Showing papers in "The Journal of African History in 2015"
TL;DR: The idea of dividing the Sahara is based on historical political divisions and locally developed notions of race and religion, brought about by trade and justified in Islamic religious discourse as mentioned in this paper. But these formulations were, and still are, based in both physical and discursive realities that have been developed in Africa itself.
Abstract: This article addresses how scholarship has formulated human connections and ruptures over the Sahara. However, these formulations were, and still are, based in both physical and discursive realities that have been developed in Africa itself. The idea of a dividing Sahara is based on historical political divisions – despite a homogenous political culture in the region – and by locally developed notions of race and religion, brought about by trade and justified in Islamic religious discourse. The Saharan divide acquired a new reading in colonial historiography, which, in turn, informed scholarly work until well into the 1960s. I will suggest that both colonial and postcolonial research on the differences and connections between the Saharan shores are suffering from a civilisational bias towards North Africa.
37 citations
TL;DR: This article examined Saharan history with a particular view towards understanding how and why historians have long represented the continent as being composed of two "Africas" and traced the epistemological creation of a racial and geographic divide.
Abstract: Based on a broad assessment of the scholarship on North-Western Africa, this article examines Saharan historiography with a particular view towards understanding how and why historians have long represented the continent as being composed of two ‘Africas’. Starting with the earliest Arabic writings, and, much later, French colonial renderings, it traces the epistemological creation of a racial and geographic divide. Then, the article considers the field of African studies in North African universities and ends with a review of recent multidisciplinary research that embraces a trans-Saharan approach.
30 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that debates about cultural heritage and demands for cultural restitution became important aspects of Congolese interpretations of decolonization, and argue that they played an important role in the national and international politics that were central to the construction of the cultural sovereignty of the postcolonial Zairian state.
Abstract: This article argues for a thematic and periodization shift in the approach to the history of Congo's decolonization. It demonstrates how debates about cultural heritage and demands for cultural restitution became important aspects of Congolese interpretations of decolonization, and argues that they played an important role in the national and international politics that were central to the construction of the cultural sovereignty of the postcolonial Zairian state.
30 citations
TL;DR: The authors analyzes the production of colonial propaganda and its reception by Africans during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya, revealing how its themes and strategies changed over the course of the 1950s.
Abstract: Despite the recent proliferation of scholarship on the Mau Mau rebellion, little attention has been paid to the ‘propaganda war’ it generated. The absence is especially striking given the importance that both the British and Mau Mau fighters attached to success in the battle for the ‘hearts and minds’ of Kenya's African population. This article analyzes the production of colonial propaganda – and its reception by Africans – in the ‘Emergency’, revealing how its themes and strategies changed over the course of the 1950s. Despite vast resources pumped into this effort, both African and British testimonies reveal that this propaganda had only limited success until government forces gained the upper hand in the military war against Mau Mau in late 1954. After that point, the increased level of control in Central Province enabled officials to finally best the efforts of skilled Mau Mau propagandists.
27 citations
TL;DR: The etymology of 'Lucumi' and 'Terranova' used to describe Yoruba-speaking people during the Atlantic slave trade helps to reconceptualize the origins of a Yoruba nation.
Abstract: The etymology of ‘Lucumi’ and ‘Terranova’, ethnonyms used to describe Yoruba-speaking people during the Atlantic slave trade, helps to reconceptualize the origins of a Yoruba nation. While there is general agreement that ‘Lucumi’ refers to the Yoruba in diaspora, the origin of the term remains unclear. We argue ‘Lucumi’ was first used in the Benin kingdom as early as the fifteenth century, as revealed through the presence of Olukumi communities involved in chalk production. The Benin and Portuguese slave trade extended the use of ‘Lucumi’ to the Americas. As this trade deteriorated by 1550, ‘Terranova’ referred to slaves captured west of Benin's area of influence, hence ‘new land’. By the eighteenth century, ‘Nago’ had replaced ‘Lucumi’, while the ‘Slave Coast’ had substituted ‘Terranova’ as terms of reference. This etymology confirms the collective identification of ‘Yoruba’ and helps trace the evolution of a transnational identity.
