{"title":"Unsteady Is the Cross: Catholic Missionaries, Marriage, and Fang Communities in the Gabon Estuary, ca. 1914–1945","authors":"J. Rich","doi":"10.1080/17532523.2022.2135879","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17532523.2022.2135879","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Between 1914 and 1945, French Catholic missionaries and Gabonese priests tried to impose their faith and ideals of family life on Fang communities in the rural Estuary region of the French colony of Gabon. Catholic evangelists offered benefits such as education as well as threats of spiritual punishment to convert Fang people. However, Fang men and women often rejected these demands. While Fang men tried to maintain polygamy as a sign of successful manhood, women often rejected their spouses. At the same time, missionaries relied on Catholic lay Fang catechists in their work. Male catechists often violated the marital ideals of the missionaries, but they also successfully promoted Catholic conversions. Ultimately, rural Estuary communities selectively appropriated aspects of Catholicism, even if relatively few followed Catholic teachings on marriage.","PeriodicalId":41857,"journal":{"name":"African Historical Review","volume":"52 1","pages":"62 - 83"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44608511","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Making of a Nation: The Northern Territories and the Colonial Discourse of Nationhood in the Gold Coast, 1897–1950","authors":"Moses Diyaane Awinsong","doi":"10.1080/17532523.2022.2122308","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17532523.2022.2122308","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article examines the exclusionary experiences of northern Ghana in the empire, which kept it at the periphery of Gold Coast national consciousness up to 1950. If the “nation” is an imagined community, as Benedict Anderson asserts, then the Gold Coast was a product of colonial discourse merging varying interests into a multicultural nation. The article explores why the Northern Territories lagged in influencing that imagined consciousness until 1951. I argue that a multiplicity of factors constrained the north’s contribution to the burgeoning national consciousness of the Gold Coast. The constriction was a function of colonial intentionality, distinct constitutional and political set-ups, economic policies, and the social circumstances in the protectorate. This work adds to our understanding of colonial northern Ghana and how structural disadvantages absented it from early colonial political and constitutional discourses that produced Ghanaian nationhood.","PeriodicalId":41857,"journal":{"name":"African Historical Review","volume":"52 1","pages":"1 - 30"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60242410","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pan-Africanism: A History, by Hakim Adi","authors":"Ibrahim B. Anoba (Bàbátúndé Anọ́ba)","doi":"10.1080/17532523.2021.1986925","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17532523.2021.1986925","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41857,"journal":{"name":"African Historical Review","volume":"52 1","pages":"99 - 101"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47182582","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cameroon 1884–Present (2018): The History of a People, by Victor Julius Ngoh","authors":"R. Ndille","doi":"10.1080/17532523.2022.2047284","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17532523.2022.2047284","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41857,"journal":{"name":"African Historical Review","volume":"52 1","pages":"102 - 107"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44785641","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Journals of Sophia Pigot: Performing Gentility in the Eastern Cape","authors":"Amina Marzouk Chouchene","doi":"10.1080/17532523.2022.2076951","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17532523.2022.2076951","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article examines the experience of an 1820 settler woman, Sophia Pigot, who immigrated with her family to the eastern Cape as part of the 1819 government-sponsored scheme. Existing scholarship has dealt with the experiences of some 1820 settler wives who left accounts of their experiences. However, Sophia Pigot has not been the subject of historical research. Based on her journals, this article seeks to fill this gap. Although Sophia’s journals seem to be an unworthy historical account due to their short entries, repetitious style, and seemingly mundane details, they reflect her preoccupation with maintaining a genteel lifestyle in the eastern Cape. The article examines some of the challenges that she encountered in this respect. The article builds on the growing body of scholarship on how British women maintained gentility in various colonial settings.","PeriodicalId":41857,"journal":{"name":"African Historical Review","volume":"52 1","pages":"28 - 46"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43050978","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Small Matter of “Sellouts”: Chiefs, History, Politics, and the State at Zimbabwe’s Independence, 1980–1985","authors":"Lotti Nkomo","doi":"10.1080/17532523.2022.2047283","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17532523.2022.2047283","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article explores the relationship between chiefs and the state in Zimbabwe's immediate post-independence years. Focusing on the period 1980 to 1985, it discusses how the advent of independence in 1980 engendered tensions between the Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front (ZANU–PF) government and chieftaincy. Through a series of legal and policy instruments, the new government transferred the little power chiefs had over grassroots land and judicial processes to bureaucratic and party functionaries. Literature has largely emphasised the state's “socialist,” modernising, and democratising agenda to explain this emasculation of chiefs. However, this article foregrounds