History of West Africa

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 racial and gendered hierarchies of power.

With rigorous methodology and innovative analyses, Ray brings Ghana and Britain into a single analytic frame by examining cases in both locales. Intimate relations between black men and white women in Britain’s port cities emerge as an influential part of the history of interracial sex and empire in ways that are connected to rather than eclipsed by relations between European men and African women in the colony.

Based on rich archival evidence and original interviews, the book moves across different registers, shifting from the micropolitics of individual disciplinary cases against colonial officers who “kept” local women to transatlantic networks of family, empire, and anticolonial resistance. In this way, Ray cuts to the heart of how interracial sex became a source of colonial anxiety and nationalist agitation during the first half of the twentieth century.

Earlier studies carried out on Sungbo’s Eredo (embankment) showed that it is about 165 km in circumference and surrounds the whole of Ijebu Kingdom. From the date obtained by Aremu et al. (2013: 17), the structure is thought to have been built around 5000 years ago. However, it is possible that the site was also occupied during the medieval period, as evidenced in the remains around the sacred grove. This paper reports on a GPS survey of the site and excavations carried out during 2014 fieldwork archaeology intended to confirm or refute the dates previously obtained from the embankment. It examines the cultural materials recovered from the excavation, including Late Stone Age materials and those of the Neolithic period. Analysis of the Neolithic and Late Stone Age materials suggests that the site may be of greater antiquity than earlier reported and that this forest zone of West Africa was occupied at different time periods.

Many mining and development experts consider artisanal diamond mining to be a form of gambling. In Sierra Leone’s mining areas, this comparison also recurs occasionally in miners’ discourses. However, the idea that mining is like gambling deserves critical scrutiny as it allows only a limited, stereotypical representation of this work. This article considers mining as a complex combination of material production and imaginaries oriented by a specific ethic. Central to the understanding of this ethic is a repertoire of religious metaphors that inform miners’ working and ritual practices.
By drawing upon my ethnographic experience in Sierra Leone (2007–2011), I examine the vocabulary of contingency which the miners use to make sense of their successes and failures and guide their daily decision-making. Moreover, I show how this vocabulary mirrors the daily efforts  of miners in (re)producing the social reality in and around diamond mines. What I mean to  highlight is the ways in which diamond miners challenge dominant discourses depicting them as immoral, antisocial agents.

After the First World War, France moved toward a clear secular education system in Senegal, with emphasis on French literacy and Republican values. Local response to the new regulations, both by missionary educators and indigenous Senegalese, revealed the competing spheres of colonial education. Protestant missionaries, in particular, asserted their own definition of the purpose of both education and empire.

O documento comentado consiste em um pronunciamento realizado por Amilcar Cabral no dia 1º de janeiro de 1973, no qual realiza um balanço da luta de libertação de Guiné-Bissau e Cabo Verde em 1972. Além de trazer informações valiosas para os estudos sobre a descolonização no continente africano, como procuraremos enfatizar, o documento transcrito delineia o projeto de um Estado binacional para Guiné-Bissau e Cabo Verde.

While Nigeria was under President Sani Abacha’s dictatorship, the democratic system was toppled in Sierra Leone by rebels but Abacha reversed the trend. The reasons for the largely unilateral and hasty decision to restore democracy in Sierra Leone by the Abacha regime remain controversial. Wide skepticism and condemnation greeted the decision to commit Nigerian troops, money and materials to a foreign operation at the expense of Nigeria’s fragile economy. The Nigeria Armed Forces consequently became the instrument for the pursuant of an aggressive foreign policy. The Economic Community of West Africa Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) hastily deployed to Sierra Leone just as it had previously done in Liberia amidst various operational and logistical problems. In terms of interests, Nigeria’s attempt to restore democracy in Sierra Leone was perceived to be contradictory both at home and abroad since Abacha’s regime itself was undemocratic and facing international isolation. The view that the ...

