as the colonial state remained understaffed and confined to a few trading posts. Nevertheless, and similar to other colonial powers, Portugal displayed an obsession with regulations and statistics, believing in the superiority of numbers.^{Footnote 26} Measurement has been related to the state and state-building, serving the state’s “interest in social coordination and control,” provoking feelings of threat and resistance among a population that feared invasions in privacy uses of personal information (e.g. for taxation).^{Footnote 27} Responses of those classified and counted could be therefore strategic (including, amongst others, the attempt to avoid hut tax censuses),^{Footnote 28} and much depended on the interpretation of the data, the categories chosen, and how identity was asked for (i.e. self-identification vs. ascription).^{Footnote 29} In other words, the formal, official, identity could lag behind the far more complex and situative lived one.^{Footnote 30} The hypothesis of a simple imposition of modern governmentality (and, thereby, also of identities) by means of measurements proposed by Indian subaltern studies historians has been criticized, for example, by scholars who showed that the first census in Kenya was only conducted in 1948, at a time when ethnic identities had been already consolidated.^{Footnote 31} Therefore, while census takings were anonymous and cursory, there were other methods that imposed identity in a more forceful, sustainable, way, such as identity cards and other official documents.^{Footnote 32}

The subsequent example of the Kriston de Geba creole group illustrates this point. Firstly, the ethnic identities officially ascribed to Kriston de Geba in censuses and official documents differed fundamentally from the lived creole identity. This ascription generated rejection among the Kriston de Geba and did not, even in the long run, lead to a change of popular self-perception. This highlights the limitations of the colonial state to impose ethnic categories. Secondly, the example of the Kriston de Geba, most of whom were legally classified as indígena subjects under the Native Statute, underlines that Kriston could not be regarded as “elite” per se.^{Footnote 33} Indeed, while Cape Verdeans and some creoles of Kriston descent held Portuguese citizenship, many Kriston were, contrary to their own, popular self-image, officially regarded as “uncivilized” natives and therefore legally considered indígenas.

The Kriston de Geba are a creole group that originates from the formerly vibrant trading post of Geba in central Guinea-Bissau but most of whom, due to the decline of Geba, live nowadays in the nearby town of Bafatá, or in the capital city of Bissau.^{Footnote 34} For centuries they had served as cultural, political, and economic brokers but the implementation of the Native Statute during the late 1920s signified a major turning point for their community. Unlike Cape Verdeans and other Kriston who lived in bigger agglomerations such as Bissau or the colony’s former capital Bolama, most of the Kriston de Geba, under the Native Statute, were ethnically categorized as “Beafadas” or “Fulas” by the colonial officials, who thus contested their Kriston identity. Accordingly, being entered as “Beafadas” and “Fulas” in the caderneta indígena or guia indígena (“indigenous pass”) upset the Kriston de Geba, according to some elderly Kriston de Geba informants I interviewed. This procedure was applied not only to identity documents but also to population censuses. Indeed, according to the census of 1950, the majority of Geba’s indígena inhabitants counted were Beafadas, Fulas, and Mandingos, while a category for “Kriston (de Geba)” did not exist.^{Footnote 35} To this day the Kriston de Geba, both in Geba itself and beyond, have continued to proudly assert their Kriston identity. The elderly interviewees underlined that although they did not perceive themselves as belonging to the Beafada or Fula ethnic groups, the colonial officials did not want to enlist them as “Kriston,” apparently because such a category was not provided for. Ever since, they argued, they have regarded themselves as “civilized” in a popular sense, portraying themselves as those who first adopted Christianity and other European cultural forms like the Portuguese-creole language, but then they were legally grouped together with primarily Muslim ethnic groups who the Kriston de Geba believed to be “pagans” who lacked “civilization” and education.^{Footnote 36}

Since the nineteenth century, simultaneously with the development of modern state structures, censuses and counts were conducted in an increasingly standardized manner.^{Footnote 37} Statistical services in Portugal’s colonies were founded, at least de jure, in 1896 – but for more than fifteen years no population counts in a modern fashion were conducted in what is now Guinea-Bissau.^{Footnote 38} Nevertheless, the proclamation to establish professionalized statistical services documented the colonial state’s will to enforce its control over the colonies and their populations. By introducing both censuses and legal classifications, the colonial state did not merely aim at separating citizens from subjects.^{Footnote 39} Rather, the state attempted to discipline people, imposing its supposedly “totalizing classificatory grid” on the populations in order to “make them governable.”^{Footnote 40}

The thinking of the time and its fixation on census statistics included the division of mankind into mutually exclusive “races,” “nations,” and “tribes” that were believed to each possess unique cultural traits.^{Footnote 41} Thus, public authorities developed official lists of ethnic groups, and in so doing, they constrained the previously fluid and inclusive socially constructed collective identities. Those classified, however, were not passive in their response. On the contrary, the colonial attempt to impose identities on those colonized created a situation in which the colonized resisted. Thus, these individuals were able to objectify and reify their culture and collective identity.^{Footnote 42}

