Showing papers in "The Journal of African History in 2019"
TL;DR: In this article, European and Katangese mercenaries revolted against the rule of Mobutu Sese Seko in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and the International Committee of the Red Cross intervened to try to have the rebels peacefully leave the DRC.
Abstract: In 1967, European and Katangese mercenaries revolted against the rule of Mobutu Sese Seko in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) intervened to try to have the rebels peacefully leave the DRC. Katangese troops who fled to Rwanda with white mercenaries were forced by the Organization of African Unity and the Rwandan government to return to the DRC, where they were eventually executed. White mercenaries, under the protection of the ICRC and Rwanda, ultimately escaped Mobutu's wrath. Congolese and Rwandan leaders skillfully employed the ideal of African sovereignty and humanitarian rhetoric with its Western and African allies to ensure their consolidation of power.
19 citations
TL;DR: The authors reconstructs the trajectory of the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute (KNII) to shed light on the politics of socialist education in 1960s Ghana and analyses the individual motivations and experiences of a sample of foreign lecturers, suggesting that ideological institutes offer insights into the processes by which official ideologies were created and disseminated, a foil through which to interrogate the usages and appropriation of social sciences education, and a window onto the multiple ways in which local and foreign agents negotiated their identities and political participation in African socialist experiments.
Abstract: This article reconstructs the trajectory of the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute (KNII) to shed light on the politics of socialist education in 1960s Ghana. On the basis of archival evidence, it explores the changing role of the institute in the making of Nkrumahism as public discourse and documents the evolving relationship between the universalism of Marxism-Leninism and the quest for more local political iconographies centred on Nkrumah's life and work. Secondly, the article analyses the individual motivations and experiences of a sample of foreign lecturers. The article suggests that ideological institutes offer insights into the processes by which official ideologies were created and disseminated, a foil through which to interrogate the usages and appropriation of social sciences education, and a window onto the multiple ways in which local and foreign agents negotiated their identities and political participation in African socialist experiments.
11 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors track the historical processes that shaped human waste management practices in Majunga, Madagascar from the city's founding in the mid-eighteenth century to contemporary times.
Abstract: This article tracks the historical processes that shaped human waste management practices in Majunga, Madagascar from the city's founding in the mid-eighteenth century to contemporary times. Moving beyond colonial urban histories of sanitation, this article charts the meanings, strategies, and work practices Majunga residents employed to deal with predicaments of waste in everyday life. I argue that the particular material configuration of the colonial sanitation infrastructure in Majunga required new forms of labor — especially maintenance work — which city dwellers evaluated through existing moral norms. With the construction of French colonial sanitation infrastructures and the new labor regimes they necessitated, waste management became a key vector through which notions of difference were negotiated over the early- to mid-twentieth century. Shifting emphasis away from colonial infrastructure as disparity and onto moments of reception can contribute fresh insights not only on the histories of African cities, but also to histories of technology in the Global South.
9 citations
TL;DR: This article analyzed various cases of captivity in a region comprised within modern-day South Africa and Lesotho in the late precolonial period, focusing on a single social institution, bohlanka.
Abstract: The article analyses various cases of captivity in a region comprised within modern-day South Africa and Lesotho in the late precolonial period. Focusing on a single social institution, bohlanka, the article follows its traces scattered among the Batlhaping, the Basotho, the Barolong, the Bataung, and other smaller precolonial communities. Generally considered by scholars as a form of clientship based on cattle-loans, bohlanka is here redefined as originating from warfare and captivity, and later expanding to include the destitute. The fundamental elements of the institution — violence, natal alienation, and suspended death — lead to the conclusion that bohlanka constituted a local form of slavery that pre-dated colonial influences.
7 citations
TL;DR: The authors examined the role of trade unions and of the Kebele administration in the making of the red terror, a period of unprecedented political violence that closely followed upon the Ethiopian revolution of 1974.
Abstract: This article examines the role of trade unions and of the Kebele - the most local urban
administrative structures of the Ethiopian state - in the making of the red terror, a period of
unprecedented political violence that closely followed upon the Ethiopian revolution of 1974.
