African Empire Research Articles

The Empire Writes Back: African Challenges to the Brutish (South African) Empire in the Early 20th Century

This paper examines African critical views on empires in the early 20th century. Historians regard modern African challenges to empire and the settler state in South(ern) Africa as a post-Second World War phenomenon; before then, entrenched empire loyalism among black elites held sway. I argue that while loyalism remained influential, black intellectuals and political leaders, from the earliest articulation of African nationalism, began to critique European and South African empires qua empire just as they first began to synchronise their forces across the terrain of a South African state aggressively developing imperial ambitions. In this counter-discourse, Africans adapted, inverted and subverted polite imperial discourse in their press, speeches and praise poetry that eulogised past African empires and criticised, even condemned, Boer and British imperialism. British Empire, South African empire, African empire; all this requires a re-figuring of how historians conceive African response to empire.

Empire and Nation

In this article, I suggest that the idea of the South African empire may need further conceptual elaboration if it is to support and sustain the project of keeping alive a desire for a post-apartheid future as a possible horizon in Southern African historiography. A notion of the South African empire bound to the desire for a post-apartheid future will depend on our ability to distinguish between ideological racism and biopolitics. The biopolitics of apartheid was not merely a reaction to the setting sun of the British Empire, or the dissolution of liberal reason. It was, as I will show, a response to the very question of political subjectivity in liberal discourse. Biopolitics, in contrast to ideological racism, demands a reading of empire that advances and elaborates a concept of the post-apartheid. To this end, earlier critical models that were applied to readings of empire specifically locate empire's force in imperial war or the ravages of imperialism. Perhaps such critiques may be productively enlivened by a demand to keep the desire for the post-apartheid in sight. To the extent that empire always also reveals itself as the story of the postcolonial nation, might the intended critique of the South African empire afford us an opportunity to think our way out of the tragic scripts of the 19th and 20th centuries?

Rethinking Empire in Southern Africa

This special issue on the ‘South African empire’ evolved from the South African empire research project, the origins of which lie in the discomfort of a number of historians of Namibia with dominan...

The Graves of Dimbaza and the Empire of Liberation

This paper focuses on the ambiguous, contradictory and montaged space of Dimbaza in the former Ciskei bantustan of the Eastern Cape, figured simultaneously as homeland resettlement village, betterment rural township, decentralised industrialisation showcase, site of political banishment, international symbol of apartheid difference and as graveyard of the racially discarded, among others. Drawing on empire as the dependent space to command sovereignty, the paper considers Dimbaza in terms of South African empire. While it is suggested that as a means to re-figure the South African political, the bantustan may be read as a mark of a South African empire ‘project’, the paper is more concerned to ‘think with empire as a theoretical concept’. The paper draws on the elements of knowledge susceptible to being assembled by historical imagination – written documents, letters in the International Defence and Aid Fund (IDAF) Collection, contemporary testimonies, and visual sources (including the important film documentary Last Grave at Dimbaza) – and which constitute or resist the native/racial/ethnic/African subject (and thus are seen to exemplify the racial spatial command of the sovereign). We assemble these in relation to seemingly antagonistic historical formulations, particularly ‘colonialism of a special type’ and the politics of exile and liberation. We propose that, rather than returning us to South African ‘empire’ as a totality, the term offers us multiple singularities that allow us to consider the imaginative formulation of the ‘empire of liberation’ as a dependent space that continues to command sovereignty within the ‘native question’.

The NE 51 Series Frontier: The Grand Narrative of Apartheid Planning and the Small Town

The article proposes to bring the urban development of Usakos, a small Namibian town on the fringe of the South African empire, into conversation with the ‘grand narrative’ of the apartheid city. Narratives of the apartheid city were shaped by contemporary academic architectural discourses sustained by those who pioneered and promoted urban planning in South Africa. It was formulated in texts on architecture and apartheid produced in the 1980s and 1990s, which developed a strong argument about South African architects' involvement in the creation of standardised housing for Africans. Big cities constituted the main reference for both critics and promoters of South African urban planning, and their analyses subscribed to paradigmatic notions of rapidly growing cities and inevitable housing crises, slums and chaos. The analysis of the urban development in Usakos in the 20th century allows for challenging the teleological model of such hegemonic narratives. The case of a small town also integrates otherwise separate discussions on ‘white’ and ‘black’ housing. In Usakos, the transformation of urban space was primarily ideologically driven, and part of a general attempt to create a tangible and visible experience of a homogenous imperial South African space. One of the dominant material manifestations of such an imperial space were the iconic NE 51 series houses in standardised neighbourhoods, to which Africans were forcibly removed.