This is how the first two decades of the twentieth century brought major changes for creoles in Guinea-Bissau. The effective territorial colonial seizure by military means accomplished after the turn of the century was accompanied by a tightening, regulating, grip of the colonial state on local society.^{Footnote 43} However, Portuguese colonial rule in general remained characterized by a lack of hegemony and limited domination, hence by ambivalence.^{Footnote 44} Racial divisions as well as social segregation between urban and rural areas were fostered from then on, but those subjected to these measures nevertheless maintained autonomy, while the colonizers even depended for efficient administration to a certain degree on those co-opted.^{Footnote 45} In other words, even when participating in processes of colonization, at least some Africans were always able to maintain agency or “autonomy of action,” as I demonstrated.^{Footnote 46}

Post-1900 changes affected intra-creole relationships, also: immigrant Cape Verdeans and their offspring became increasingly estranged from Kriston, for example. ^{Footnote 47} This was partly due to racist ideology: Portugal fostered the emigration of Cape Verdeans to mainland Guinea-Bissau in the twentieth century, and it lasted until the outbreak of the liberation war in the early 1960s. Many Cape Verdeans, being of lighter skin color, were regarded as more “European” by the Portuguese. Absorbed into the public administration and commerce, immigrant Cape Verdeans served as colonial auxiliaries and intermediaries between the African population and Europeans.^{Footnote 48}

This on-going social change was also gendered: a conservative image of gender roles reflecting that of bourgeois European women of the nineteenth century was imposed in the towns on female Kriston traders.^{Footnote 49} At that time, the Kriston merchants and commercial intermediaries (among them many women) lost their importance,^{Footnote 50} turning from brokers and intermediaries into planters. The establishment of a new economic base was also linked to new tendencies to political revolt that emerged and potentially threatened colonial rule.^{Footnote 51} This was expressed, for instance, in Portugal’s “pacification” campaign against Pepel and Kriston insurgents in and around Bissau in 1915.^{Footnote 52} The new Portuguese Republican regime established in 1910 pushed aside the Kriston brokers in order to provide posts in colonial public service for their European adherents.^{Footnote 53} Kriston intermediaries were further marginalized and repressed under the fascist Estado Novo-regime that emerged after 1926. The new regime “nationalized” the economy, meaning that Portuguese oligopolistic enterprises henceforth usurped commerce, thus also supplanting previously dominant French and German trading houses.^{Footnote 54} Henceforth, both Bissau-Guinean Cape Verdeans and Kriston were relegated to the second and third rows of the trading economy (intermediary trade or “comércio intermediário,” small trade in villages, known as “tabankas,” and plantation cultivation, so-called “pontas”).^{Footnote 55} In other words, the colonial state aimed at the control of smallholders, among them many creoles. Until the late 1960s, Portugal’s neo-mercantilist economic policy resulted in the extraction of quick money from taxes from agriculture and trade, without sustainable investments in infrastructure, various forms of support to small peasants, education, training and research, or the establishment of a manufacturing industry or agricultural loan system, etc.^{Footnote 56}

Civilizados and Indígenas

Practical measures to legally classify Guinea-Bissau’s population either as civilizados (= citizens) or indígenas (= subjects) date back to the late nineteenth century. In retrospective, and contrary to Portugal’s assimilationist luso-tropicalist^{Footnote 57} colonial ideology, the assimilation of Africans remained lip service as the following data suggest: In 1926, the civilizados counted 6,973 individuals, among them 12 percent “whites,” 67 percent “blacks,” and 20 percent “mixed.”^{Footnote 58} By 1940, the total number of civilizados had fallen to 5,822 and was composed of 24 percent “whites,” 37 percent “blacks,” and 38 percent “mixed.”^{Footnote 59} By 1950, the number of civilizados increased to 8,320 individuals.^{Footnote 60} However, while the number of “whites” (27 percent) and “mixed” (54 percent) had grown, the proportion of “blacks” (17 percent) had shrunk again. In the same year, Cape Verdeans accounted for 21 percent of the Portuguese citizens, Metropolitan Portuguese for 18 percent, and Bissau-Guineans for 58 percent.^{Footnote 61} Due to a change of census modalities (presumably due to the impending abolition of the Native Statute) the census of 1960 merely counted a “non-autochthonous population” of 13,686 individuals, without differentiating according to “race.”^{Footnote 62} It is evident that, over a period of twenty-five years, the number of “blacks” decreased while those of “whites” and “mestizoes” grew, apparently due to an increased number of migrants from Portugal and Cape Verde. These data can be interpreted as a sign of a very limited assimilation of Africans into the civilizado-stratum. However, as all census data these numbers have to be read with caution as phenotypical markers are subject to manipulation and politicization. Thus, shrinking numbers of “blacks” may be also attributed to increased racist prejudices, leading individuals to negate a “black” identity and to rather identify oneself as “mixed” – if there was sufficient phenotypical leeway for such “negotiations.”

Unfortunately, we do not know much about the performative, “political” interplay between census takers and colonial officials responsible for assigning “tribal affiliations” in official documents on the one hand and respondents or citizens/subjects on the other. Nor do we know if, and to what extent, the former influenced or “negotiated” the outcomes and how their counterparts reacted. Owing to the “transitory nature” of lived identity it is reasonable to assume that the “formal” “identity fabricated through census forms” differs from identity as it is practiced.^{Footnote 63} With regard to censuses, results turn out differently, according to whether respondents are ascribed an identity by census takers or if they can self-identify. The move from ascription to choice or vice-versa is known to produce individual “ethnic switchings,” leading to different census results.^{Footnote 64} Furthermore, in most cases, including that of colonial Guinea-Bissau, instructions for census takers are not available (anymore) or not easily accessible.

