Author: Christopher John Gray
Publisher: University Rochester Press
ISBN: 9781580460484
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316
Book Description
A look at the encounter between the French and the peoples of Southern Gabon in terms of their differing conceptions of boundaries. In the second half of the nineteenth century, two very different practices of territoriality confronted each other in Southern Gabon. Clan and lineage relationships were most important in the local practice, while the French practice was informed by a territorial definition of society that had emerged with the rise of the modern nation-state and industrial capitalism. This modern territoriality used an array of bureaucratic instruments -- such as maps andcensuses -- previously unknown in equatorial Africa. Such instruments denied the existence of locally created territories and were fundamental to the exercise of colonial power. Thus modern territoriality imposed categories and institutions foreign to the peoples to whom they were applied. As colonial power became more effective from the 1920s on, those institutions started to be appropriated by Gabonese cultural elites who negotiated their meanings in reference to their own traditions. The result was a strongly ambiguous condition that left its imprint on the new colonial territories and subsequently the postcolonial Gabonese state. Christopher Gray was Assistant Professor of History, Florida International University.
Colonial Rule and Crisis in Equatorial Africa
Author: Christopher John Gray
Publisher: University Rochester Press
ISBN: 9781580460484
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316
Book Description
A look at the encounter between the French and the peoples of Southern Gabon in terms of their differing conceptions of boundaries. In the second half of the nineteenth century, two very different practices of territoriality confronted each other in Southern Gabon. Clan and lineage relationships were most important in the local practice, while the French practice was informed by a territorial definition of society that had emerged with the rise of the modern nation-state and industrial capitalism. This modern territoriality used an array of bureaucratic instruments -- such as maps andcensuses -- previously unknown in equatorial Africa. Such instruments denied the existence of locally created territories and were fundamental to the exercise of colonial power. Thus modern territoriality imposed categories and institutions foreign to the peoples to whom they were applied. As colonial power became more effective from the 1920s on, those institutions started to be appropriated by Gabonese cultural elites who negotiated their meanings in reference to their own traditions. The result was a strongly ambiguous condition that left its imprint on the new colonial territories and subsequently the postcolonial Gabonese state. Christopher Gray was Assistant Professor of History, Florida International University.
Publisher: University Rochester Press
ISBN: 9781580460484
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316
Book Description
A look at the encounter between the French and the peoples of Southern Gabon in terms of their differing conceptions of boundaries. In the second half of the nineteenth century, two very different practices of territoriality confronted each other in Southern Gabon. Clan and lineage relationships were most important in the local practice, while the French practice was informed by a territorial definition of society that had emerged with the rise of the modern nation-state and industrial capitalism. This modern territoriality used an array of bureaucratic instruments -- such as maps andcensuses -- previously unknown in equatorial Africa. Such instruments denied the existence of locally created territories and were fundamental to the exercise of colonial power. Thus modern territoriality imposed categories and institutions foreign to the peoples to whom they were applied. As colonial power became more effective from the 1920s on, those institutions started to be appropriated by Gabonese cultural elites who negotiated their meanings in reference to their own traditions. The result was a strongly ambiguous condition that left its imprint on the new colonial territories and subsequently the postcolonial Gabonese state. Christopher Gray was Assistant Professor of History, Florida International University.
Ordering Africa
Author: Helen Tilley
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526118718
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 405
Book Description
African research played a major role in transforming the discipline of anthropology in the twentieth century. Ethnographic studies, in turn, had significant effects on the way imperial powers in Africa approached subject peoples. Ordering Africa provides the first comparative history of these processes. With essays exploring metropolitan research institutes, Africans as ethnographers, the transnational features of knowledge production, and the relationship between anthropology and colonial administration, this volume both consolidates and extends a range of new research questions focusing on the politics of imperial knowledge. Specific chapters examine French West Africa, the Belgian and French Congo, the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Italian Northeast Africa, Kenya, and Equatorial Africa (Gabon) as well as developments in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. A major collection of essays that will be welcomed by scholars interested in imperial history and the history of Africa.
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526118718
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 405
Book Description
African research played a major role in transforming the discipline of anthropology in the twentieth century. Ethnographic studies, in turn, had significant effects on the way imperial powers in Africa approached subject peoples. Ordering Africa provides the first comparative history of these processes. With essays exploring metropolitan research institutes, Africans as ethnographers, the transnational features of knowledge production, and the relationship between anthropology and colonial administration, this volume both consolidates and extends a range of new research questions focusing on the politics of imperial knowledge. Specific chapters examine French West Africa, the Belgian and French Congo, the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Italian Northeast Africa, Kenya, and Equatorial Africa (Gabon) as well as developments in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. A major collection of essays that will be welcomed by scholars interested in imperial history and the history of Africa.
