Segregation: a global history of divided cities

Abstract

the promise of future development rather than shared historical social realities has backfired in the face of conflict and stagnation. Other fascinating issues – including beleaguered white settler nationalism in Angola and the emergence of a unified Ovimbundu ethnicity in the wake of UNITA’s military defeat in 1976 rather than prior to the emergence of the movement in the 1960s – also receive coverage, and will be of interest to scholars working on failed nationalist movements and the invention of tradition. With an edited collection of such broad scope there are bound to be weaknesses arising from the challenges of multiple authorship. Some essays present arguments that are more provocative and far clearer than others. A few lack accessible structures and end abruptly without conclusion. The introductory chapter is at times vague and laden with jargon, and its call to “restore diversity, complexity and uncertainty” (xxii) is commendable but something of an historian’s cliché at this point in time; happily, however, the concluding remarks do a fine job of summarising the collection’s main contributions. Several chapters contain typographical errors, and overall the volume could benefit from more attentive copyediting. On the other hand, a number of these errors result from authors writing in a second language, and the benefits of this international perspective far outweigh any typographical inconveniences. On the whole, Sure Road is an important collection that heralds a turn toward postcolonial political history within the community of Africanist historians. This is a welcome and necessary development, one that is due, as Morier-Genoud notes, to the recent opening of certain archives and to progress in theories of nationalism and in related areas. While its eclecticism, complexity and editorial issues make this volume a challenge for undergraduates and non-specialists, it will be essential reading for those interested in Lusophone African postcolonial politics and, more broadly, socialism in Africa, nationalism in Africa and African developmental politics.