The Labor Act of 1899, re-enacted in 1911 by the newly established Republican regime that replaced the monarchy in Lisbon, sought to draw the “indigenous” population into the colonial market economy and arranged for a forced labor system. This happened, however, without properly defining at the outset who was an indígena, i.e. if this was conceived merely as a legal term (i.e. “non-citizen”) or rather as a social category.^{Footnote 65} These regulations also applied to other Portuguese colonies, such as Angola and Mozambique, amongst others. Another law of 1913 pressed ahead with the arbitrary separation of the “indigenous” from the “civilized” population and emphasized the Portuguese mission to “civilize” the “indigenous” inhabitants, an indication of the evolutionist and Eurocentric colonial thinking of the time.^{Footnote 66} Complaints by citizens that parts of the indigenous population behaved and dressed “inappropriately” in the towns were taken into account in 1917, leading to regulations for “decent” attitudes to be maintained by the indigenous population.^{Footnote 67} In the same year, a first attempt was made to properly define the attributes that members of the “native” population (“indígenas”) had to possess if they aimed at qualifying for Portuguese citizenship. The following attributes were required when they wanted to become a civilizado, as it was officially termed: to show their dedication to the interests of the Portuguese nation, to demonstrate their ability to read or at least speak Portuguese, to possess the material means for their subsistence, and finally to have “good behavior” as confirmed by the authorities. According to the legal text, it was in turn the governor’s task (upon consultation of the advisory “government council”) to award civic and political rights when candidates met these legal requirements.^{Footnote 68} In sharp contrast to the local native population, Europeans did not have to qualify for citizenship. A decree issued in 1921 guaranteed – at least theoretically – the legally equal treatment of both Europeans and the “civilized” indigenous population.^{Footnote 69} As distinct from “civilized” citizens, a guia for indígenas was obligatory since 1921 in order to control their freedom of movement.^{Footnote 70} In 1925, the caderneta indígena for travels abroad was introduced; it indicated the “tribal” affiliation (tribu, “tribe,” the contemporary expression to denote an ethnic group).^{Footnote 71} Later, the “improved” caderneta, introduced in 1934, which served both as identity card and certificate of employment for the “indigenous” population, contained a section that indicated “raça ou tribu a que pertence” (“race or tribe she/he belongs to”), whereas the citizens’ identity cards did not state any ethnic affiliation but only the Portuguese nationality.^{Footnote 72} While censuses were only periodic events, a guia or caderneta, along with the obligation to provide this inscribed ethnic affiliation when interacting with colonial authorities (whether when paying taxes or visiting health centers), may have left a more lasting impression in terms of ethnic identity among African non-citizens.

The policy towards the few African citizens in the colony was different. The Portuguese held to their practice of not recognizing the ethnic and creole identities of African citizens, due to their assimilationist ideology and color-blind rhetoric. Africans who held citizenship were regarded as Portuguese and were therefore not allowed to indicate an ethnic group. Further, the existence of “false,” “artificial” creole identities (in contrast to presumably “primordial,” “native” ones)^{Footnote 73} would have disproved the state’s ideology of assimilation and incorporation.^{Footnote 74} This was in contrast to British colonies like Sierra Leone or The Gambia, for instance, where citizens “maintained” their ethnic or creole identity. British census authorities required both subjects and citizens to state their ethnic affiliation.^{Footnote 75} In Guinea-Bissau, ethnic entries were abolished from official documents only after independence. Of course, despite a Bissau-Guinean family being classified for decades as citizens, the ethnic identification did not disappear, even if many African citizen families bent under colonial pressure and kept distance to African traditions, including language. Some families tried but did not “succeed” while other families were divided into (usually urban) “civilized” and (usually rural) “indigenous” family branches, urban branches fearing that the latter might threaten the status of the “civilized” family lines. Nevertheless, many, especially creole families that were classified as “civilized” and hence as “citizens” in colonial times, often retain today a privileged social habitus that serves to draw a boundary towards individuals perceived as “uncivilized.”

The Native Statute of 1927 that had been initially decreed for Angola and Mozambique only was expanded to Guinea-Bissau in the same year.^{Footnote 76} Thus, the regulations of the Native Statute did not apply to colonies like Cape Verde, Portuguese India, and Macau.^{Footnote 77} The Native Statute further deepened the population’s legal segregation, aiming at consolidating colonial rule by extending the “divide-and-rule” practices. In 1928, a more precise definition of an indígena was introduced, thus abrogating a decree of 1920 that had apparently proven inadequate, according to law-makers.^{Footnote 78} According to the new law’s introductory text, administrators had doubted whether it was sufficient to be cristão in order to be classified as civilizado. For centuries, Christianity had commonly served to label individuals as “civilized,” contrary to “pagan savages.”

