LibGuides: Modern World History: 9. Africa Decolonization

Scholarly Sources within the JSCC Library

The Ideological Scramble for Africa : How the Pursuit of Anticolonial Modernity Shaped a Postcolonial Order, 1945–1966 by Frank Gerits
ISBN: 9781501767913

Publication Date: 2023-03-15

Rather than choose Cold War sides between East and West, anticolonial nationalists worked to reverse the psychological and cultural destruction of colonialism.Kwame Nkrumah's African Union was envisioned as a federation of liberation to challenge the extant imperial forces: the US empire of liberty, the Soviet empire of equality, and the European empires of exploitation. In the 1950s, the goal of proving the potency of a pan-African ideology shaped the agenda of the Bandung Conference and Ghana's support for African liberation, while also determining what was at stake in the Congo crisis and in the fight against white minority rule in southern and eastern Africa. In the 1960s, the attempt to remake African psychology was abandoned, and socioeconomic development came into focus. Anticolonial nationalists did not simply resist or utilize imperial and Cold War pressures but drew strength from the example of the Haitian Revolution of 1791, in which Toussaint Louverture demanded the universal application of Europe's Enlightenment values.
A Slave Between Empires : A Transimperial History of North Africa
ISBN: 9780231549554

In June 1887, a man known as General Husayn, a manumitted slave turned dignitary in the Ottoman province of Tunis, passed away in Florence after a life crossing empires. As a youth, Husayn was brought from Circassia to Turkey, where he was sold as a slave. In Tunis, he ascended to the rank of general before the French conquest forced his exile to the northern shores of the Mediterranean. His death was followed by wrangling over his estate that spanned a surprising array of actors: Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamid II and his viziers; the Tunisian, French, and Italian governments; and representatives of Muslim and Jewish diasporic communities. A Slave Between Empires investigates Husayn's trans-imperial life and the posthumous battle over his fortune to recover the transnational dimensions of North African history. M'hamed Oualdi places Husayn within the international context of the struggle between Ottoman and French forces for control of the Mediterranean amid social and intellectual ferment that crossed empires.
The Ottoman Scramble for Africa: Empire and Diplomacy in the Sahara and the Hijaz by Mostafa Minawi
ISBN: 9780804795142

The Ottoman Scramble for Africa is the first book to tell the story of the Ottoman Empire's expansionist efforts during the age of high imperialism. Following key representatives of the sultan on their travels across Europe, Africa, and Arabia at the close of the nineteenth century, it takes the reader from Istanbul to Berlin, from Benghazi to Lake Chad Basin to the Hijaz, and then back to Istanbul. It turns the spotlight on the Ottoman Empire's expansionist strategies in Africa and its increasingly vulnerable African and Arabian frontiers. Drawing on previously untapped Ottoman archival evidence, Mostafa Minawi examines how the Ottoman participation in the Conference of Berlin and involvement in aggressive competition for colonial possessions in Africa were part of the self-reimagining of this once powerful global empire.
Mining Africa: Law, Environment, Society and Politics in Historical and Multidisciplinary Perspectives by Artwell Nhemachena & V. Warikandwa
ISBN: 9789956764327

The book comes at the right time when matters of African mining and environment are increasingly coming to the fore in the light of discourses about the new 21st-century scramble for African resources, in which big transnational corporations and nations are jostling to suck Africa dry in their race to control planetary resources. It is a book that speaks to contemporary broader issues of (de-)coloniality and the transformation of African minds and African environmental resources.
The Colonial Politics of Global Health: France and the United Nations in postwar Africa by Jessica Lynne Pearson
ISBN: 9780674989283

Publication Date: 2018-09-10
Belgium and the Congo, 1885-1980 by Guy Vanthemsche
ISBN: 9780521194211

Publication Date: 2012-04-30

While the impact of a colonizing metropole on subjected territories has been widely scrutinized, the effect of empire on the colonising country has long been neglected. Recently, many studies have examined the repercussions of their respective empires on colonial powers such as the United Kingdom and France. Belgium and its African empire have been conspicuously absent from this discussion. This book attempts to fill this gap. Belgium and the Congo, 1885–1980 examines the effects of colonialism on the domestic politics, diplomacy and economics of Belgium, from 1880 - when King Leopold II began the country's expansionist enterprises in Africa - to the 1980s, well after the Congo's independence in June of 1960. By examining the colonial impact on its mother country Belgium, this study also contributes to a better understanding of Congo's past and present.
Southern Africa: old treacheries and new deceits by Stephen Chan
ISBN: 9780300154054

