The documentary research and treatment developed over the last decade at the Portuguese Overseas Historical Archive (Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, Lisbon) has enabled contact with several Public Works archives. It happened most significantly during two international investigation projects, briefly the Coast to Coast (2017-2019) and the ArchWar (ongoing) - both projects hosted at DINAMIA’CET, ISCTE - IUL. Since 2019 this archival work has been online and growing at the Historical Archive research portal in a database named “Public Works” (“Obras Públicas”, in the original). Considering colonial records as markers of colonial memories, this communication resorts to information presented in the archives of the Public Works as a direct manifestation of the Portuguese Administration’s action from the XIX century up to the colonial independence in Africa (1830-1975). This communication aims to explore the Public Works records double dynamic: one, it marked the landscape with a profuse structural and infrastructural legacy, which in turn, can mirror several logics in the same proportion (social, economic and political). Actors, missions, constructions and technology are recurrent presences in these records. Within is also conflict, covering several layers from domination attempts to war allowing us to explore numerous representations and colonial information systems.

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Colonial records,information systems,representations