A new law of 1930 arranged for the introduction of a new intermediate, pre-civilizado juridical category: the assimilado (“assimilated”). Henceforth, those “natives” of the colony, or those from abroad and of “black race or descendants,” who met the following requirements were considered “assimilated to the Europeans” and were consequently elevated from being “indigenous.” They had to know to read, write, and speak Portuguese, to possess the necessary material means for their alimentation, European style clothing, and dwellings, and had to have a record of “good behavior.” This meant that they did not practice customs of their “race.” They were then given an identity card (labeled first bilhete de identidade and from 1930 on bilhete de assimilado, thus stressing the intermediary, albeit advanced status).^{Footnote 79} Exempt from qualification were Portuguese (European) citizens or “individuals of the black race or their descendants” who held a public office and possessed a minimum of literacy skills, were merchants, entrepreneurs, or landholders, or who originated from Portuguese colonies where the indigenato did not apply, implying a presumably higher level of “civilization” on their part. In contrast to the popular parlance that tended to equate civilizados and assimilados, the legal “assimilated” category was a pre-stage for non-European subjects, i.e. indígenas, to obtain citizenship. It was abolished in 1946. In that year the assimilados were “upgraded” to civilizados and thus received full Portuguese citizenship.^{Footnote 80}

The colonizers faced the problem of how to measure “objectively” and in a non-time consuming way, the level of “civilization” that qualified an individual for citizenship. One of my informants in Guinea-Bissau remembered his father’s experiences becoming a civilizado.^{Footnote 81} According to him, “civilization” had to be staged, reducing colonial civilizing attempts to absurdity. A small group of people that had applied for citizenship, for example, were summoned to a residential house in one of Bissau’s neighborhoods where they, one after another, had to pass a test to prove that they maintained a cultivated, “civilized” European style of living in presence of a colonial official. Precisely, one applicant after another had to one-time demonstrate that she/he had a command of European style table manners, showing how to sit at a table and, dressed in European fashion, to prove their knowledge of using cutlery and crockery “correctly.” However, identity issues related to colonial ambiguity and hypocrisy did not only manifest in such “exam situations” but also in daily life, illustrating the discrepancy between social reality and ideological-legal desirability: many African lower-class citizens privately led a lifestyle that integrated African traditions, which were seen socially and legally (i.e. from a European point of view) as undesirable and therefore officially condemned under colonial rule. These individuals partially hid behind a false front in public life.^{Footnote 82} Obviously, representatives of the colonial state, including, in a wider context, the clergy, were not able, or even willing, to entirely enforce “civilization,” therefore, intentionally or unintentionally, leaving Africans leeway to undermine colonial policy on identity. Official classifications and the maintenance of autonomy thus partly depended on relationships with colonial officials or influential Europeans.

When an indígena became “civilized,” a note was published in the colony’s law gazette.^{Footnote 83} This regulation was tightened in 1935, and the handing over of a bilhete and the attainment of a respectable status in society now depended on the completion of military service^{Footnote 84} (even if, according to testimonies, medical exemptions from such service could be acquired). The Colonial Act of 1930 emphasized the regime’s intention to assimilate and “civilize” the colony’s indigenous population via religious and educational means.^{Footnote 85} Following a Eurocentric approach, the paternalist colonial government had to protect and defend the indígenas, respecting the “principles of humanity,” as it was officially described. According to popular colonial ideology, the “civilizing” of the Africans went according to the following simple scheme that was characterized by a mix of cultural relativism and evolutionism: “detribalized” individuals of the “indigenous” population would abandon their “tribe” and “savage” environment in order to settle in urban areas. According to census data, 70 percent of the civilizados were living in Guinea-Bissau’s urban areas by 1950, although most of them were non-Bissau-Guineans, i.e. mostly Europeans, as shown above.^{Footnote 86} Thus, the colonizers believed that Africans were passing through a severe crisis because of the consequential lack of “moral principles” and “deracination,” ensuing from their abandonment of their “natural” rural environment. Colonial theorists and politicians were convinced that these “detribalized” Africans were attracted by European civilization in the towns and cities, where they were supposed to adopt a new “mentality,” and to think “like us,” meaning like the Europeans.^{Footnote 87} Interestingly, “colonial rulers explicitly aimed to ‘civilize’ their subjects and mold them in the image of Europeans; natives who imitated the colonizer were in this sense part of the colonial plan.”^{Footnote 88} However, from the Portuguese colonial state’s perspective such assimilating individuals might become too “civilized” or “half-civilized,” or, even worse, “bad copies,”^{Footnote 89} in other words, a threat. Therefore, and not surprisingly, concerns were raised over the perceived threat that Metropolitan Portuguese in the colony might be (de-)”civilized” by African “indigenous customs,” due to the latter’s numerical preponderance.^{Footnote 90}