Dictatorland
Author: Paul Kenyon
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1784972150
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 552
Book Description
A Financial Times Book of the Year 'Jaw-dropping' Daily Express 'Grimly fascinating' Financial Times 'Humane, timely, accessible and well-researched' Irish Times The dictator who grew so rich on his country's cocoa crop that he built a 35-storey-high basilica in the jungles of the Ivory Coast. The austere, incorruptible leader who has shut Eritrea off from the world in a permanent state of war and conscripted every adult into the armed forces. In Equatorial Guinea, the paranoid despot who thought Hitler was the saviour of Africa and waged a relentless campaign of terror against his own people. The Libyan army officer who authored a new work of political philosophy, The Green Book, and lived in a tent with a harem of female soldiers, running his country like a mafia family business. And behind these almost incredible stories of fantastic violence and excess lie the dark secrets of Western greed and complicity, the insatiable taste for chocolate, oil, diamonds and gold that has encouraged dictators to rule with an iron hand, siphoning off their share of the action into mansions in Paris and banks in Zurich and keeping their people in dire poverty.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1784972150
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 552
Book Description
A Financial Times Book of the Year 'Jaw-dropping' Daily Express 'Grimly fascinating' Financial Times 'Humane, timely, accessible and well-researched' Irish Times The dictator who grew so rich on his country's cocoa crop that he built a 35-storey-high basilica in the jungles of the Ivory Coast. The austere, incorruptible leader who has shut Eritrea off from the world in a permanent state of war and conscripted every adult into the armed forces. In Equatorial Guinea, the paranoid despot who thought Hitler was the saviour of Africa and waged a relentless campaign of terror against his own people. The Libyan army officer who authored a new work of political philosophy, The Green Book, and lived in a tent with a harem of female soldiers, running his country like a mafia family business. And behind these almost incredible stories of fantastic violence and excess lie the dark secrets of Western greed and complicity, the insatiable taste for chocolate, oil, diamonds and gold that has encouraged dictators to rule with an iron hand, siphoning off their share of the action into mansions in Paris and banks in Zurich and keeping their people in dire poverty.
Africa's Last Colonial Currency
Author: Fanny Pigeaud
Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)
ISBN: 9780745341798
Category : Africa
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
How the CFA Franc enabled France to continue its colonies in Africa.
Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)
ISBN: 9780745341798
Category : Africa
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
How the CFA Franc enabled France to continue its colonies in Africa.
Navigating African Maritime History
Author: Carina E. Ray
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1786948958
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 226
Book Description
This book is a collection of essays addressing multiple aspects of African maritime history in attempt to counter the lack of academic research that exists in comparison to other nations and continents, and to assert the value of African topics to the global study of maritime history. Each essay addresses African maritime history whilst also demonstrating an inextricable link to the global maritime stage. The topics discussed include early human migration to Africa; early European contact with Africa; the role of West African maritime communities in the Atlantic slave trade; New World slaveholders and the exploitation of African maritime skillsets; the construction of Atlantic world racial discourses; the rise and fall of colonial rule; and African immigrant communities in Europe. These essays cover maritime topics such as seafaring labour, navigational technology, swimming, diving, surfing; plus political subjects that include colonisation, decolonisation, immigration and citizenship. The book consists of eight essays and an introduction that evaluates the existing research into African maritime history. It includes case studies from every major geographical part of the continent, bar North Africa, and covers the Early Modern period up to the twentieth century. The purpose is not to provide a comprehensive chronological history, but rather a diverse collection of topics across a range of periods and locations to reflect the wealth of maritime topics in the history of Africa and their global significance. It concludes with a call for further research into non-European maritime activity, to deepen the global historiography.
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1786948958
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 226
Book Description
This book is a collection of essays addressing multiple aspects of African maritime history in attempt to counter the lack of academic research that exists in comparison to other nations and continents, and to assert the value of African topics to the global study of maritime history. Each essay addresses African maritime history whilst also demonstrating an inextricable link to the global maritime stage. The topics discussed include early human migration to Africa; early European contact with Africa; the role of West African maritime communities in the Atlantic slave trade; New World slaveholders and the exploitation of African maritime skillsets; the construction of Atlantic world racial discourses; the rise and fall of colonial rule; and African immigrant communities in Europe. These essays cover maritime topics such as seafaring labour, navigational technology, swimming, diving, surfing; plus political subjects that include colonisation, decolonisation, immigration and citizenship. The book consists of eight essays and an introduction that evaluates the existing research into African maritime history. It includes case studies from every major geographical part of the continent, bar North Africa, and covers the Early Modern period up to the twentieth century. The purpose is not to provide a comprehensive chronological history, but rather a diverse collection of topics across a range of periods and locations to reflect the wealth of maritime topics in the history of Africa and their global significance. It concludes with a call for further research into non-European maritime activity, to deepen the global historiography.