Drawing on a broad range of new source materials - from labour union files to oral histories
and East German State Security archives - the article shows how the red terror was in large
part the product of synergies between diverse groups and actors within these structures, and
how it was rooted in histories, motives and collaborations that have scarcely featured in the
historiography of revolutionary Ethiopia. In turn, the red terror radically reshaped both trade
unions and Kebele administrations, affording Ethiopian state actors unprecedented means of
control over civil society and over urban residents.
6 citations
6 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explain the changing composition and magnitude of one such uncontrolled migration flow, from Ruanda-Urundi to Buganda, using analytical concepts from economic history and migration theory.
Abstract: Migration was a crucial component of the spatially uneven formation of labour markets and export-oriented economies in colonial Africa. Much of this mobility was initiated by migrants themselves rather than by colonial authorities. Building on analytical concepts from economic history and migration theory, this study explains the changing composition and magnitude of one such uncontrolled migration flow, from Ruanda-Urundi to Buganda. Migrants’ mobility choices – when to migrate, for how long, and with whom – proved highly responsive to shifting economic opportunity structures on the sending and receiving ends. Initially, large differences in terms of land and labour endowments, socio-economic structures, and colonial interventions, combined with substantial scope for price arbitrage, created large spatial inequalities of opportunity and strong incentives for circular male labour migration. Over time, however, migration contracted as opportunities in Ruanda-Urundi and Uganda converged, not in the least as a result of large-scale mobility itself.
6 citations
TL;DR: In Mozambique, a network of reeducation centers was used to mentally decolonize wayward members of urban society and putative enemies of the socialist revolution as mentioned in this paper, which became a dumping ground for unwanted citizens accused of all kinds of wrongdoing.
Abstract: Throughout the socialist experiment between 1974 and 1992, the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) ran a network of internment camps officially known as reeducation centers. Established in remote rural sites to mentally decolonize wayward members of urban society and putative enemies of the socialist revolution, the camps became a dumping ground for unwanted citizens accused of all kinds of wrongdoing. Although the Frelimo leaders envisioned a pedagogical institution that would undo the damage of colonialism by transforming reeducatees into new social beings, the gap between the idea of rehabilitation and the reality of detention was abysmally wide. Austerity – the order of the day throughout the fifteen years of socialist experiment in Mozambique – conditioned and defined the organic functioning of reeducation camps. Unlike internment camps elsewhere, Mozambique's camps were not strictly regimented. The carceral regime that emerged not only set Mozambique's reeducation centers apart from camps elsewhere, they were also far from the technocratic moralism and panoptic ambitions of the ruling party.
5 citations
TL;DR: The authors studied Islam in East Africa's precolonial interior and found that new converts were observable through the act of circumcision, dietary restrictions, abidance by some of Islam's core tenets, and the adoption and adaptation of certain phenomena from east Africa's Indian Ocean coast and islands.
Abstract: Most histories of East Africa's precolonial interior only give cursory attention to Islam, especially in histories of present-day west-central Tanzania and the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Most converts to Islam in this context are usually viewed as ‘nominal’ Muslims. This article, by contrast, builds on recent scholarship on other regions and time periods that questions the conceptual validity of the ‘nominal’ Muslim. New converts necessarily questioned their social relationships, ways of living, and ritual practices through the act of conversion. On the shores of Lake Tanganyika, new converts were observable through the act of circumcision, dietary restrictions, abidance by some of Islam's core tenets, and the adoption and adaptation of certain phenomena from East Africa's Indian Ocean coast and islands. Interior populations’ conversion to Islam was bound up with broader coast-interior material, cultural, and religious exchanges.
5 citations
4 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a compelling new history of the emergence of international aid and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the governance of countries that comprise the Sahelian region of West Africa is presented.