Yet, even if the assimilado-status for the African, “indigenous” population was abolished in 1946, the Native Statute was retained.^{Footnote 91} This development was celebrated by the colonial regime as a major step towards uniform citizenship for both assimilados and civilizados. However, the new law only eliminated the “discriminating” legal inconsistency, as the Colonial Act had only separated indígenas from cidadãos (citizens).^{Footnote 92} The “indigenous” population was from that time on able to apply directly for Portuguese citizenship without passing through the intermediate assimilado status. Although some cosmetic modifications were carried out during the 1950s, the Native Statute and according regulations (qualification for citizenship etc.) remained unchanged in their foundation until the statute’s abrogation in 1961.^{Footnote 93} After years of international protest, the forced labor service for indígenas was eventually abolished in 1960, following the ratification of International Labor Organization (ILO) conventions by Portugal.^{Footnote 94} The following year, driven by the international community, a legal norm announced the abolition of the Native Statute, as amended and promulgated in 1954.^{Footnote 95} In theory, the “indigenous,” “uncivilized” subjects, who had accounted for more than 98 percent of the total population in 1950, automatically became citizens and were on an equal footing with the hitherto privileged civilizados. However, the verdict on Angola, namely that the colonial-era reforms there “proved to be merely a change in form rather than substance,”^{Footnote 96} might also be applied to Guinea-Bissau: there, Africans continued to suffer social and political exclusion, albeit to a lesser extent than in the Angolan case.^{Footnote 97}

Education under Colonial Auspices

The colonial education system largely prevented the emergence of local elites as the available local education capacity remained extremely limited, until very belated efforts to remedy this situation were made since the 1950s, and even more since the outbreak of the independence struggle in the 1960s.^{Footnote 98} Significantly, education can be also understood as a facilitator of political participation and responsibility. However, in colonial Guinea-Bissau indirect discrimination on racial grounds was manifested very strikingly in the education sector, contributing to the exclusion of vast parts of the population of such participation. In general, the Portuguese colonial education system did not favor the social advancement of individuals of African descent. Instead, instruction sought to foster an imperialist mentality, emphasizing the putative greatness of Portugal’s civilizing mission.^{Footnote 99}

Colonial education was strongly characterized by the duality of separate schooling systems for civilizados and indígenas. The Catholic Church offered (as a result of the agreements between the Portuguese state and the Vatican) so called “rudimentary education,” intended exclusively for “indigenous” students. It was limited to four years of primarily practical knowledge of basic literacy and numeracy. The number of schools, and of enrolled students, was low. In 1954–1955 there were only eleven state-run schools (enrolling 732 “civilized” students) and – aimed exclusively at indígenas – 120 missionary schools (enrolling 7,181 “indigenous” students) in Guinea-Bissau. Thus, out of a total population of about 510,000 in about 1955, only 7,913 persons attended school. These numbers indicate a huge educational disparity. The situation began to change only after the outbreak of the war of independence, as the colonial administration introduced half-hearted efforts in the basic education sector. In 1973–1974, the last school year before independence, there were 179 state schools (25,249 students), 79 missionary schools (10,457 students) and 160 schools (10,255 students) run by the Portuguese army, the entire schooling system thus accounting altogether for 45,961 students.^{Footnote 100} In addition to this European instruction, the Muslim clergy ran 436 Koranic schools (counting about 5,000 students) and 50 Islamic cultural centers for adults in 1950–1951. Tellingly, Koranic schools and their students were more numerous than missionary and official schools and their students (1,979) at this time,^{Footnote 101} demonstrating that formal “Western” education was given a low priority by the colonial state and the Church.

Studying these numbers reveals a fragmented, bifurcated picture of a colonial schooling system that already separated children of citizens from those of subjects. As a result, civilizado and indígena children were trained according to different curricula, “indigenous” students’ education being limited to four years, and the transfer of basic knowledge. This cemented social disparities, excluded indígenas from qualified positions, and created significant social, political, and economic problems for the country after independence was achieved.

Yet, colonial reality was more complex than the figures quoted above suggest, as the following ethnographic vignette illustrates. When I traveled to Farim in Northern Guinea-Bissau in late 2006 I was approached by an elderly man in his mid-sixties. We started a conversation and it turned out that he was a Mandingo. What struck me was the fact that he bore, quite untypical for Mandingos, a Portuguese given name – something that used to be obligatory for children that were registered by their “civilized” parents. He explained that he was a child of “indigenous” peasants. One day, a Portuguese trader got aware of him, his attention being drawn to the boy’s intelligence and outstanding talent. With the consent of his parents the Portuguese took the young boy from Farim to Bissau in order to act as his patron and develop his skills. The practice of adopting children (known as “meninus di kriason,” i.e. “cared children” or “fijus di kasa,” i.e. “children of the house”) from relatives and friends from the countryside is a very common practice in Guinea-Bissau today – similar to the practice of adolescent rural dwellers that seek simple employment (as cooks, caretakers, ambulant salesmen, etc.) in urban settings. In Bissau, he was awarded citizenship and therefore could attend grammar school and joined a local football club. A Muslim by birth, as civilizado he was obliged to adopt a Christian-Portuguese name, which he maintained after independence, along with an “unofficial” Mandingo one. Advancing in colonial Guinea-Bissau hence also depended very much on personalized relationships – underlining the heterogeneous (and potentially contradicting) interests of the colonizers.^{Footnote 102} These informal practices made the colonial system, at least to a certain extent, more permeable for Africans. Colonial Guinea-Bissau also stood in contrast to settler colonies like Angola and Mozambique where racial segregation was far more pronounced and strictly implemented, as some Bissau-Guineans colonial army recruits that served abroad remembered.

