Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The Palgrave
Handbook
of African Colonial
and Postcolonial
History
Editors
Martin S. Shanguhyia Toyin Falola
History Department, Maxwell School of University of Texas at Austin
Citizenship and Public Affairs Austin, TX, USA
Syracuse University
Syracuse, NY, USA
This book is the result of unlimited effort from various individuals and insti-
tutions. The topics and themes came from an enriching brainstorming and
back-and-forth communication and conversation between Toyin Falola and
Martin Shanguhyia. Most important, we are grateful to the contributors to
this volume who were willing to share some perspectives on how certain top-
ics have been essential to the development of modern African history. They
spent their invaluable time making endless revisions to their chapters under
time constraints. Our constant communications and conversations were
more rewarding than an inconvenience to all involved. We would also like to
thank Amy Katherine Burnette, then a Dissertation Fellow at the Humanities
Center at Syracuse University, and Thomas Jefferson West III, a doctoral can-
didate in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics, Syracuse
University, for the endless hours they spend editing the chapters. Special
thanks also to the History Department at Syracuse University for subsidizing
funds for editorial services. We also wish to acknowledge Jamie DeAngelo for
her expertise in producing the maps.
v
vi Acknowledgements
Map 1 Africa on the eve of European scramble and partition, circa 1880
Acknowledgements vii
1 Introduction 1
Martin S. Shanguhyia and Toyin Falola
xi
xii Contents
45 Young People and Public Space in Africa: Past and Present 1155
Mamadou Diouf
Index 1323
Editors and Contributors
Contributors
Jamaine M. Abidogun, is Professor in history, Missouri State University,
holds a Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction in secondary education,
minor in African and African-American studies, from the University of
Kansas. She is a two-time Fulbright Scholar recipient for her work ‘Gender
Perspectives in Nigeria Secondary Education: A Case Study in Nsukka’
(2004–2005) and ‘Strengthening Gender Research to Improve Girls’ and
xvii
xviii Editors and Contributors
in the fields of African popular culture and African queer studies. His forth-
coming book Kwaito Futurity discusses the rise of post-apartheid South
African popular culture and its articulation with contemporary politics of
race, gender, and sexuality.
Paul E. Lovejoy, is Distinguished Research Professor in the Department
of History, York University, Toronto, and holds the Canada Research Chair
in African Diaspora History. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
and was the founding director of the Harriet Tubman Institute for Research
on the Global Migrations of African Peoples. His recent publications include
The Transatlantic Slave Trade and Slavery: New Directions in Teaching and
Learning (2013), co-edited with Benjamin Bowser, and Jihád in West Africa
During the Age of Revolutions (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2016).
He has been awarded the Honorary degree of Doctor of the University, by
the University of Stirling in 2007, the Distinguished Africanist Award by the
University of Texas at Austin in 2010, a Life Time Achievement Award from
the Canadian Association of African Studies in 2011, and Faculty of Graduate
Studies Teaching Award at York University in 2011. He is General Editor of
the Harriet Tubman Series on the African Diaspora, Africa World Press.
Robert M. Maxon, is an historian with more than 45 years of teach-
ing, research and supervision of students at West Virginia University and
Moi University. His research interests include East African history, Kenyan
political and economic history, the economic history of western Kenya, and
Kenya’s constitutional history. He has published in these areas, most recently
Kenya’s Independence Constitution: Constitution-Making and End of Empire
(2011), Britain and Kenya’s Constitutions 1950–1960 (2011), and Historical
Dictionary of Kenya (3rd edn, 2014).
John Mukum Mbaku, is an economist, lawyer, and legal scholar with more
than 30 years of teaching and research experience. He is currently Brady
Presidential Distinguished Professor of economics and John S. Hinckley
Fellow at Weber State University (Utah, USA), a Nonresident Senior Fellow
at The Brookings Institution (Washington, DC), and an Attorney and
Counselor at law (licensed in Utah). His research interests are in constitu-
tional political economy and governance in Africa. He has published exten-
sively in these areas, most recently, Governing the Nile River Basin: The Search
for a New Legal Regime (2015), with Mwangi S. Kimenyi.
Enocent Msindo, is Associate Professor of History at Rhodes University,
South Africa. He has published widely on Africa’s social and political history.
He is the author of Ethnicity in Zimbabwe: Transformations in Kalanga and
Ndebele Societies (2012) and is currently completing a monograph on the
state, information policy and propaganda in Zimbabwe from 1890 to the pre-
sent.
Editors and Contributors xxv
Tanure Ojaide, is a writer and scholar, currently The Frank Porter Graham
Professor of Africana studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
He has won major awards for his poetry and scholarly works.
Peter Otiato Ojiambo, is an Associate Professor in the Department of
African and African-American Studies at the University of Kansas with several
years of teaching, research and student supervision experience. His areas of
research include: African-centered educational biographies, comparative and
international education, educational leadership and non-western educational
thoughts. He has written and published extensively on these areas. His recent
publication is entitled “Perspectives on Empowering Education”, 2014.
Meshack Owino, is an Associate Professor of History at Cleveland State
University, Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his B.Ed and M.A at Kenyatta
University, Kenya, and an M.A. and Ph.D.. at Rice University, Houston,
Texas. Owino’s areas of academic interests include the social experience of
African soldiers in pre-colonial and colonial wars; and the nature and per-
mutation of the modern African state. Owino has taught African History at
several universities, including Egerton University, Kenya and Bloomsburg
University, Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. He has served as a Visiting Professor
of African history at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, and as an
Adjunct Professor at Texas Southern University, Houston, Texas.