Colonial Transactions
Author: Florence Bernault
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478002662
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 238
Book Description
In Colonial Transactions Florence Bernault moves beyond the racial divide that dominates colonial studies of Africa. Instead, she illuminates the strange and frightening imaginaries that colonizers and colonized shared on the ground. Bernault looks at Gabon from the late nineteenth century to the present, historicizing the most vivid imaginations and modes of power in Africa today: French obsessions with cannibals, the emergence of vampires and witches in the Gabonese imaginary, and the use of human organs for fetishes. Struggling over objects, bodies, agency, and values, colonizers and colonized entered relations that are better conceptualized as "transactions." Together they also shared an awareness of how the colonial situation broke down moral orders and forced people to use the evil side of power. This foreshadowed the ways in which people exercise agency in contemporary Africa, as well as the proliferation of magical fears and witchcraft anxieties in present-day Gabon. Overturning theories of colonial and postcolonial nativism, this book is essential reading for historians and anthropologists of witchcraft, power, value, and the body.
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478002662
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 238
Book Description
In Colonial Transactions Florence Bernault moves beyond the racial divide that dominates colonial studies of Africa. Instead, she illuminates the strange and frightening imaginaries that colonizers and colonized shared on the ground. Bernault looks at Gabon from the late nineteenth century to the present, historicizing the most vivid imaginations and modes of power in Africa today: French obsessions with cannibals, the emergence of vampires and witches in the Gabonese imaginary, and the use of human organs for fetishes. Struggling over objects, bodies, agency, and values, colonizers and colonized entered relations that are better conceptualized as "transactions." Together they also shared an awareness of how the colonial situation broke down moral orders and forced people to use the evil side of power. This foreshadowed the ways in which people exercise agency in contemporary Africa, as well as the proliferation of magical fears and witchcraft anxieties in present-day Gabon. Overturning theories of colonial and postcolonial nativism, this book is essential reading for historians and anthropologists of witchcraft, power, value, and the body.
Africans
Author: John Iliffe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108191088
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 421
Book Description
In a vast and all-embracing study of Africa, from the origins of mankind to the present day, John Iliffe refocuses its history on the peopling of an environmentally hostile continent. Africans have been pioneers struggling against disease and nature, but during the last century their inherited culture has interacted with medical progress to produce the most rapid population growth the world has ever seen. This new edition incorporates genetic and linguistic findings, throwing light on early African history and summarises research that has transformed the study of the Atlantic slave trade. It also examines the consequences of a rapidly growing youthful population, the hopeful but uncertain democratisation and economic recovery of the early twenty-first century, the containment of the AIDS epidemic and the turmoil within Islam that has produced the Arab Spring. Africans: The History of a Continent is thus a single story binding modern men and women to their earliest human ancestors.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108191088
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 421
Book Description
In a vast and all-embracing study of Africa, from the origins of mankind to the present day, John Iliffe refocuses its history on the peopling of an environmentally hostile continent. Africans have been pioneers struggling against disease and nature, but during the last century their inherited culture has interacted with medical progress to produce the most rapid population growth the world has ever seen. This new edition incorporates genetic and linguistic findings, throwing light on early African history and summarises research that has transformed the study of the Atlantic slave trade. It also examines the consequences of a rapidly growing youthful population, the hopeful but uncertain democratisation and economic recovery of the early twenty-first century, the containment of the AIDS epidemic and the turmoil within Islam that has produced the Arab Spring. Africans: The History of a Continent is thus a single story binding modern men and women to their earliest human ancestors.
From Slaving to Neoslavery
Author: I. K. Sundiata
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 9780299145101
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 274
Book Description
Fernando Po, home to the Bantu-speaking Bubi people, has an unusually complex history. Long touted as the "key" to West Africa, it is the largest West African island and the last to enter the world economy. Confronted by both African resistance and ecological barriers, early British and Spanish imperialism foundered there. Not until the late nineteenth century did foreign settlement take hold, abetted by a class of westernized black planters. It was only then that Fernando Po developed a plantation economy dependent on migrant labor, working under conditions similar to slavery. In From Slaving to Neoslavery, Ibrahim K. Sundiata offers a comprehensive history of Fernando Po, explains the continuities between slavery and free contract labor, and challenges standard notions of labor development and progress in various colonial contexts. Sundiata's work is interdisciplinary, considering the influences of the environment, disease, slavery, abolition, and indigenous state formation in determining the interaction of African peoples with colonialism. From Slaving to Neoslavery has manifold implications. Historians usually depict the nineteenth century as the period in which free labor triumphed over slavery, but Sundiata challenges this notion. By examining the history of Fernando Po, he illuminates the larger debate about slavery current among scholars of Africa.