However, even the civilizados were disadvantaged in terms of education in Guinea-Bissau. As a rule, their education was likewise limited to four years. For a long time, education remained limited to basic instruction: a vocational school was not established until 1953, and a grammar school opened as late as 1958.^{Footnote 103} Prior to this, families that could afford secondary education had to send their children either to secondary schools in Europe or neighboring Senegal. A major hurdle for poor families was the fact that access to secondary and tertiary education depended on the ability to pay tuition fees in Portugal and its colonies.^{Footnote 104} Indeed, only after the outbreak of the war the number of grammar school students started to grow from 290 in 1962–1963 to 514 in 1972–1973 and 1,238 in 1973–1974.^{Footnote 105} Racial discrimination was blatant. In 1950 only 5.3 percent of the “mestizo” and 2.7 percent of the “black” “civilized” population profited from secondary instruction.^{Footnote 106}

Despite the fact that the Catholic faith had never been the state religion in the Estado Novo-era, Christianity played a crucial role in Portugal’s “civilizing mission.”^{Footnote 107} Agreements that delegated the instruction for indígena-students to the Holy See were concluded between 1926 and 1941.^{Footnote 108} Advocating Western “civilization,” missionary school teachers opposed African initiation ceremonies in the 1920s and 1930s, an aged informant who had grown up in Cacheu in Western Guinea-Bissau remembered. However, methods employed in “civilizing” students could be also more subtle: One informant, who attended a secondary school run by the Catholic Church in Eastern Guinea-Bissau in the 1960s, remembered that many of his Muslim classmates formally converted to Catholicism, while continuing to adhere to Islam. Although no open pressure was exerted on children and adolescents, many peers, including Muslim ones, were attracted by the cinema that occasionally ran inside the Catholic school. However, cinema tickets were restricted to those who had attended the Christian Mass and this was, for many, reason enough to engage in the pretense of conversion. This demonstrated the hypocrisy that colonialism demanded from both citizens and subjects.

Civilizados and assimilados constituted only a relative elite with respect to education. Data from 1950 suggest that a high percentage of them were illiterate: in 1950, 52.2 percent of the “black,” 50.6 percent of the “mestizo,” and 23.9 percent of the “white” civilizado-population were illiterate. Europeans, just like individuals from Portuguese colonies where the Native Statute did not apply, were, as mentioned above, generally exempted from laws applying in Guinea-Bissau that stipulated literacy as a prerequisite for citizenship in the colonies. The same holds true for those few Africans who had inherited the civilizado-status from their parents. The high number of illiteracy among “white,” mostly Portuguese citizens was not astonishing since even in mainland Portugal illiteracy rates were high.^{Footnote 109} The Portuguese government supported the immigration of its labor surplus from mainland Portugal to the colonies, most of them little or uneducated citizens.^{Footnote 110}

Colonial ambiguity, however, went beyond the core of the colony’s education sector as the limits of Portuguese power became also apparent in the area language policy. The colonial authorities made a couple of awkward attempts to prohibit the use of Kriol, nowadays the country’s lingua franca, from both schools and from public life in general. These attempts found their expression in a number of legal provisions. A law passed in 1917 stipulated that applicants for citizenship should be able to read and write Portuguese, not merely Kriol.^{Footnote 111} Similarly, another law passed in the same year heavily criticized the “constant use of crioulo” in public administration and schools, “as if it were the national language.” Under this mandate, only the Portuguese language could be used in public administration and the education system.^{Footnote 112} It seems, however, that these endeavors to stamp out Kriol from Guinea-Bissau did not meet with success. A conference of administrators held in 1943 advocated the removal of the “creole dialect” from the public service and the commercial sphere. The participants labeled the use of Kriol as unpatriotic and a “manifestation of inferiority,” which the colonizers equated with “assimilating with the natives.”^{Footnote 113} Eventually, however, the colonial state could not prevent Kriol, the product of a tiny number of former trading posts dominated by creole culture, from spreading all over Guinea-Bissau. Nor could they stop the language becoming the PAIGC’s medium of command and mobilization. Kriol became, in the end, the independent country’s vernacular and is currently spoken by about 90 percent of the population. Even though the fact that people share the same language does not necessarily mean, however, that they also have a national identity in common, the shared mastery of a language contributes to interethnic conviviality and builds solidarity and a sense of shared belonging.

Politics and Being Political in Late Colonial Society

In contrast to France and the United Kingdom, colonial empires that possessed democratic systems at least in the mother countries, the Portuguese Estado Novo was an authoritarian regime that deprived even its citizens in Metropolitan Portugal of political participation and basic rights, just as it did in the colonies. Freedom was restricted by means of censorship of the press and other publications,^{Footnote 114} the prohibition of any activity that put into question the political status quo in general and the position of the regime’s single political party,^{Footnote 115} and a repressive intelligence service, which engaged in the detention and torture of political “suspects” as well as the assassination of opposition leaders (including PAIGC president Amílcar Cabral, himself a creole).^{Footnote 116} These authoritarian political structures may have also had an impact on creole, notably Kriston identity, because they were obstacles to the formulation of shared interests and their open articulation, and thus blocked the formation of political factions and cultural pressure groups. As a result, oppressive structures contributed to the prevention not only of political, but also of cultural and identitarian advocacy and the representation of creoles via-à-vis the colonial state. Thus, the only unrestricted space for political activism was outside the colonial system. By the end of the colonial period creole identity continued to remain characterized by its peculiar intersection with various other identities, such as civilizado, indígena, Portuguese, African, mixed, etc., while the legal cultural and political positionings that might have strengthened the distinct, creole feeling of belonging were rendered impossible. On the other hand, the colonial state was not able to eliminate the shared creole feeling of cultural togetherness.

