Building the Samorian State: Material Culture, Architecture, and Cities Across West Africa

Date of Award

Spring 1-1-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

History of Art

First Advisor

Cooke, Edward

Abstract

This dissertation examines the effects of the Samorian State’s (1870-1898) expansion on art, architecture, material culture, and urban design in West Africa. This project serves as the first art historical examination of the Samorian State in the nineteenth century. The dissertation investigates previously unstudied objects to understand how the Samorians used visual and built environments as an extension of their political and imperial goals. By utilizing oral histories and archival texts from five countries, the dissertation reveals the complex entanglements, encounters, divisions, and negotiations between the Samorian State and other West African actors. The project is interdisciplinary in nature and contributes to the key questions in the fields of African art history, architecture studies, urban studies, and African history. The project contributes to transnational research in art history by considering the African continent beyond linguistic and geographic divisions. The dissertation progresses chronologically from the foundation of the State to its defeat, and each chapter centers on a case study from a different location within the Samorian sphere of influence. Chapter 1 uses portraits of elite Samorian men in the 1880s to interrogate Samorian regalia and state-building strategies. The project traces Samorian material culture to firmly demonstrate that the State had a coherent political agenda that required geographic expansion. Chapter 2 examines the effects of this state-building project by examining the history of the city of Falaba, Sierra Leone, which was alternately destroyed and rebuilt multiple times by the Samorian State. This chapter contributes to architecture and urban studies by centering destruction and its implications. Chapter 3 explores the largely unstudied political alliance between the Samorian State and the Asante Kingdom by tracing the biography of an Asante-made gold ring. This chapter uses the ring to consider how African polities interacted with one another and used objects to negotiate alliances. Chapter 4 follows the Samorian State after its fall in 1898 and the impact of French colonial surveillance on the lives of Samorian individuals. The chapter centers women’s voices and the trans-Atlantic advocacy networks that Samorian women developed to combat French colonization. Chapter 5 connects the defeat of the Samorians to post-colonial Guinea and examines monuments and public performances commemorating the State. The dissertation concludes by showing how 1960s Guinean nationalism was grounded in an idealized vision of Samorian history that was propagated by the oppressive dictatorship of Sékou Touré. By focusing on the Samorian State and its interactions within West Africa, this research decenters the British and French as the primary actors for understanding the region.

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