21 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present new estimates of the Khoesan population of the Cape Colony by combining household-level settler data with anecdotal accounts of Khoean labour.
Abstract: Because information about the livelihoods of indigenous groups in Africa is often missing from colonial records, the presence of such people usually escapes attention in quantitative estimates of colonial economic activity. This is nowhere more apparent than in the eighteenth-century Dutch Cape Colony, where the role of the Khoesan in Cape production, despite being frequently acknowledged, has been almost completely ignored in quantitative investigations. Combining household-level settler data with anecdotal accounts of Khoesan labour, this article presents new estimates of the Khoesan population of the Cape Colony. Our results show that the Khoesan did not leave the area as a consequence of settler expansion. On the contrary, the number of Khoesan employed by the settlers increased over time, as the growth of settler farming followed a pattern of primitive accumulation and drove the Khoesan to abandon their pastoral lifestyle to become farm labourers.We show that, in failing to include the Khoisan population, previous estimates have overestimated slave productivity, social inequality, and the level of gross domestic product in the Cape Colony. (Less)
20 citations
TL;DR: In 2010, the Kenyan government annulled national census results due to concerns that Somalis in the country had been over-counted as discussed by the authors, which held important implications for the distribution of political power.
Abstract: In 2010, the Kenyan government annulled national census results due to concerns that Somalis in the country had been over-counted. This article traces the genesis of this recent demographic dispute, which held important implications for the distribution of political power. It shows that African leaders inherited long-standing practices laid down by the colonial state, which was unable to obtain a reliable count of the number of people in Kenya or render its Somali subjects into a countable, traceable population. In regions where expansive Somali networks had long predated British rule, colonial authorities only loosely enforced the concept of a permanent population. By yielding to this reality, colonial officials developed governance techniques that should not be mistakenly portrayed as state ‘failures’. These policies call into question the applicability of James C. Scott's concept of ‘legibility’ to Kenya. They also suggest that recent demographic controversies cannot be reductively blamed on ‘illegal’ immigration.
20 citations
TL;DR: The Sharpeville emergency of 1960 was a key turning point for modern South African history as discussed by the authors, which persuaded the liberation movements that there was no point in civil rights-style activism and served as the catalyst for the formation of the African National Congress's armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe.
Abstract: In many accounts, the Sharpeville emergency of 1960 was a key ‘turning point’ for modern South African history. It persuaded the liberation movements that there was no point in civil rights-style activism and served as the catalyst for the formation of the African National Congress's armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe. From the South African government's perspective, the events at Sharpeville made it imperative to crush black resistance so that whites could defend themselves against communist-inspired revolutionary agitation. African and Afrikaner nationalist accounts are thus mutually invested in the idea that, after Sharpeville, there was no alternative. This article challenges such assumptions. By bringing together new research on African and Afrikaner nationalism during this period, and placing them in the same frame of analysis, it draws attention to important political dynamics and possibilities that have for too long been overlooked.
18 citations
TL;DR: This paper argued that international aid to Rwandan refugees in Ngara district during decolonization unfolded as part of a broader project of nation-state formation and regulation, one that deeply affected local narratives of community and belonging.
Abstract: This article argues that international aid to Rwandan refugees in Ngara district during decolonization unfolded as part of a broader project of nation-state formation and regulation – one that deeply affected local narratives of community and belonging. While there is an extensive scholarship on decolonization and nationalism, we know less about the history of the nation-state as a refugee-generating project, and the role of international aid agencies therein. The history of Rwandan refugees in Ngara district, Tanzania, reveals the constitutive relationship between nation-building and refugee experiences, illustrating that during decolonization local political imaginations congealed around internationally-reified categorizations of the ‘refugee’ and the ‘citizen’.
15 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the relationship between the rural squatters who resisted the project and the political elites who intervened, particularly President Kenyatta, and show that these two groups not only negotiated the reformulation of a major international development program, but also worked out broader questions about political authority and political culture.