Political limitations started with the Estado Novo’s restriction of the franchise in both Metropolitan Portugal and in the colonies. This followed the tradition of previous legislation, such as the colonial Organic Law of 1914, for example, that already restricted suffrage to male, literate (Portuguese, non-European naturalized, and resident foreign) citizens with income, and confined eligibility to vote to literate Portuguese citizens.^{Footnote 117} In 1931 the right to vote was extended to women.^{Footnote 118} Further measures were taken in 1933, when the right to vote was more restricted. Henceforth, the literacy qualification was more stringently enforced, leading to the rigorous exclusion of voters. Later, the introduction of a liberalized, restricted female suffrage in 1946 resulted in three groups allowed to vote: a) literate males; b) illiterate males as well as married women or heads of household with a minimum income; and c) single literate women.^{Footnote 119}

As an overseas province, as the colonies were eventually officially designated, Guinea-Bissau delegated one deputy to Portugal’s National Assembly. As a result of the above mentioned restrictions, the number of voters was low. Whereas indígenas were excluded from voting from the outset, only a small number of the civilizados was actually allowed to take part in the elections. According to election results, the winning candidate obtained 453 votes in 1911, increasing to 3,939 in 1969.^{Footnote 120} This means that, given a total population of a little over 600,000 in the 1960s, the electorate represented only around 1–1.5 percent of the colony’s inhabitants. Hence, far less than one percent of colonial Guinea-Bissau’s entire population had actually voted for the winning candidate in 1969. For decades, the delegates of Portuguese Guinea in Portugal’s Parliament in Lisbon originated from Metropolitan Portugal. Usually, they were former government and military officials (like Ricardo Vaz Monteiro, Avelino Teixeira da Mota, and Luis António de Carvalho Viegas). Only in the last years of the Estado Novo, after the outbreak of the struggle for independence, Portugal made concessions and Guinea-Bissau born individuals started to represent the colony in the Portuguese Parliament: James Pinto Bull, a former high-ranking colonial government official, from 1961 to 1970, and Manuel Gardete Correia, a medical doctor, from 1973 to 1974.^{Footnote 121} These men were both members of the local elite in colonial Guinea-Bissau.

Colonial Guinea-Bissau was headed by a governor (governador) and a Government Council (conselho do governo). However, the Conselhos do Governo for the colonies – which were set up for the first time in 1914 – took only an advisory role.^{Footnote 122} Following the Statute for Guinea-Bissau of 1955, the delegates of Guinea-Bissau’s government council, like those for the Portuguese Parliament, were elected by a minority.^{Footnote 123} Besides, only a minority of the seats were assigned through elections: three ex-officio members were delegated by the colonial administration, three members were directly elected by an electoral college of voters inscribed on the electoral rolls, one member by those citizens who had paid a minimum tax amount, one member was chosen by the governor from among the heads of private associations and institutions, one member was chosen by the governor to represent the “indigenous” population, and yet another member was chosen by the governor from among the heads of administrative bodies.^{Footnote 124} The legislation of 1963 and 1972 largely confirmed these structures, adding only minor changes.^{Footnote 125} Guinea-Bissau’s colonial governors were, without exception, military officers who possessed extensive executive and legislative powers. Thus, while most French and British African colonies aspired towards increasing participation of the African population, towards self-determination and independence, colonial Guinea-Bissau and other Portuguese colonies continued to be characterized by a lack of channels for political participation and claims.

In order to make the people governable the regime sought their integration, notably that of civilizados and creoles, into state or state-oriented institutions that served the autocratic regime as ideological transmission belts. One such institution employed by the Estado Novo to win the hearts of the people was the Mocidade Portuguesa (“Portuguese Youth”). Branches of this organization were founded in all colonies following a decree in early 1939. The organization’s objectives were physical training and the creation of a “sense of discipline,” “order,” and “military duty,” as well as cultivating “traditional Christian education.” Membership in this uniformed organization officially conceptualized as “pre-military” and “national,” was limited to citizens, that is, the Europeans and the “assimilated native youth.”^{Footnote 126} Former members in Guinea-Bissau recalled that the movement attracted many adolescents and children due to scouting-style holiday camps it organized and the provision of uniforms. Camps were accompanied by military training and Masses. Joining the Mocidade Portuguesa was further facilitated by the fact that the organization provided uniforms, shoes, belts, socks, and shirts at a reasonable price – an important incentive for many Bissau-Guinean families with low incomes, as an informant remembered. Today, people who had joined the Mocidade as youth recall this organization more or less positively, pointing to group activities and the conviviality that prevailed during meetings and events. Even if few people I talked to appear to have been conscious about the regime’s more subtle mechanisms to influence the youth, the Mocidade, just like youth mass organizations in authoritarian states elsewhere, nevertheless appears to have been met with sympathy by the youth although this organization did not allow space for open discussions or (dissident) political, identitarian, and cultural articulations.