Adebayo Oyebade, is Professor of history and Chair of the History
Department at Tennessee State University at Nashville. He has authored
numerous journal articles and book chapters on African and African diaspo-
ran history. He is the author, editor, and co-editor of nine books including
United States’ Foreign Policy in Africa in the twenty-first Century: Issues and
Perspectives (2014).
Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie, is Professor of art history and visual cul-
tures of global Africa at the University of California Santa Barbara. He
received his Ph.D. at Northwestern University and is the author of Ben
Enwonwu: The Making of an African Modernist (2008) which was awarded
the 2009 Herskovits Prize of the African Studies Association for best schol-
arly publication in African studies. He has also authored Making History:
The Femi Akinsanya African Art Collection (2011), and is editor of Artists
of Nigeria (2012). Ogbechie is also the founder and editor of Critical
Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture. He is cur-
rently a Smithsonian Institution Senior Fellow at the National Museum of
African Art.
Ruth Rempel, is a historian in the international development studies pro-
gram at Canadian Mennonite University. Her research and teaching inter-
ests include global and African development history, structural adjustment
in Africa, narratives of African development since 1990, and development
Editors and Contributors xxvii
theory. She has written on these and other topics, and has a forthcoming
book on African development history from 1970 to 2010.
David H. Shinn, has been teaching as an Adjunct Professor in the Elliott
School of International Affairs at George Washington University since 2001.
He previously served for 37 years in the US Foreign Service with assignments
at embassies in Lebanon, Kenya, Tanzania, Mauritania, Cameroon, Sudan,
and as ambassador to Ethiopia and Burkina Faso. Shinn, who has a Ph.D.
from George Washington University, is the co-author of China and Africa:
A Century of Engagement and the Historical Dictionary of Ethiopia, and
the author of Hizmet in Africa: The Activities and Significance of the Gülen
Movement. Shinn has authored numerous journal articles and book chapters
on China–Africa issues. He blogs at http://davidshinn.blogspot.com.
Charles G. Thomas, is an Associate Professor of comparative military stud-
ies at the Air Command and Staff College. He is the co-editor of Securing
Africa: Local Crises and Foreign Interventions (2013) and the Managing
Editor of the Journal of African Military History (Brill Academic Press).
Uyilawa Usuanlele, studied in Nigeria, Sweden, and Canada and majored in
African History, Peace, and Conflict Studies. He worked as a researcher with
the National Council for Arts and Culture, Nigeria. He was a founding mem-
ber/Coordinator of Institute for Benin Studies, Benin City, Nigeria. He has
contributed articles and chapters to journals and books. He currently teaches
African history, as well as peace and conflict Studies at State University of
New York (SUNY) Oswego, New York, USA.
Sarah Van Beurden, is an Associate Professor of African studies at
the Ohio State University. She received her Ph.D. from University of
Pennsylvania, and is the author of Authentically African: Arts and the
Transnational Politics of Congolese Culture (2015). She has also written
several articles and chapters on the colonial and postcolonial history of
Congo/Zaire, and cultural heritage and museum politics.
Natalya Vince, is a Lecturer in North African and French Studies at
the University of Portsmouth. Her subject area is modern Algerian and
French history, and her research interests include oral history, gender
studies, and state and nation building in Algeria and France, and more
broadly in Europe and Africa. Her monograph Our Fighting Sisters: Nation,
Memory and Gender in Algeria, 1954–2012 was published in 2015.
Michael O. West, is Professor of Sociology, Africana Studies and
History at Binghamton University. He has published broadly in the fields
of African studies, African diaspora studies, African-American studies,
Pan-Africanism, history, and historical sociology. His current research centers
on the Black Power movement in global perspectives.
List of Figures
Map 1 Africa on the eve of European scramble and partition, circa 1880 vi
Map 2 Colonial Africa, circa 1914 vii
Map 3 Modern Africa: Countries that have experienced military rule viii
Map 4 Modern Africa: Countries that have experienced political conflict ix
Fig. 8.1 Total Revenue (c.1949–1972) 224
Fig. 16.1 Staged stick fight, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa (c.1900) 396
Fig. 16.2 Xhosa women practice their martial arts, Eastern Cape,
South Africa (1981) 397
Fig. 16.3 Madam and children: Young Zulu servant in his kitchen suit,
Natal, South Africa (c.1900) 404
Fig. 18.1 Olowe of Ise, Palace Door. Wood and pigment, 20th Century
(copyright Femi Akinsanya African Art Collection) 434
Fig. 19.1 Masqueraders’ family house in Aperin, Ibadan 462
xxix
List of Tables
xxxi
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
This Handbook was conceived out of the necessity to demonstrate the extent
to which African history has expanded in scope, themes, and interpretations
since the early 1980s. It focuses on African colonial and postcolonial history,
the two eras of the continent’s history that seem inseparable, though the
extent to which they are similar or different has pervaded scholarly debates
for decades and is an aspect that some of the chapters in this volume explore.
The book benefits from contributions from established and up-and-com-
ing scholars in African studies, each using the vantage point of their study
of Africa and Africans to reveal how we have come to understand the conti-
nent’s historical trajectory since the professionalization of African history in
the 1950s.
The majority of the contributors are historians, while the rest are drawn
from diverse fields in African studies, particularly political science, anthro-
pology, art, music, literature, religious studies, education, and international
relations. Part of the initiative here is to demonstrate that African history has
not evolved in isolation from other disciplines that focus on Africa; rather, in
researching and interpreting what they study, historians of Africa have directly
and indirectly benefited immensely from other disciplines. One can also argue
contrariwise that scholars of African studies have tapped into African history
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