Boundaries, Communities and State-Making in West Africa: The Centrality of the Margins

ISBN-13: 9781107020689 / Angielski / Twarda / 2019 / 636 str.

Paul Nugent

Opis

By examining three centuries of history, this book shows how vital border regions have been in shaping states and social contracts.

Recenzje

'A tremendously creative study, masterfully bringing to the West African fore that which has hitherto been seen as marginal: the edges of the colonial and postcolonial state. With his fine frontier brush, Nugent paints us a different conceptual picture of how we ought to reimagine the centres and perimeters of African polities.' William F. S. Miles, Northeastern University, Boston

Spis treści

1. Centering the margins: states, borderlands and communities; Part I. From Frontiers to Boundaries: 2. Configurations of power in comparative perspective: commerce, people and belief to c.1880; 3. Port cities, frontiers and boundaries: spatial lineages of the colonial state; Part II. States and Taxes, Land and Mobility: 4. Constructing the compound, keeping the gate: a fiscal anatomy of colonial state-making, c.1900–40; 5. Being seen like a state: frontier logics, colonial administration and traditional authority in the borderlands; 6. Border regulation and state-making at the margins: taxation, migration and contraband during the interwar years; 7. Land, belief and belonging in the borderlands; Part III. Decolonization and Boundary Closure, 1939–69: 8. Bringing the space back in: decolonization, development and territoriality c.1939–60; 9. The vanishing horizon of Senegambian unity: statist visions and border dynamics; 10. Forging the nation, contesting the border: identity politics and border dynamics in the Trans-Volta; Part IV. States, Social Contracts and Respacing From Below, 1970–2010; 11. Barnacle states and boundary lines: states, trade and urbanism in the Senegambia; 12. The remaking of Ghana and Togo at their common border: Alhaji Kalabule meets Nana Benz; 13. Boundaries, communities and 're-membering': festivals and the negotiation of difference; Conclusion. Boundaries and state-making: comparisons through time and space.