Abstract: Gregory Mann has written a compelling new history of the emergence of international aid and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the governance of countries that comprise the Sahelian region ofWest Africa. Rather than see the origins of these ubiquitous features of much of contemporary sub-Saharan Africa in the neoliberal turn brought about by debt and structural adjustment in the s, Mann recasts the story both chronologically and ideologically, by locating it in an earlier time period and to left-leaning politics. Using Mali as the principle focus, Mann suggests that Sahelian anticolonial political movements and post colonial states were far from weak, ‘neocolonial’ regimes incapable or unwilling to make a break with France. In the case ofMali, the political party that broughtMali to independence in , l’Union soudanaise-Rassemblement démocratique africain (US-RDA), embarked on a quite radical and aggressive program of transforming Malian society in order to make way for a hoped-for rural democracy, and in establishing its independence from France by closing all French military bases on its territory and creating a Malian currency. While it is not quite right to call these projects failures, for, as Mann shows, they continue to animate intellectual and political life in the region even today, they did not achieve their aims. When the region was hit by drought in , the Malian military regime of Moussa Traoré that had overthrown the regime of Modibo Keita in was not able to meet the needs of people in the most affected regions. This provided an opening for international aid organizations who attempted to offer relief to famine victims. Some
TL;DR: This article explored the contributions of formerly enslaved children at the turn of the twentieth century, exploring their contributions to discourses about childhood, labor, and stigma in Senegal's colonial towns, and argued that while many liberated minors seemed to accept their circumstances, others complained, disobeyed, or ran away, thereby challenging lingering stigmas and highlighting ways the state fell short of the anti-slavery and humane ideals touted by some officials.
Abstract: This article focuses on formerly enslaved children at the turn of the twentieth century, exploring their contributions to discourses about childhood, labor, and stigma in Senegal's colonial towns. Drawing on records for over 1,600 so-called ‘liberated minors’, children who entered state guardianship after official recognition of their liberation from slavery, and on a variety of other sources, the article investigates both broad trends and individual experiences of work, mistreatment, conflict, and — sometimes — defiance. I argue that while many liberated minors seemed to accept their circumstances, others complained, disobeyed, or ran away, thereby challenging lingering stigmas and highlighting ways the state fell short of the anti-slavery and humane ideals touted by some officials. Attentive, insofar as records allow, to the actions and perspectives of liberated minors, the article contributes to the growing literature on the history of children and youth in Africa and to scholarship on post-emancipation societies.
TL;DR: In this article, a local history of the Anya-nya rebellion in South Sudan is explored with greater nuance, and the authors show how these parties built upon experiences from imperial conquest and colonial rule when entrenching violent wartime practices such as mass displacement and encampment, raising of local militias and intelligence networks.
Abstract: In 1963, unrest in Sudan's three southern provinces (today's South Sudan) escalated into a civil war between the government and the Anya-Nya rebellion. The subsequent eight years of violence has hitherto largely escaped scrutiny from academic researchers and has remained a subject of popular imagination and politicised narratives. This article demonstrates how this history can be explored with greater nuance, thereby establishing a local history of a postcolonial civil war. Focusing on the garrison town of Torit, our research reveals a localised and personalised rebellion, made up of a constellation of parochial armed groups. This new history also demonstrates how these parties built upon experiences from imperial conquest and colonial rule when entrenching violent wartime practices such as mass displacement and encampment, the raising of local militias and intelligence networks, and the deliberate starvation of civilians — all common methods in subsequent wars.
TL;DR: A History of Borno is a useful text for anyone attempting to gain a deep historical understanding of an ancient state that has been able to remain resilient through intense modern change as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: empire were represented as an extension of British greatness. This imagined and longcultivated history has led those who have claimed Borno affiliation to maintain a sense of exceptionalism vis-à-vis their neighbors. In the context of post-independence Nigeria, where an intense federalism continues to fuel state fragmentation, Borno remains relatively intact. Hiribarren argues in Chapter Eight that it is the culture of exceptionalism that allows the patronage networks to remain stable, even after Borno became peripheral within the Nigerian state, especially in economic terms. Political parties continue to curry favor with the Bornu’s historic ruling elite in order to maintain a sense of political coherence in the North. However, Boko Haram threatens to destabilize this region. How well will the current Nigerian state and the Kanuri ethnic communities of Bornu be able to maintain the integrity of this imagined community over the coming century? It remains to be seen. A History of Borno is a useful text for anyone attempting to gain a deep historical understanding of an ancient state that has been able to remain resilient through intense modern change.