African urbanites with creole and “civilized” background that grew up in the 1960s revealed an ambiguous stance on the 1960s. On the one hand, interviewees were nostalgic about this period, stressing sociability and the infrastructure in the city, the past being contrasted with the “chaos” and “poor organization” in present-day Bissau. The present is thus imagined in a negative way against a positive colonial past, an attitude that has been framed as “‘negro’-pessimism” by Vigh.^{Footnote 127} On the other hand, interviewees affirmed that they were aware of the on-going and intensifying fighting between the Portuguese and the PAIGC. They observed how friends and colleagues disappeared overnight in order to clandestinely join the PAIGC in the country’s interior, while others were called up for military duty in the Portuguese armed forces. Some families had members fighting either in the Portuguese troops or for the PAIGC. Rumors and news about war atrocities, and the persecution and torturing of presumed “enemies” by the Portuguese intelligence service spread. The political situation was, then, far more tense, than before the war when the holding of clandestine PAIGC meetings challenged colonial rule. Hence, it seems that political issues like the lack of political participation and freedom, the quest for independence from Portugal, triggered by the PAIGC, which could not be expressed openly under colonialism could only be articulated through the armed struggle. Personal life and collective memory, it can be argued, can thus be characterized as bifurcated and ambiguous, possibly fostered by either the fear of retaliation from colonial authorities, or by an apolitical or even supportive attitude towards colonial domination that provided a certain standard of living particularly for a few socially advanced Bissau-Guineans. This was also facilitated by the fact that the political, in the sense of popular participation in decision-making, had been entirely absent, even among the tiny citizenship stratum. Along with low levels of education and the fear of retaliation and repression an atmosphere was created that, to a large extent, may have relegated discussions of awareness of political issues to a closed circuit of kin and friends.

After the PAIGC took power in 1973–1974, authoritarianism continued under new political circumstances, so did the reluctance to talk openly about political issues and to make political demands. Although creoles continue to figure quite prominently among the country’s civil society and political arena, both creole civilizados and indígenas were, due to a lack of open political scopes in colonial times, unfamiliar with “Global North” style democracy and participatory approaches, and were therefore unable to accordingly influence Bissau-Guinean society after independence. Additionally, various Eastern Bloc countries and their allies in the “Global South” provided the blueprint for Guinea-Bissau’s emerging one-party state, giving the means for the emerging new elite to secure power and to (unsuccessfully) follow the path of authoritarian social, political, and economic “modernization.” The experiences of colonial times, and those of a postcolonial left-wing one-party state discouraged individuals from making open political claims, and encouraged them instead to retreat to the private sphere of kin and friends. Hence, even though individuals were able to preserve sufficient freedom together with kin, friends, and colleagues, the colonial state, as a matter of course, managed to a certain degree to shape people’s minds. Nevertheless, independence marked a major watershed for Guinea-Bissau’s population, including the formerly privileged Bissau-Guineans with (Portuguese) citizenship, among them many creoles. Some who had fought alongside the Portuguese hesitated to identify with the new state and preferred to migrate to Portugal, while others stayed in Guinea-Bissau: reporting the pressure exerted on them by the new authorities and giving in to widespread post-colonial euphoria, they hesitantly adopted citizenship of newly independent Guinea-Bissau. Many interviewees remembered that the spirit of optimism directly after independence soon gave way to new forms of authoritarian governance, political persecution, economic setbacks, and food shortages.

Many, urban based civilizado descendants that I interviewed voiced that they perceived themselves as guineense (“[Bissau-]Guinean”), misto, or djagassidu (“mixed”), voicing that they were little or even not at all connected with their respective ethnic group’s “ancestral” cultural representations, such as language or religion. They clearly distanced themselves from the rural population; contrary to the people from the interior, they perceived themselves as “urbanized” and “detribalized.” Nevertheless, some of them valorized certain customs of the particular ethnic groups with which they identified, underlining the importance they ascribed these “ethnic” cultural traits. Other former civilizado, creole individuals have openly identified with one of the country’s ethnic groups, but emphasized their socio-cultural distinction from rural dwellers owing to their urban residence, the result of intergenerational changes since independence.^{Footnote 128} These present-day characteristics also underline prevailing rural-urban divisions and biases. To date, these creole individuals maintain an urban self-image, one juxtaposed to that of the rural population and their lifestyle. One informant of Kriston descent recalled that she observed how vacant apartments, abandoned by the Portuguese in the capital’s city center shortly after independence, were taken over by newly arrived supporters of the independence movement, coming from the countryside. She narrated in an ironic, mocking manner how these newcomers started to keep pigs in the balconies of these apartments. Unlike the older city residents, she opined, these countrymen did not seem to know anything about city life. This reference to a collective urban creole we-group expresses the desire for the drawing of a boundary, which would exclude the supposedly less “modern,” less “civilized,” and therefore socially inferior rural population. This underlines the myth of elite distinctiveness and exclusiveness common among creoles, which Cohen analyzed in the case of Sierra Leone’s Krios.^{Footnote 129}