Abstract: This article examines squatter resistance to a World Bank-funded forest and paper factory project. The article illustrates how diverse actors came together at the sites of rural development projects in early postcolonial Kenya. It focuses on the relationship between the rural squatters who resisted the project and the political elites who intervened, particularly President Kenyatta. Together, these two groups not only negotiated the reformulation of a major international development program, but they also worked out broader questions about political authority and political culture. In negotiating development, rural actors and political elites decided how resources would be distributed and they entered into new patronage-based relationships, processes integral to the making of the postcolonial political order.
15 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors identify the wage-burden faced by European settler farmers by measuring wage shares (total amount paid in the form of wages as a share of total profits) on European farms in colonial Africa.
Abstract: The historical role of European farming in southern and central Africa has received a great deal of attention among scholars over the years. Going through this vast literature, a striking consensus emerges: the success or failure of European farming in southern Africa was to a large extent dependent upon the colonisers’ access to and control over cheap labour, which they in turn could only access through strong support of the colonial state. Yet, these propositions have so far never been systematically and empirically tested. This paper is a first attempt to do that by analysing the ‘wage-burden’ European settler farmers faced. The wage-burden is identified by measuring wage shares (total amount paid in the form of wages as a share of total profits) on European farms in colonial Africa. Based on archival documents, we construct time-series for value of output, transportation costs, investments in agriculture, and wages paid for the European tobacco and tea sector in colonial Malawi. Our results contradict both with previous research on settler colonialism in Africa and the historiography of Nyasaland. Our estimates show that settler farming did not collapse in the 1930s as commonly assumed. On the contrary, the value of production on both tobacco and tea farms increased significantly. And so did the settler farmers capacity to capture the profits, manifesting itself by a declining wage share over time. In contrast with previous research we argue that the developments cannot be explained by domestic colonial policies but rather through changes in regional migration patterns, and global commodity markets. Migrations patterns had a significant impact on the supply of farm labour and global commodity markets influenced value of production. Market forces rather than colonial policies shaped the development trajectory of settler farming in Nyasaland. (Less)
TL;DR: This article argued that the demand to represent "the south" did not come solely from the people who lived in the southern provinces: southern politics was heavily extraverted, pulled by the interests and prejudices of northern Sudanese, Egyptians, Britons, and others.
Abstract: Southern Sudanese politicians of the 1950s and 1960s have been criticized for a rivalrous, divisive politics, which left the south disunited and vulnerable. While acknowledging that these men were a tiny, squabbling group, remote from those they sought to represent, this article suggests that they faced an impossible task. The demand to represent ‘the south’ did not come solely, or even largely, from the people who lived in the southern provinces: southern politics was heavily extraverted, pulled by the interests and prejudices of northern Sudanese, Egyptians, Britons, and others. Like other African nationalists of the time, southern Sudanese politicians struggled to weave together different levels of moral community, from the very local to the imagined nation. Yet they did so in uniquely unfavourable circumstances: subject to constant harassment and occasionally lethal violence, unable to secure political compromise, and without patronage resources. Representing the south gave these men space to talk about the increasingly desperate circumstances of those who lived in Sudan's southern provinces; but it gave them almost no space at all to negotiate a civic culture of southern politics.
TL;DR: The authors argue that the South African government's outreach was intended to energise a top-down recalibration of the ideology of Afrikaner nationalism, as the regime endeavoured to detach its apartheid programme from notions of colonialist racial supremacy, and instead reach across the colour line and lay an equal claim to the power and protection of African nationalism.
Abstract: Between 1968 and 1975, the leaders of white South Africa reached out to independent African leaders. Scholars have alternately seen these counterintuitive campaigns as driven by a quest for regional economic hegemony, divide-and-rule realpolitik, or a desire to ingratiate the regime with the West. This article instead argues that the South African government's outreach was intended to energise a top-down recalibration of the ideology of Afrikaner nationalism, as the regime endeavoured to detach its apartheid programme from notions of colonialist racial supremacy, and instead reach across the colour line and lay an equal claim to the power and protection of African nationalism. These diplomatic manoeuvrings, therefore, serve as a prism through which to understand important shifts in state identity, ideological renewal, and the adoption of new state-building models.