political motivations, whose base lay in colonial history, and argues that this was also a punitive response against chieftaincy's entanglement with the colonial state, particularly in the era of mass nationalism. Using archival records, newspapers, interviews, and parliamentary debates, the article demonstrates continuity in the manner in which the post-independence state related with chiefs: as in the colonial era, the relationship continued to be defined by the political interests and strategies of the governing regime.","PeriodicalId":41857,"journal":{"name":"African Historical Review","volume":"52 1","pages":"47 - 71"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43379779","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Kwame Nkrumah’s Overthrow and Its Effect on National Team Players (1957–1980)","authors":"E. Acheampong, M. Raspaud","doi":"10.1080/17532523.2022.2047282","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17532523.2022.2047282","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Studies have revealed the evolution of African football from the 1980s to the 2000s by explaining how the migration of football talents from the continent intensified. Before the 1980s, African footballers were an integral part of sports labour migration to North America but this topic has evoked little scholarly interest in the history of football migration. This paper analyses the movement of African football talents, particularly West Africans, to leagues in the United States from 1967 to 1984. Data on this period of migration is lacking. The paper further provides insight into how the promotion of football by Nkrumah interplayed with political, social, and economic influences on the African continent. Firstly, it discusses several reasons behind Ghanaian players’ decision not to go abroad to play professionally after the country‘s independence in 1957 under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah. Secondly, it analyses the state of football in Ghana after Nkrumah was overthrown, especially from the perspective of the national team players and its consequences on their livelihood. The continued decline of the game in Ghana after 1966 resulted in several players migrating to the North American Soccer League (NASL) in 1968. This further explains some adverse effects after Nkrumah was toppled. This paper concludes by bringing to the understanding of readers the continent‘s political icon who used sport as a vehicle to champion African unity via the mantra of Pan-Africanism.","PeriodicalId":41857,"journal":{"name":"African Historical Review","volume":"52 1","pages":"1 - 27"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42466881","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“Little More than Rich Soil?”: The Anatomy and Politics of the Cape Bat Guano Trade, 1890–1920","authors":"Hendrik Snyders","doi":"10.1080/17532523.2022.2047281","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17532523.2022.2047281","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The bat guano trade, although a small, localised, and secondary enterprise was as significant for the nineteenth and early twentieth century Cape fertiliser trade as its more lucrative and prominent counterpart, the seabird guano trade. Located in relatively inaccessible and geographically dispersed caves on the Southern Cape coast and following a long struggle to be acknowledged as a useful fertiliser, the product became part of and contributed to the generation of continuous conflict between the colonial authorities, local farmers, and entrepreneurs about cheap guano. Aided by farmer-politicians, bona fide farmers and horticulturists continuously agitated for access to a cheap fertiliser while local businessmen with an interest in deriving some income from its exploitation fought for the right to free and unrestricted access to the resource. Resolution of this matter became far more difficult with the dawn of the Union of South Africa where the need to integrate new discoveries in Transvaal resulted in the need for a national policy and a central administration as well as common quality standards. Although relatively low-key and less dramatic, the battle for access to bat guano mirrored that of the seabird guano trade. This article attempts to properly contextualise this branch of the international guano trade and to describe the dynamic interaction between the conflicting parties around matters such as access, policy, and profit. In this regard, it explores and tries to make sense of both the mechanisms used and compromises concluded to ensure the workability of the system during the first two decades of the twenty-first century.","PeriodicalId":41857,"journal":{"name":"African Historical Review","volume":"52 1","pages":"72 - 98"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49483566","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Botswana—A Modern Economic History: An African Diamond in the Rough, by Ellen Hillbom and Jutta Bolt","authors":"Unaludo Sechele","doi":"10.1080/17532523.2020.1727109","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17532523.2020.1727109","url":null,"abstract":"Botswana—A Modern Economic History traces Botswana’s economic development from precolonial times through the development of the cattle-led industry to the diamond-mining period. This book is divided into four parts. The first chapter in part one gives an overview of the entire book. Chapter two examines precolonial sociopolitical and economic livelihoods, before tracing the origins of pastoralism and labour migration to the mines of the Witwatersrand. Building on the previous chapter, part two, which consists of chapter three, follows the development of pastoralism to the point where it dominated the economy until the early 1970s. Urbanisation in this period was minimal.","PeriodicalId":41857,"journal":{"name":"African Historical Review","volume":"51 1","pages":"77 - 78"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17532523.2020.1727109","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48119781","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}