In this timely and essential book, Stephen Chan explores the political landscape of southern Africa, examining how it's poised to change over the next years and what the repercussions are likely to be across the continent. He focuses on three countries in particular: South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Zambia, all of which have remained interconnected since the end of colonial rule and the overthrow of apartheid.
The End of Empire in French West Africa: France's successful decolonization by Tony Chafer
ISBN: 9781845206307

In an effort to restore its world-power status after the humiliation of defeat and occupation, France was eager to maintain its overseas empire at the end of the Second World War. Yet just fifteen years later France had decolonized, and by 1960 only a few small island territories remained under French control. The process of decolonization in Indochina and Algeria has been widely studied, but much less has been written about decolonization in France's largest colony, French West Africa.

African Studies
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Warlordism in the Congo Basin between the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.
by Giacomo Macola from the International Journal of African Historical Studies
ABSTRACT
This paper deploys the concept of "warlordism" to make sense of the bloody history of the Congo basin between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. Growing out of the ruins of older and less predatory governance models, "warlord states" came of age in the central African interior in the second half of the nineteenth century, the era of the long-distance caravan trades in ivory and slaves. The essay examines their emergence and distinguishing attributes. It then argues that the extractive warlord states of the Congo basin prefigured, and consequently easily adapted to, the looting economy of the Congo Free State, which therefore granted them an extended lease of life during the "Scramble for Africa" and the early colonial period. The essay's epilogue briefly raises the question of historical continuities and asks whether the concept of warlordism might prove helpful in accounting for the Congo's exceptionally violent postcoloniality.
The coloniality of power in postcolonial Africa: experiences from Nigeria
by Akinbode Fasakin in Third WOrld Quarterly
ABSTRACT
While the coloniality of power underpins the continuity of colonial sit-
uations in postcolonial Africa, (neo)liberal thinking attempts to dismiss
its place in Africa’s contemporary challenges, blaming instead anti-co-
lonial struggles and the quest for complete decolonisation as the cause
of these challenges. A focus on this neoliberal cum pro-colonial per-
spectives, at the expense of a corpus of post-, anti- and de-colonial
writings that expose and challenge coloniality, however, inhibits our
understanding of the consolidation, problematic place and impact of
the coloniality of power in postcolonial Africa. Analysing the presence
of colonial situations in policy choices and governance patterns, which
link Africa’s postcolonial present to their colonial past, this paper claims
that the coloniality of power retains its salience in postcolonial Africa.
Illustrating with experiences from Nigeria, I show how this continues
to structure the state of affairs in Africa even after formal colonialism
has ended. This article contributes to the discourse on the legacies of
colonialism in Africa.

The Fortunes of Africa: a 5000-year history of wealth, greed, and endeavour by Martin Meredith
Available for Checkout at the JSCC Jackson Library
DT20 .M47 2014

In this vast and vivid panorama of history, Martin Meredith follows the fortunes of Africa over 5,000 years. With a compelling narrative, he traces the rise and fall of ancient kingdoms and empires; the spread of Christianity and Islam; the enduring quest for gold and other riches; the exploits of explorers and missionaries; and the impact of European colonization. He examines, too, the fate of modern African states and concludes with a glimpse of their future.
Land of Tears: the exploration and exploitation of equatorial Africa by Robert Harms
Available for Checkout at the JSCC Jackson Library
DT352.7 .H373 2019

In Land of Tears, historian Robert Harms reconstructs the chaotic process by which the heart of Africa was utterly transformed in the nineteenth century and the rainforest of the Congo River basin became one of the most brutally exploited places on earth. Ranging from remote African villages to European diplomatic meetings to Connecticut piano-key factories, Harms reveals how equatorial Africa became fully, fatefully, and tragically enmeshed within our global world.

Modern World History

African Independence Movement

Standard Swahili

Scholarly Sources within the JSCC Library