TL;DR: The reference to a colonial past was an important instrument and point of debate in Dahomey during the period of autonomy and the first years of independence as discussed by the authors, and it was used by a new group of politicians to accuse trade union leaders to make unrealistic claims; local peasants mobilized it as their point of reference against infrastructure projects; officials discussed it to make sense of tax refusals, while locals invoked older forms of tax resistance they had practiced under colonial rule.
Abstract: In Dahomey (Benin) during the period of autonomy and the first years of independence, the reference to a colonial past was an important instrument and point of debate. Members of a new group of politicians used it to accuse trade union leaders to make unrealistic claims; local peasants mobilized it as their point of reference against infrastructure projects; officials discussed it to make sense of tax refusals, while locals invoked older forms of tax resistance they had practiced under colonial rule. This article follows the different relationships with the colonial past, through the regions of Abomey and Porto-Novo, and shows how these experiences were viewed by local residents and by nationalist leaders, such as Justin Ahomadegbe. It also serves as an example and an injunction to make use of the administrative postcolonial archive.
TL;DR: The authors developed a new methodology to understand the making of the "nations" of 290 Africans found on the slave ship Jovem Maria, which boarded slaves in the Congo river and was captured by the Brazilian Navy near Rio de Janeiro in 1850.
Abstract: Between 1845 and 1850, the Congo coast became the most important source of slaves for the coffee growing areas in the Brazilian Empire. This essay develops a new methodology to understand the making of the ‘nations’ of 290 Africans found on the slave ship Jovem Maria, which boarded slaves in the Congo river and was captured by the Brazilian Navy near Rio de Janeiro in 1850. A close reading of such ‘nations’ reveals a complex overlapping between languages and forms of identification that alters the historian's use of concepts such as ‘ethnolinguistic group’ and ‘Bantu-based lingua franca’ in the Atlantic world. Building on recent developments in Central African linguistics, the article develops a social history of African languages in the Atlantic that foregrounds how recaptives negotiated commonalities and boundaries in the diaspora by drawing on a political vocabulary indigenous to their nineteenth-century homes in Central Africa.
TL;DR: The authors assesses the agricultural sector under the government of Kwame Nkrumah as a dynamic Cold War front, and brings to light the ways that Ghanaians in rural areas engaged with and interpreted the increasingly interventionist agriculture projects and policies of Kwabena-Nrumah's government.
Abstract: This study assesses the agricultural sector under the government of Kwame Nkrumah as a dynamic Cold War front. After Ghana's independence in 1957, Nkrumah asserted that the new nation would guard its sovereignty from foreign influence, while recognizing that it needed foreign cooperation and investment. His government embarked upon a development program with an emphasis on diversifying Ghana's agriculture to decrease her dependence on cocoa. Meanwhile, both the United States and the Soviet Union sought to establish footholds in Ghana through agricultural aid, trade, and investments. In the first years of independence, the Ghanaian state encouraged smallholder farming and American investment. Later, in a sudden change of policy, the government established large-scale state farms along the socialist model. This article brings to light the ways that Ghanaians in rural areas engaged with and interpreted the increasingly interventionist agriculture projects and policies of Nkrumah's government.
TL;DR: The life of Ayuba Sulayman Diallo (also known as Job ben Solomon) receives a fresh examination in this article, based primarily on his own writings as mentioned in this paper, which reveals new information about his life history; his relationships with the elites in both Bundu and London; his scholarly abilities; and the history of Bundu itself.
