{"title":"Armies and Identities in Southern Africa","authors":"Stephanie Quinn","doi":"10.1017/S0021853722000408","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853722000408","url":null,"abstract":"This empirically rich book joins a growing group of scholarly works that probe the ‘ un-national ’ char-acteristics of Southern Africa ’ s wars of decolonization by examining the experiences of Black members of apartheid South Africa ’ s security forces, who fought on South Africa ’ s side in Namibia ’ s war of decolonization and the Angolan civil war. Bolliger engages an interdisciplinary literature on soldiers and police in Africa and elsewhere and traces how rank-and-file Africans ’ experiences of training and drill, racial hierarchies, and their units ’ mission and ideology shaped disparate military cultures. What results are what he calls ‘ un-national ’ histories that challenge popular understandings of these wars as struggles for ‘ national liberation ’ . Such interpretations remain prominent in popular and aca-demic discourses in and about Southern Africa and, in particular, Namibia. 1 Bolliger engages the literatures of ‘ un-national ’ liberation and African soldiers and police together to original effect. Like historiographies of intermediaries and the ‘ middle ground of colonialism ’ , ‘ un-national ’ histories examine individual experiences and motivations that run against the binary framework of resistance and collaboration. the ‘ un-national ’ , Although Bolliger does not answer all these questions, his work sets an agenda for scholars look-ing to challenge the assumptions, geographical parameters, and perhaps periodization of conflict in Namibia, Angola, and South Africa in the second half of the twentieth century. He paints a vivid picture of the ‘ vast and uneven “ middle ground ”’ of colonialism, engaging the historiography of African intermediaries by showing that there were not just two sides — African and colonial — but many. 8 Given the historical divides that Bolliger identifies between northern Namibia and the rest of the country, future studies might examine the experiences of Black former soldiers from central and southern Namibia. Still, by centering the experiences of Black former members of apartheid South Africa ’ s security forces, Bolliger underscores the evidentiary flimsiness of the region ’ s official histories and opens the way for further examination of what Southern Africa ’ s unevenly ‘ un-national ’ conflicts entailed for their diverse actors.","PeriodicalId":47244,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44998358","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"AFH volume 63 issue 2 Cover and Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s0021853722000536","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0021853722000536","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47244,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49620774","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Religion and Resistance in an Atlantic Biography","authors":"Mary E. Hicks","doi":"10.1017/s0021853722000317","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0021853722000317","url":null,"abstract":"highlighted by the authors as a choice — one made in the context of a numerically significant, but frequently persecuted larger African community in late-slave-trade-era Brazil. The Story of Rufino uses a life history — exceptional as it was — to illuminate a broader story about the centrality of African slavery and slave trading to economy of the mid-nineteenth-century Atlantic. His ‘ reverse ’ diasporic journey, from the slaving ships of Brazil to colonial Sierra Leone demonstrates the multidirectionality of the lives of many Africans uprooted in the slave trade, in this he was unusual but not completely unique. 3 Unlike other African diaspora intellectuals such as Domingos Álvares, who contested the hegemony of Atlantic slavery and empire, Reis, dos Santos Gomes, and de Carvalho trace the contradictions of Abundcare ’ s politics. He labored and invested in the transatlantic slave trade, while embracing a religious community which Brazilian political elites feared would under-mine their Christianized slaveholding society. His activities made him vulnerable to police harassment, but he seemingly never embraced open rebellion against the state ’ s authority like other enslaved and freed Africans. His ‘ accommodations ’ to Brazil ’ s slavocracy strikingly illustrate transatlantic slaving ’ s hegemonic power, even for people violently dispossessed by the traffic.","PeriodicalId":47244,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42658477","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Corporate Colonialism in Liberia","authors":"C. Whyte","doi":"10.1017/S0021853722000445","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853722000445","url":null,"abstract":"In 1972, Walter Rodney wrote, ‘It is common knowledge that Liberia was an American colony in everything but name’. As evidence, Rodney cited the ballooning profits of the Firestone Tire & Rubber Company. Between 1940 and 1965, the Ohio-based