This book is largely a family memoir, but it also contains material of considerable historical value. Selina Molteno and Robin Cohen married in London in June 1967. Shortly thereafter they travelled on a mail boat to Nigeria where they were to stay for two years, in the midst of that country’s civil war. Their work, the birth of their first child, Miranda, their leisure activities, and their everyday efforts to combat illness and secure food and potable water are all described here. But the book goes beyond a mere description of family life. The travails of the University of Ibadan, their friendship with one of the iconic figures of the anti-apartheid struggle, Ruth First, and Robin’s analysis of the prelude to the civil war are all included. The book is lavishly peppered with contemporary photographs and many letters that give a flavour of this extraordinary period in Nigeria’s history.
If you would like it on Kindle or in a hard copy, it is available on Amazon in a number of countries. Please go to your country site and search “An Expatriate Family in the Nigerian Civil War”.

The “Polee and Rose Allen of the Slave Ship Clotilda and Africatown, Alabama” Explorers Club Flag Expedition took place in February, March and April 2022.  This Final Flag Report contains the following sections:

• Flag Photos of the Expedition
• Location of the Expedition
• Goals of this Effort
• Why This Work is Important
• Previous Relevant Work
• Summary of Genealogical Findings
• Other Activities and Accomplishments
• Targets for Possible Archaeological, Historical & Land Ownership Investigation
• Land Ownership Map
• Any Toulmin Connection? 
• Participants in the Expedition
• Covid Precautions
• Annexes:

o A: Maps of the area
o B: Images of the expedition
o C:  New photo of Cudjo Lewis and Helen Duggar Conwell, c. 1935
o D:  Interview with Orlando Pogue
o E.  A song for the expedition
o F:  Flag #212 award email
o G. History of Flag # 212
o H: Lifetime list of Toulmin expeditions
o I:  Previous Flag Expeditions

Additionally,  a separate attachment is available on “The Polee, Rose and Lucy Allen Lines: Genealogical Descents from Africa, the Slave Ship Clotilda, and Africatown, Alabama to the Present,” and two separate supplements containing information from obituaries and funeral programs of Polee's descendants will be published in May 2022.

The tirailleurs sénégalais (Senegalese riflemen) figured prominently among the many indigenous peoples who served in the French army during the First World War. By 1918, France had recruited some 192,000 tirailleurs sénégalais throughout French West Africa, 134,000 of them fought in Europe, and 30,000 of them lost their lives.

In this chapter we propose to discuss the strategies deployed by Portugal, a peripheral country in nineteenth and twentieth century Europe, to use its African Empire as a token for asserting its position in the European arena. Beyond diplomatic and political demarches, technology—and particularly the building of railways—was at the core of the Portuguese imperial agenda, determining the way African territories were immersed in the global market. Engineers played a central role in this process by discussing and eventually deciding the layout of the railway lines that were at the core of new anthropogenic landscapes, thus establishing an economic hierarchy among geographical spaces not only within the colonies, but also in a worldwide context. We will use two case studies, one in Angola and one in Mozambique, to argue that technological choices in the colonies were strongly pervaded by political and economic European agendas.

West African Warfare in Bahia and Cuba seeks to explain how a series of historical events that occurred in West Africa from the mid-1790s - including Afonja's rebellion, the Owu wars, the Fulani-led jihad, and the migrations to Egbaland - had an impact upon life in cities and plantations in western Cuba and Bahia. Manuel Barcia examines the extent to which a series of African-led plots and armed movements that took place in western Cuba and Bahia between 1807 and 1844 were the result - or a continuation - of events that had occurred in and around the Yoruba and Hausa kingdoms in the same period.

Why did these two geographical areas serve as the theatre for the uprising of the Nagôs, the Lucumís, and other West African men and women? The answer, Barcia argues, relates to the fact that plantation economies supported by unusually large numbers of African-born slaves from the same - or close - geographical and ethnic heritage, transformed the rural and urban landscape in western Cuba and Bahia. To understand why these two areas followed such similar social patterns it is essential to look across the Atlantic - it is not enough to repeat the significance of the African background of Bahian and Cuban slaves. By establishing connections between people and events, with a special emphasis on their warfare experiences, Barcia presents a coherent narrative which spans more than three decades and opens a wealth of archival research for future study.