TL;DR: The authors examines the causes and consequences of failed British and Saudi efforts to channel, regulate, and control the trans-Sahelian flow of pilgrims and enforce a regime of mobility along the Sahel and across the Red Sea.
Abstract: West African participation in the pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj) grew considerably throughout the first half of the twentieth century. This article examines the causes and consequences of failed British and Saudi efforts to channel, regulate, and control the trans-Sahelian flow of pilgrims and enforce a regime of mobility along the Sahel and across the Red Sea. Focusing specifically on Red Sea ‘illicit’ passages, the study recovers the rampant and often harrowing crossings of dozens of thousands of West African pilgrims from the Eritrean to the Arabian coasts. It examines multiple factors that drove the circumvention of channeling and control measures and inscribes the experiences of West African historical actors on multiple historiographic fields that are seldom organically tied to West Africa: Northeast African regional history, the colonial history of Italian Eritrea, and the Red Sea as a maritime space connecting Africa with Arabia.
TL;DR: The history of the Nazaretha Church in Mtunzini, South Africa in the early 20th century sheds light on conditions that allowed chiefs and women to find common ground as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In a historiography that paints relations between chiefs and women as antagonistic, the history of the Nazaretha Church in Mtunzini, South Africa in the early twentieth century sheds light on conditions that allowed chiefs and women to find common ground. During the era of segregation, Mtunzini was, on one hand, subject to relatively less interference from white government officials, but, on the other, ravaged by social and economic change. In this context, the Nazaretha Church flourished thanks to the support of many chiefs and women. The religious community not only proposed new answers to related questions about health, healing, and morality, but it also afforded chiefs and women important social options amid rural decline and challenges to traditional authority.
TL;DR: A detailed examination of the incidents of head-taking in the colonial conflicts against the Xhosa indicates the practice evolved over time, had several causes, and became an increasingly common part of the construction and re-enforcement of a racial identity and culture of domination by British and colonial soldiers.
Abstract: The emergence of scientific racism and the taking of heads and skulls in the nineteenth-century colonial wars in Southern Africa have received limited attention from historians. Closer examination of head-taking in colonial wars fought in the western parts of Xhosaland and the Cape Colony suggests that the rise of scientific racism alone does not explain the complex interplay between military discourse on Africans, atrocities committed, and commonplace racial attitudes. A detailed examination of the incidents of head-taking in the colonial conflicts against the Xhosa indicates the practice evolved over time, had several causes, and became an increasingly common part of the construction and re-enforcement of a racial identity and culture of domination by British and colonial soldiers. It also suggests that for the Xhosa, the taking of heads was a behaviour acquired from the British.
TL;DR: The authors examines the activism of militant Catholic African students in France in the 1950s, who undertook a strident campaign to convince French Catholics and the Church hierarchy of the necessity of decolonization, trying to change the Church from the inside.
Abstract: This article examines the activism of militant Catholic African students in France in the 1950s. Largely left out of the historiography of the period, they developed a unique perspective on Africa's future, informed by their dual (and often fraught) identity as Africans and Catholics. They undertook a strident campaign to convince French Catholics and the Church hierarchy of the necessity of decolonization, trying to change the Church from the inside.
TL;DR: The history of public flogging in Namibia throughout the twentieth century is investigated in this article, where the authors argue that because the South African colonial state never withdrew the power to punish from the region's traditional authorities, these indigenous leaders were able to maintain a degree of legitimacy among their subjects who looked to the kings and headmen to punish wrongdoers and maintain communal norms.