tyre manufacturer exported 160 million dollars’ worth of rubber from Liberia, while the Liberian government received only 8 million dollars in revenue. Firestone controlled huge swathes of Liberian land, following the 1926 concession agreement that granted the company a 99-year lease over one million acres. The Firestone Natural Rubber Company still owns the world’s largest rubber plantation in Liberia. Significantly, the company also secured its future by tying the 1926 agreement to a 5 million dollar government loan, ensuring the US government would step in to protect its interests. Thus, the interests of the Liberian government became inextricably linked to Firestone’s fortunes. Gregg Mitman traces the origins and development of this American ‘corporate colonialism’ in Empire of Rubber: Firestone’s Scramble for Land and Power in Liberia. As the author explains, the book is a slice of American corporate history viewed from the perspective of Liberia, rather than a history of Liberia itself. Mitman, like other researchers, has been unable to access the Firestone archive, but he has carefully surveyed a wide range of relevant archival material from the US, Britain, and Liberia, as well as all the relevant secondary literature. Interview material enhances the account of life on the plantations, as does judicious use of photographs. More narrative history than academic intervention, the book puts forward a strong case against Firestone, highlighting the economic, legal, and cultural impact of its massive land grab. The subtitle deliberately evokes the ‘Scramble for Africa’ that saw vast territories of the continent’s land divided up into colonies by European powers, only Liberia was famously unlike other colonies. The inception of the modern Liberian state can be traced to a small number of Black American settlers, despatched to Sierra Leone in 1820 by the American Colonisation Society. The next year, representatives of the society purchased around 140 acres of land further south. The settlement was inspired by hopes of Black self-determination in Africa, but also served as a means for white segregationists to exile free and manumitted Black people from the US. In 1847, the settlers declared their independence from the American Colonisation Society and established Liberia as an African republic. Independence left Liberia with few resources and competition between European empires constantly threatened its existence. Neighbouring British and French colonial governments demanded that Liberia ‘develop’ its","PeriodicalId":47244,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45148233","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Media and the End of Empire","authors":"G. Musila","doi":"10.1017/S0021853722000469","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853722000469","url":null,"abstract":"institutional role of cultural paradigms in generative of for of empire, and","PeriodicalId":47244,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42550973","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Work and Life on the Mission Station","authors":"Morgan Robinson","doi":"10.1017/s0021853722000421","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0021853722000421","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47244,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43253629","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Colonial Theft and Postcolonial Reparation","authors":"Enibokun Uzebu-Imarhiagbe","doi":"10.1017/s0021853722000433","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0021853722000433","url":null,"abstract":"institutional role of cultural paradigms in generative of for of empire, and","PeriodicalId":47244,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47829319","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Lutheran Church and the Tanzanian State","authors":"F. Ludwig","doi":"10.1017/S002185372200041X","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S002185372200041X","url":null,"abstract":"highlighted by the authors as a choice — one made in the context of a numerically significant, but frequently persecuted larger African community in late-slave-trade-era Brazil. The Story of Rufino uses a life history — exceptional as it was — to illuminate a broader story about the centrality of African slavery and slave trading to economy of the mid-nineteenth-century Atlantic. His ‘ reverse ’ diasporic journey, from the slaving ships of Brazil to colonial Sierra Leone demonstrates the multidirectionality of the lives of many Africans uprooted in the slave trade, in this he was unusual but not completely unique. 