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 9780299145101
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 274
Book Description
Fernando Po, home to the Bantu-speaking Bubi people, has an unusually complex history. Long touted as the "key" to West Africa, it is the largest West African island and the last to enter the world economy. Confronted by both African resistance and ecological barriers, early British and Spanish imperialism foundered there. Not until the late nineteenth century did foreign settlement take hold, abetted by a class of westernized black planters. It was only then that Fernando Po developed a plantation economy dependent on migrant labor, working under conditions similar to slavery. In From Slaving to Neoslavery, Ibrahim K. Sundiata offers a comprehensive history of Fernando Po, explains the continuities between slavery and free contract labor, and challenges standard notions of labor development and progress in various colonial contexts. Sundiata's work is interdisciplinary, considering the influences of the environment, disease, slavery, abolition, and indigenous state formation in determining the interaction of African peoples with colonialism. From Slaving to Neoslavery has manifold implications. Historians usually depict the nineteenth century as the period in which free labor triumphed over slavery, but Sundiata challenges this notion. By examining the history of Fernando Po, he illuminates the larger debate about slavery current among scholars of Africa.
Religion, Colonization and Decolonization in Congo, 1885-1960. Religion, colonisation et décolonisation au Congo, 1885-1960
Author: Vincent Viaene
Publisher: Leuven University Press
ISBN: 9462701423
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 357
Book Description
Religion in today’s Democratic Republic of Congo has many faces: from the overflowing seminaries and Marian shrines of the Catholic Church to the Islamic brotherhoods, from the healers of Kimban-guism to the televangelism of the booming Pentecostalist churches in the great cities, from the Orthodox communities of Kasai to the ‘invisible’ Mai Mai warriors in the brousse of Kivu. During the colonial period religion was no less central to people’s lives than it is today. More surprisingly, behind the seemingly smooth facade of missions linked closely to imperial power, faith and worship were already marked by diversity and dynamism, tying the Congo into broader African and global movements. The contributions in this book provide insight into the multifaceted history of the interaction between religion and colonization. The authors outline the institutional political framework, and focus on the challenge that old and new forms of slavery entailed for the missions. The atrocities committed at the time of the Congo Free State became an existential question for young Christian communities. In the Belgian Congo after 1908, more structural forms of colonial violence remained a key issue marking religious experiences. And yet, religion also acted as a bridge. The authors emphasize the role intermediaries such as catechists or medical assistants played in the African “appropriation” of Christianity. They examine the complex interaction with indigenous religious beliefs and practices, and zoom in on the part religions played in the independence movement, as well as on their reaction to independence itself. Coming at a moment when Belgium confronts its colonial past, this volume provides a timely reassessment of religion as a key factor.
Publisher: Leuven University Press
ISBN: 9462701423
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 357
Book Description
Religion in today’s Democratic Republic of Congo has many faces: from the overflowing seminaries and Marian shrines of the Catholic Church to the Islamic brotherhoods, from the healers of Kimban-guism to the televangelism of the booming Pentecostalist churches in the great cities, from the Orthodox communities of Kasai to the ‘invisible’ Mai Mai warriors in the brousse of Kivu. During the colonial period religion was no less central to people’s lives than it is today. More surprisingly, behind the seemingly smooth facade of missions linked closely to imperial power, faith and worship were already marked by diversity and dynamism, tying the Congo into broader African and global movements. The contributions in this book provide insight into the multifaceted history of the interaction between religion and colonization. The authors outline the institutional political framework, and focus on the challenge that old and new forms of slavery entailed for the missions. The atrocities committed at the time of the Congo Free State became an existential question for young Christian communities. In the Belgian Congo after 1908, more structural forms of colonial violence remained a key issue marking religious experiences. And yet, religion also acted as a bridge. The authors emphasize the role intermediaries such as catechists or medical assistants played in the African “appropriation” of Christianity. They examine the complex interaction with indigenous religious beliefs and practices, and zoom in on the part religions played in the independence movement, as well as on their reaction to independence itself. Coming at a moment when Belgium confronts its colonial past, this volume provides a timely reassessment of religion as a key factor.
Africa and World War II
Author: Judith Ann-Marie Byfield
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110705320X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 565
Book Description
This volume offers a fresh perspective on Africa's central role in the Allied victory in World War II. Its detailed case studies, from all parts of Africa, enable us to understand how African communities sustained the Allied war effort and how they were transformed in the process. Together, the chapters provide a continent-wide perspective.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110705320X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 565
Book Description
This volume offers a fresh perspective on Africa's central role in the Allied victory in World War II. Its detailed case studies, from all parts of Africa, enable us to understand how African communities sustained the Allied war effort and how they were transformed in the process. Together, the chapters provide a continent-wide perspective.