De Utrechtse onderzoeker Paul Julien (1901-2001) groeide op,  studeerde en promoveerde in Utrecht. Hij zou vele reizen naar Afrika ondernemen om bloedgroepenonderzoek onder Pygmee-volken te verrichten.
Hij schreef vier boeken over zijn reizen in Afrika.

This review examines research undertaken on West African archaeological sites of the past 500 years. It is for this time period that written sources and oral traditions provide the most information. The definitional parameters of historical archaeology are considered first, followed by a brief survey of work undertaken on African and European sites. The research presented reflects the nature of the archaeological record being studied, as well as the varied methodological and theoretical concerns represented. In some world areas, historical archaeology has been viewed in narrower perspective. In North America, as well as other world areas lacking well developed indigenous writing systems, the tendency has been to define the sub-discipline in terms of the European presence: as primarily focusing on "the spread of European societies worldwide, beginning in the fifteenth century, and their subsequent development and impact on native peoples in all parts of the world" (Deetz 1991:1). While it is useful to consider "the archaeology of European expansion" as a discrete area of study, such a Eurocentric definition of historical archaeology has been questioned (Agbaje Williams 1986; DeCorse 1993). Focus on the European presence, European documents, and European trade materials provides insight into only a circumscribed portion of the changes and developments which occurred in West Africa during the past 500 years.
The research examined here illustrates the limitations inherent in focusing solely on the European presence.

In the course of the Cold War, architects, planners, and construction companies from socialist Eastern Europe engaged in a vibrant collaboration with those in West Africa and the Middle East in order to bring modernization to the developing world. Architecture in Global Socialism shows how their collaboration reshaped five cities in the Global South: Accra, Lagos, Baghdad, Abu Dhabi, and Kuwait City.

Łukasz Stanek describes how local authorities and professionals in these cities drew on Soviet prefabrication systems, Hungarian and Polish planning methods, Yugoslav and Bulgarian construction materials, Romanian and East German standard designs, and manual laborers from across Eastern Europe. He explores how the socialist development path was adapted to tropical conditions in Ghana in the 1960s, and how Eastern European architectural traditions were given new life in 1970s Nigeria. He looks at how the differences between socialist foreign trade and the emerging global construction market were exploited in the Middle East in the closing decades of the Cold War. Stanek demonstrates how these and other practices of global cooperation by socialist countries—what he calls socialist worldmaking—left their enduring mark on urban landscapes in the postcolonial world.

Featuring an extensive collection of previously unpublished images, Architecture in Global Socialism draws on original archival research on four continents and a wealth of in-depth interviews. This incisive book presents a new understanding of global urbanization and its architecture through the lens of socialist internationalism, challenging long-held notions about modernization and development in the Global South.

Revenir aujourd'hui sur les aspects méthodologiques de l'oeuvre d'Yves Person, en dehors des intentions purement commémoratives, signifie, à mon sens, réfléchir sur le rapport entre les différentes sources historiques – orales, écrites et matérielles – et sur la manière d'écrire l'histoire afri-caine 1. En particulier, je voudrais aborder ici le sujet du rapport entre ora-lité et écriture sous un angle quelque peu négligé : celui de l'écriture de l'histoire (orale). Deuxièmement, je voudrais focaliser mon attention sur la chronologie, enjeu de taille du débat sur la fiabilité respective des sources orales et des sources écrites et sujet majeur des préoccupations et des contributions théoriques d'Yves Person. En troisième lieu, je voudrais plaider en faveur de la recomposition de toute forme de dichotomie ou de « grand partage » et proposer une meilleure intégration entre sources de différente nature et origine.