3 Unlike other African diaspora intellectuals such as Domingos Álvares, who contested the hegemony of Atlantic slavery and empire, Reis, dos Santos Gomes, and de Carvalho trace the contradictions of Abundcare ’ s politics. He labored and invested in the transatlantic slave trade, while embracing a religious community which Brazilian political elites feared would under-mine their Christianized slaveholding society. His activities made him vulnerable to police harassment, but he seemingly never embraced open rebellion against the state ’ s authority like other enslaved and freed Africans. His ‘ accommodations ’ to Brazil ’ s slavocracy strikingly illustrate transatlantic slaving ’ s hegemonic power, even for people violently dispossessed by the traffic.","PeriodicalId":47244,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43604399","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘To Satisfy My Savage Appetite’: Slavery, Belief, and Sexual Violence on the Mina (Gold) Coast, 1471–1571","authors":"Kwasi Konadu","doi":"10.1017/S0021853722000287","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853722000287","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Scholars of women and girls in African history, focusing on gender and power within religious or colonial (slavery) contexts, have drawn our attention to sexual violence against girls and women. Despite what historians of slavery and imperial violence have noted about their vulnerability and survival strategies in ‘colonial’ and ‘postcolonial’ contexts, questions remain about sexual predation and slavery in earlier periods. In the Mina (Gold) Coast, there is little known about the lived experiences of enslaved and ‘freed’ girls and women in the sixteenth century, and this is especially true for females held captive or in proximity to Portuguese slaving and gold trading bases of operation. Although only three inquisitional trials exist, sources which provide rare African female voices in the Portuguese colonial and evangelical world, their unprecedented baseline evidence for those under Portuguese slaving and religious authority tell us much about sexual violence, slavery, and religious orthodoxy.","PeriodicalId":47244,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47524981","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Worlding of Architectural Labor","authors":"Hannah le Roux","doi":"10.1017/S002185372200038X","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S002185372200038X","url":null,"abstract":"The effort to imagine worlds beyond colonialism has become a central subject for recent historiography, and in this enormously important contribution from Łukasz Stanek, the postcolonial imagination enfolds the architectural labor of experts from the Comecon states who worked in West Africa and the Middle East from 1957 to 1990. Stanek’s long and detailed project is timely, not least as a counter to the dominance of architectural research conducted in Western European and Anglophone archives. Stanek has gathered project files from the dispersed personal and institutional archives of former socialist architectural bureaus and companies, and conducted site-based research, often with African academics. His remarkably persistent research — some details of it are given in a concluding note on sources (308) — has unearthed an extraordinary record, often in the form of long unseen plans, photographs, and publicity. Read as manifestations of new worldmaking during the intense growth period of Africa’s ‘short century’ and the Middle East’s early growth decades, these designs emerged from urban modernization, decolonial agendas, and foreign collaborations. After proposing to address both the histories and significance of these ‘new geographies of collaboration’ and hinting at projects in Syria, Ethiopia, and Algeria that fall outside this volume, Stanek limits his case studies to four main sites and periods: Ghana during 1957–66, Lagos during 1966–79, Baghdad during 1958–90, and Abu Dhabi and Kuwait City during 1979–90. These are places where some major projects designed for the new regimes were built, including international trade fair infrastructures, the complex built in Lagos to host the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (Festac ’77), and government buildings for Abu Dhabi. In parallel, socialist consultants also contributed to several master plans or ‘type designs’ (215–22) of standardized building layouts or components. These commissions led to incremental growth in the exchange of expertise as socialist architects worked abroad, sometimes with African assistants, and occasionally beneath Middle Eastern experts. Sometimes, however, they suffered problems of coordination, unsustainable costs, and, in some later cases, outdated design approaches. The projects Stanek describes were often produced through collective ventures, including state-funded design institutes. This approach to procurement contrasted with the colonial practices of foreign architecture where research stations would offer expertise to professional offices and construction firms, a likely more flexible way of distributing knowledge, but a less efficient route to scaling up construction. While there are some extraordinary narratives of grand projects carried out by Comecon experts, the stories of those overseas experts who became more embedded in local societies by joining local institutions make for some of the most revealing content. These stories point to t","PeriodicalId":47244,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45350892","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}