Abstract: The life of Ayuba Sulayman Diallo (also known as Job ben Solomon) receives a fresh examination in this article, based primarily on his own writings. The son of an Imam from Bundu in Senegambia, Diallo was enslaved in 1731 and transported to America. He survived to gain his freedom, make his mark in London society, and return to Africa in 1734. This article offers an analysis of documents from the British Library, including items that have not been previously analysed and are here translated into English for the first time. In addition, they bring together what is known of his archive, including the letters he wrote before, during, and after his time in London, the Qur'ans he scribed there, and the scraps and snippets created as he discussed the Arabic language with friends.A close analysis of Diallo's writings reveals new information about his life history; his relationships with the elites in both Bundu and London; his scholarly abilities; and the history of Bundu itself. Diallo used the technology of writing to direct the course of his own life and career, converting a disastrous course of events into favourable opportunities for himself.
Journal Article•
TL;DR: In this article, the adoption and termination of the Programme d'Education Televisuelle (PETV) in Cote d'Ivoire is discussed. And the authors argue for the centrality of formal schooling to the history of development.
Abstract: Cote d'Ivoire's Programme d'Education Televisuelle (PETV) was one of postcolonial Africa's most innovative educational reforms. And yet, PETV was implemented by a country exemplary for its educational conservatism. This apparent paradox is explained by the Ivorian state's developmentalist vision had crowned education its ‘priority of priorities‘. By charting the adoption and termination of PETV, this article argues for the centrality of formal schooling to the history of development.
TL;DR: The Sunjata epic of Manden as discussed by the authors was originally published as a novelette in French colonial accounts by the end of the nineteenth century, and it was not until the early 1970s that it became widely available outside of West Africa.
Abstract: Fragments of the Mande narrative featuring Sunjata Keita, the founder of the Mali empire, began appearing in French colonial accounts by the end of the nineteenth century. But it was not until the s that the ‘Epic of Manden’, as it came to be known, circulated widely outside of West Africa. Djibril Tamsir Niane framed and published the epic, based on an oral narrative that he collected in Guinea-Conakry, as a novelette geared for a popular audience. He titled it Soundiata after the central character. In the decades that followed, other variants became available, mostly formatted to reflect some level of Mande oral performance values. All of the legendary figures in the epic carrying the names of present-day Mande people are regarded by the latter as ancestors, and as other variants appeared, the roll call of forebears lengthened with the emergence of characters not mentioned in the earlier Niane version. In the collective discourse of bards from across the Mande landscape, new episodes also emerged, enlarging the overall epic narrative that was by then firmly established as ‘The Sunjata epic’, with a score of different spellings for the name of the central hero and variant names for many of the supporting cast. As generations of griots (jeliw) from various bardic lineages conveyed details from alternative reservoirs of traditional knowledge, the composite identities of several ancestral characters became increasingly complex, and they emerge as major, multi-dimensional players. The hero’s mother Sogolon Condé develops from the vulnerable bride of Niane’s story to a formidable sorceress and matriarch. Kamissa of Dô ‘the Buffalo Woman’, goes from murderous shape-shifter to nurturing guide who helps unlock the doors to Mali’s future greatness. Sogolon, Kamissa, Sumanguru’s sister Kosiya, and other heroines emerge as classic paradigms of Mande power women (musofadiw). Fakoli Koroma, ridiculed as a dwarf and cuckolded by his uncle in Niane’s account, is at the nexus of crucial events and alliances in other versions; he is lauded as a great general, ancestor of blacksmith clans and sorcerers, and — with a father from Manden and a mother from Soso — as a link between opposing sides. As for Sumanguru the Soso king and Sundiata’s nemesis, he is limited in Niane’s book to being a villainous tyrant sartorially inclined to garments of human skin. But as the post-s corpus of the
TL;DR: Although John W. Colenso thought that he was merely acting as amicus curiae in compiling evidence to explain Langalibalele's supposed rebellion in 1873, the Bishop of Natal ended up writing a damning anti-colonial tract.