This paper summarizes the development and classification of Cameroon Pidgin English and Camfranglais, two mixed languages in Cameroon.  Pidgin is one of the source languages for Camfranglais, providing an interesting case of a mixed language influencing another mixed language.

This article briefly outlines the history of the colonial diamond industry of Sierra Leone from 1930 to 1961, highlighting its contingent aspects and the bonds guiding the decisions and actions taken by local social actors in different contexts and at different times. By drawing on colonial documents and memoirs of colonial officers, it shows how the colonial government of Sierra Leone and the mining company that exercised a monopoly on diamond extraction collaborated on the establishment of a series of legislative and disciplinary devices that encompassed forms of biopolitical expertise.

Portuguese edition of this extraordinary work, which it keeps us to know about this continent. (First volume Metodologia e pré-história da África EDITOR J. KI-ZERBO) UNESCO Representação no BRASIL Ministério da Educação do BRASIL Universidade Federal de São Carlos)

This chapter examines the characteristics and consequences of African-European interactions in West Africa.  Emphasis is placed on the varied nature of the contact setting and the evaluation of culture change in African populations during the period of initial European contact, trade, and colonization.  Archaeological data, documentary sources, and oral traditions are used to evaluate transformations in African worldviews.  Although a general relationship between an expanding Eurocentric economic system and changing artifact inventories is recognized, inferences concerning the alteration of nonmaterial cultural systems are viewed as more difficult and challenging to asses.  Acknowledgement of the varied ways in which material remains represent cultures and their tropes, and how changes in shared beliefs or worldviews may be identified archaeologically, is seen as  fundamental to archaeologists' perceptions of the past.  These issues are highlighted by recent work at the site of Elmina in coastal Ghana.

The Senufo peoples in West Africa and in Cote d’Ivoire, in particular, have suffered a double colonization, including that of the Mandingo who have had the most penetrating and pervasive cultural and linguistic impact on them. Mandingo loan surnames within the Senufo communities are quite an edifying example. Although many members of these communities are complaisant about these loan names, over the years, increasing numbers of Senufo have expressed the desire to recover their ancient surname. Amidst this movement, a line on the sly, both insidious and alarming, has been firmly taking place. Indeed, some Senufo, more often than not, senior executives and icons of the Senufo communities, have abandoned the ancestral surname to adopt a new surname – the first or middle name of their father or a revered ancestor. Given the dimensions of Senufo names and surnames, what justifies this adoption? In what ways does this endangers the survival of the Senufo identity? It turns out that this p...

On connaît encore mal les processus d’affranchissement au sein des sociétés africaines avant la fin du XIXème siècle en Afrique de l’Ouest. L’esclavage fut officiellement aboli en Afrique occidentale française (AOF) en 1905 mais certaines émancipations personnelles et collectives eurent lieu bien avant cette abolition coloniale. Elles prirent dans certains cas la forme de révoltes qui sont encore rapportées aujourd’hui par quelques sources orales. Ces informations restent cependant difficiles d’accès et les archives coloniales sont souvent pauvres à ce titre (Rodet, 2010). Cependant, certaines trajectoires d’émancipation de la deuxième moitié du XIXème siècle peuvent nous permettre d’amorcer une réflexion sur des processus d’émancipation s’inscrivant dans la longue durée. C’est à ces formes de résistances, de révoltes et de rébellions contre l’esclavage dans la région de Kayes au Mali avant la fin officielle de l’esclavage que cet article s’intéresse.

Photography's particular histories in west Africa suggest that the medium has been profoundly shaped by subsequent viewers and owners who have altered and adapted photographs for their personal use. Rooted in the objects and conceptual frameworks of family collections in Accra and Cape Coast, Ghana, this paper explores portraiture as a technology of multiples layered with non-photographic techniques , and these objects' "creative audiences." Photography here has long been a performative and socially expansive category of object and subject.

