States of Marriage shows how throughout the colonial period in French Sudan (present-day Mali) the institution of marriage played a central role in how the empire defined its colonial subjects as gendered persons with certain attendant rights and privileges. The book is a modern history of the ideological debates surrounding the meaning of marriage, as well as the associated legal and sociopolitical practices in colonial and postcolonial Mali. It is also the first to use declassified court records regarding colonialist attempts to classify and categorize traditional marriage...
States of Marriage shows how throughout the colonial period in French Sudan (present-day Mali) the institution of marriage played a centra...
A fascinating exploration of sex across the color line in colonial Ghana. This book is a brilliant addition to the literature on sex, gender and empire. Kwame Anthony Appiah, professor of philosophy and law, New York University
A fascinating exploration of sex across the color line in colonial Ghana. This book is a brilliant addition to the literature on sex, gender and em...
Winner of the 2016 Wesley-Logan Prize in African Diaspora History from the American Historical Association
Interracial sex mattered to the British colonial state in West Africa. In Crossing the Color Line, Carina E. Ray goes beyond this fact to reveal how Gold Coasters--their social practices, interests, and anxieties--shaped and defined these powerfully charged relations across racial lines. The interplay between African and European perspectives and practices, argues Ray, transformed these relationships into key sites for consolidating colonial rule and for contesting its...
Winner of the 2016 Wesley-Logan Prize in African Diaspora History from the American Historical Association
"This masterful study of Belgian and Congolese collecting and exhibitions of African arts, and the murky heritage politics so implied, offers insights for understanding colonial and postcolonial histories of representation anywhere in the world." --Allen F. Roberts, author of A Dance of Assassins: Performing Early Colonial Hegemony in the Congo Together, the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium, and the Institut des Musees Nationaux du Zaire (IMNZ) in the Congo have defined and marketed Congolese art and culture. In Authentically African, ...
"This masterful study of Belgian and Congolese collecting and exhibitions of African arts, and the murky heritage politics so implied, offers in...
"This masterful study of Belgian and Congolese collecting and exhibitions of African arts, and the murky heritage politics so implied, offers insights for understanding colonial and postcolonial histories of representation anywhere in the world." --Allen F. Roberts, author of A Dance of Assassins: Performing Early Colonial Hegemony in the Congo Together, the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium, and the Institut des Musees Nationaux du Zaire (IMNZ) in the Congo have defined and marketed Congolese art and culture. In Authentically African, ...
"This masterful study of Belgian and Congolese collecting and exhibitions of African arts, and the murky heritage politics so implied, offers in...
After four decades of British rule in colonial Kenya, a previously unknown ethnic name - "Luyia" - appeared on the official census in 1948. The emergence of the Luyia represents a clear case of ethnic "invention." At the same time, current restrictive theories privileging ethnic homogeneity fail to explain this defiantly diverse ethnic project, which now comprises the second-largest ethnic group in Kenya. In Cartography and the Political Imagination, which encompasses social history, geography, and political science, Julie MacArthur unpacks Luyia origins. In so doing, she calls for a shift to...
After four decades of British rule in colonial Kenya, a previously unknown ethnic name - "Luyia" - appeared on the official census in 1948. The emerge...
With forced marriage, as with so many human rights issues, the sensationalized hides the mundane, and oversimplified popular discourses miss the range of experiences. In sub-Saharan Africa, the relationship between coercion and consent in marriage is a complex one that has changed over time and place, rendering impossible any single interpretation or explanation. The legal experts, anthropologists, historians, and development workers contributing to Marriage by Force? focus on the role that marriage plays in the mobilization of labor, the accumulation of wealth, and domination versus...
With forced marriage, as with so many human rights issues, the sensationalized hides the mundane, and oversimplified popular discourses miss the range...
Why did some central African peoples embrace gun technology in the nineteenth century, and others turn their backs on it? In answering this question, The Gun in Central Africa offers a thorough reassessment of the history of firearms in central Africa. Marrying the insights of Africanist historiography with those of consumption and science and technology studies, Giacomo Macola approaches the subject from a culturally sensitive perspective that encompasses both the practical and the symbolic attributes of firearms. Informed by the view that the power of objects extends beyond their immediate...
Why did some central African peoples embrace gun technology in the nineteenth century, and others turn their backs on it? In answering this question, ...
Examining the history of warfare and political development through a technological lens, Macola relates the study of military technology to the history of gender.
Examining the history of warfare and political development through a technological lens, Macola relates the study of military technology to the histor...
In the 1940s, British shipping companies began the large-scale recruitment of African seamen in Lagos. On colonial ships, Nigerian sailors performed menial tasks for low wages and endured discrimination as cheap labor, while countering hardships by nurturing social connections across the black diaspora. Poor employment conditions stirred these seamen to identify with the nationalist sentiment burgeoning in postwar Nigeria, while their travels broadened and invigorated their cultural identities. Working for the Nigerian National Shipping Line, they encountered new forms of injustice and...
In the 1940s, British shipping companies began the large-scale recruitment of African seamen in Lagos. On colonial ships, Nigerian sailors performed m...