Abstract: Although John W. Colenso thought that he was merely acting as amicus curiae — a friend of the court — in compiling evidence to explain Langalibalele's supposed rebellion in 1873, the Bishop of Natal ended up writing a damning anti-colonial tract. This paper will attempt to show how this report — written for the Queen and Colenso's House of Lord peers — is not just an achievement in legal refutation and forensic analysis but that it was a linguistic and cultural statement about the working and limits of Zulu law as Colenso understood it through his interactions with his Natal converts. Although it is obvious that Colenso's audience was not moved by his supplications on Langalibelele's behalf, it is less obvious why those who thought of Colenso as a maverick and heretic should have ignored his thorough repudiation of cultural chauvinism. The paper will suggest that Colenso's Remarks were ignored precisely because to take them seriously would have meant abandoning the authoritarian underpinnings of the late 19th century colonial project.
TL;DR: Prichard's Sisters in Spirit as mentioned in this paper explores the platonic intimacies of a particular African women missionaries and teachers of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa (UMCA) and uncovers a unique set of perspectives from which to interpret both broad transformations such as religious transformation and British imperialism; and individual adaptations, such as personal behavior and perspective.
Abstract: Historians often struggle to reveal the depth of human experience in turbulent and transformative eras in which the worlds of church, empire, and nation-state intersect. Andreana Prichard’s Sisters in Spirit: Christianity, Affect, and Community Building in East Africa, – stands out in this regard as it provokes the reader with a sensitive historical analysis that explores the platonic intimacies of a particular community — the African women missionaries and teachers of the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa (UMCA) — and uncovers a unique set of perspectives from which to interpret both broad transformations, such as religious transformation and British imperialism; and individual adaptations, such as personal behavior and perspective. Critically, this book makes an important contribution to the field of the history of emotion, which is notable because few Africanists have ventured in this realm. While many historians of Africa have brilliantly crossed the boundaries between private and public and have investigated the historical roles of love, desire, jealousy, and devotion in African communities, Prichard investigates the emotional states of a particular community by revealing both reverential and interpersonal expressions of emotion and the trajectory of the community’s relational ties as they were held together by a particular strain of religious feeling. This study also provides a fascinating and necessary corrective to previous assumptions about nineteenth-century British imperialists, who, generations of historians have argued, focused on transmitting modern rationalism and bridling the emotional and sentimental impulses they believed governed the minds and souls of those they colonized. Prichard reveals the experience of a pan-ethnic African community living in colonial
TL;DR: The Bound for Work: Labor, Mobility, and Colonial Rule in Central Mozambique by Kagan Guthrie as mentioned in this paper is a seminal work in the field of forced labour analysis.
Abstract: The inhabitants of late colonial Mozambique’s Manica e Sofala District suffered one of the most rigid variants of Portuguese forced labour practices. As Zachary Kagan Guthrie shows in his book, Bound for Work: Labor, Mobility, and Colonial Rule in Central Mozambique, –, forced recruitment, which had been common under concession rule in the district before , remained an essential experience after the termination of the company’s charter and into the s. (Eric Allina’s findings on the earlier period serve as the starting point for Kagan Guthrie’s interpretation.) The continuous role of forced labour in that mid-century period has been pointed to in earlier work, especially by Corrado Tornimbeni. But Kagan Guthrie explains the inner workings of the system while furthermore conveying how forced labour affected the life options and migration choices of young men and the impact of those processes on women and family constellations. The author uses no fewer than interviews to shed light on the individual trajectories of both men who migrated and women whose lives were affected by their husbands’ temporary absences. In this study, Kagan Guthrie manages to clarify important policy contradictions and moments of transformation. For his region of analysis, he shows that the Second World War produced something of a worldwide smokescreen for colonial powers. At that time, the Portuguese in Mozambique reinterpreted the (initially vague) six-month work obligation for able-bodied men, which allowed administrators to forcibly recruit colonial subjects and send them into underpaid private contracts under drastically bad conditions (a practice called contrato in that part of the Portuguese empire), even though this practice remained technically illegal (–; ). Male inhabitants of the region then typically were restricted to one of three choices: volunteer with the same employers, thereby obtaining somewhat better contract conditions; migrate into the city of Beira, where the urban setting