RESUMO
Fruto de pesquisas iniciadas em um encontro de pesquisadores na Universidade Gaston Berger, em Saint-Louis do Senegal, em 2017, o presente artigo analisa retratos e autorretratos de estúdio produzidos pelo artista-fotógrafo senegalês Omar Victor Diop, a
partir de três séries fotográficas: Studio of Vanities (2012),
Diaspora (2014) e Liberty (2016). O intuito consiste em destacar
os diálogos e releituras estéticas travados com a tradição da
fotografia de estúdio da África ocidental, em especial os retratos
produzidos pelo fotógrafo malinense Seydou Keïta em meados do
século XX. Da mesma forma, buscou-se observar de que modo as
imagens produzidas por Diop reescrevem histórias e personagens
da África e da Diáspora, articulando-as com a agenda
contemporânea do combate à colonialidade epistêmica e ao
racismo ao passo que expandem o acesso a narrativas visuais
protagonizadas por africanos no cenário internacional.
___________________________________
ABSTRACT
This article analyzes studio portraits and self-portraits produced
by the Senegalese artist-photographer Omar Victor Diop. It draws
on three photography series: Studio of Vanities (2012), Diaspora
(2014) and Liberty (2016). The aim is to highlight Diop’s aesthetic reinterpretations of, and dialogues with, the tradition of West
African studio photography, especially the portraits produced by
the Malian photographer Seydou Keïta in mid-20th century.
Likewise, the article seeks to track how the images produced by
Diop rewrite stories and characters from Africa and the Diaspora,
by connecting them with the contemporary agenda of the struggles against racism and epistemic coloniality, while also expanding access to visual narratives protagonized by Africans on the
international stage.

The term “Moor”and its variants have long been used throughout Europe as synonyms for Nigri or Negro and to denote various black-skinned and nearly black peoples. In the last century or so, it has been presumed that ancient “Moorish” Muslims in the Iberian peninsula were erroneously thought of as black by medieval Europeans. It has also been presupposed that the term “Moro” in the Iberian peninsula originally denoted Saracens and Berber-speakers that were distinct from modern “blacks” of Africa in phenotype and biological origin. It has been concluded that early “Berber” populations in North Africa were descendants of ancient  “Caucasoids“ who have absorbed different black African populations in recent times. Similarly it is believed that the Arab populations of North Africa a thousand years ago were mainly “Caucasoid” groups affiliated with present populations of the Levant.

Historical documents, physical anthropology, linguistics, archeology and traditional record in Muslim Africa and Asia, however, support the view that early “Berber” clans entering Europe were not only “blacks” and “near blacks” in the literal sense, but affiliated with early and current black populations of the Fezzan, Mzab, Syrtica, the Moroccan Riff, Sudan, Sahara and Sahel designated Garawa, Masmuda, Jarawa or Wangara, and Zaghawa, Zaghai or Songhai.

The Tuwarek or Tuareg were also one of the originally "Ethiopic" peoples of coastal regions of North Africa once  designated Lewathes, Mauri, Austuriani,  Nasamones and Mazikes or "Mazazeces"  from which comes the nationalist term  "Amazigh" of modern Berber-speakers.  The Tuareg peoples in combination with the original Beriberi or "Berbers" were the populations first referred to as Mauri or Moors, a designation which was utilized for them as late as the early Medieval period.

Black Africans in Renaissance Europe

Thomas Foster Earle, K. J. P. Lowe
Cambridge University Press, 26 May 2005

Summary
This book, first published in 2005, opens up the much neglected area of the black African presence in Western Europe during the Renaissance. Covering history, literature, art history and anthropology, it investigates a whole range of black African experience and representation across Renaissance Europe, from various types of slavery to black musicians and dancers, from real and symbolic Africans at court to the view of the Catholic Church, and from writers of African descent to black African 'criminality'. The main purpose of the collection is to show the variety and complexity of black African life in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe, and how it was affected by firmly held preconceptions relating to the African continent and its inhabitants. Of enormous importance for both European and American history, this book mixes empirical material and theoretical approaches, and addresses such issues as stereotypes, changing black African identity, and cultural representation in art and literature.