Abstract: Based on both archival research and oral interviews conducted in northern Namibia, this article traces the history of public flogging in Ovamboland throughout the twentieth century. In contrast to recent scholarship that views corporal punishment in modern Africa mainly through the lens of colonial governance, the article argues that because the South African colonial state never withdrew the power to punish from the region's traditional authorities, these indigenous leaders were able to maintain a degree of legitimacy among their subjects, who looked to the kings and headmen to punish wrongdoers and maintain communal norms. Finally, the article explores why nostalgia for corporal punishment remains a salient feature in Namibian society today, 25 years after the end of colonial rule.
TL;DR: In this article, the fraught history of officials' innovative uses of wildlife in socialist Tanzania, as they pursued both international and domestic agendas with the country's wild fauna, is examined.
Abstract: This article examines the fraught history of officials' innovative uses of wildlife in socialist Tanzania, as they pursued both international and domestic agendas with the country's wild fauna. Internationally, officials sought to enhance Tanzania's reputation and gain foreign support through its conservation policies and diplomatic use of wild animals. Domestically, officials recognized the utility of wildlife for a number of nation-building agendas, ranging from national identity to economic development. However, internal contradictions riddled the wildlife economy, creating difficulty for government officials and party leaders when balancing socialist commitments with an effective, market-driven industry.
TL;DR: This paper focused on the transcript involving the testimonies of three young, unfree girls transacted in 1930 and redeemed through a district court of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast in 1941.
Abstract: Scholars of children and migration have recently turned their attention to how children mediate home and belonging, especially through contradictory or challenging circumstances. For unfree children in Africa, challenging circumstances of sale or debt-bondage pose particular difficulties. Despite what historians of slavery have noted of their adaptability for survival, questions remain about how the unfree child constructs self, home, and belonging when transferred over long distances, and when age and size precludes running away as a strategy for survival or return. This article focuses on the transcript involving the testimonies of three young, unfree girls transacted in 1930 and redeemed through a district court of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast in 1941. Though their testimonies are provided within the arena of a male, colonial district court, Atawa, Kibadu, and Abnofo reveal how their treatment, duration of bondage, and geographical and cultural distance shaped their constructions of self, home, and belonging.
TL;DR: State at Work as mentioned in this paper is a collection of case studies from the field of public administration, public policy, and development studies with a focus on the contemporary state bureaucracy in the African continent.
Abstract: show that the African bureaucrat is not captured through the caricature of rent-seeking alone; in aggregate and often individually, bureaucrats combine self-interest with principled commitments, a sense of moral obligation to the state, and an esprit de corps with fellow officials. Beyond theoretical and empirical achievements, States at Work has a noteworthy structural accomplishment. For an edited volume, the disparate case studies – each deeply grounded in particular subjects and context – are integrated into an impressive whole. The book coheres without observable constraints on individual analyses by offering useful conceptual frames and theoretical common ground, and then allowing individual cases to speak to overarching themes. Crucially, the volume’s coherence amid empirical diversity is not only a testament to editorial organization: it also constitutes valuable evidence that the understandings and approaches of these authors resonate across locales. This should encourage Africanists in building a grounded theory of the contemporary state bureaucracy, even as the authors would insist on caution about ‘generalizability’. Any concerns about the book pale in comparison to the contributions. One might quibble that the book’s final section (‘Bureaucracies at Work’) could benefit from more thorough framing around the concept of reform and its limitations, since these issues are prevalent in the section. Similarly, a masterful synthesis chapter by Bierschenk is situated at the end of one section when its breadth really spans the book, much like Olivier de Sardan’s powerhouse concluding chapter. But such questions are mere trivialities and do not detract from the strength of individual or collective contributions. This book will remind many readers of the pleasures of being an Africanist. The authors are anthropologists, historians, sociologists, and scholars of public administration, public policy, anddevelopment studies.And the result is avolumeof significanceacrossall of thesedisciplinary boundaries and equally so to political scientists, economists, and others. As our understanding of African states evolves away from its monolithic neopatrimonialism, we will do well to interrogate the balance between theoretical commonalities and specificities of local context. In that vein, these editors and authors have illuminated where we are and where we may be going. J . TYLER D ICKOVICK Washington and Lee University