Mobilising Britain's African Empire for War: Pragmatism vs Trusteeship

Britain's African territories provided a reservoir of manpower that was heavily exploited during the First World War to aid the imperial war effort. Africans were recruited for service as labourers on the Western Front and, more importantly, staffed the vast logistics organisation that sustained multiple campaigns in Africa. Mobilising African subject populations raised difficult questions about the nature of British rule, particularly the racial hierarchies that sustained it. Voluntary recruiting was the model espoused by the colonial state, but in reality local systems of governance were exploited to impress men into service. Once on campaign African labourers suffered from high casualty rates as disease ravaged the lines of communication. This brutal wartime experience was not confined to those living under British rule, with German forces also sustained by poorly-treated African labourers. Mobilisation for the imperial war effort and the negligence of commanders during campaigns reveals the extent to which African colonial subjects were viewed as an exploitable resource during the First World War; an attitude that would leave a complex post-war legacy for the colonial powers in Africa.

Italian Cinema and the Fascist Past: Tracing Memory Amnesia

In Italy, cinema has contributed to constructing a paradox of memory in which the rememberer is asked to prevent past mistakes from happening again and yet is encouraged to forget what those mistakes were, or that they ever even took place. Through an examination of the long-term trends in Italian cinema about the Fascist period, this article explores its recurrent tropes alongside its recurrent absences, isolating in particular the act of killing and Italy’s African Empire as crucial absences in Italy’s memory. The dominant narrative of italiani brava gente explains popular amnesia and institutional silences that still surround the darkest and bloodiest pages in Italy’s history. From the narratives of innocence and sacrifice that populate the canon of Italian film about Fascism to the sanitised representations of Italy’s wars of aggression or the boycott of Moustapha Akkad’s The Lion of the Desert (1981), this paper argues that recurrent presences and absences in Italy’s cinematic memories of the long Second World War have not been random but coherent, cogent and consistent.

Six theses on forced labor in the Portuguese empire of continental Africa

Forced labor in Portugal’s African colonies during the twentieth century is often generalized in the literature as a “simple continuation” of slavery because the historiography related to the continental territories of Portugal’s third African empire has been overly influenced by the situation of São Tomé e Príncipe, where this “continuation” was the case. This article defends six theses: 1. In Portugal’s continental colonies, the end of the slave trade and the beginning of forced labor did not succeed each other through a regime of transition, but rather of rupture. 2. The introduction of forced labor was not a Portuguese “archaism” but a modern capitalist rupture. 3. Forced labor was able to function only in the framework of an articulation of the modes of production by maintaining a subalternized domestic production, which subsisted thanks to an acute gender oppression. 4. It was not the case of the law promulgated in Portugal being “erroneously applied in the colonies”. 5. This legislation was racist not only in terms of phenotype, but also in its function as a discrimination founded on the sphere of production, defining the exclusion of an entire people. 6. It is this situation that paradoxically nourished the ideology of assimilation

The Trans-Saharan Railway and the Politics of Imperial Expansion, 1890–1900

The trans-Saharan railway scheme was the dominant, if intermittent, theme of French African expansion in the last 20 years of the nineteenth century. Behind political and economic arguments for the scheme lay a hidden agenda—the promotion of Algerian railway interests. Its revival in 1890, after a ten-year interval, was driven by a need to safeguard returns on railway investments, threatened by the growing political influence of the Radicals. Success in a campaign on its behalf was dependent on reinvigorating empire-building in tropical Africa, a function performed by the Chad plan, which also provided the required territorial configuration for a trans-Saharan railway. Subsequently, interest shifted from West Africa to the Sahara where efforts to promote railway construction through exploitation of the Tuat question stood greater chances of success. Saharan expansion was delayed for almost a decade by the obstinacy of the Algerian generals and the timidity of governments in France, before finally being resolved by a fait accompli. However, political circumstances at home, and the emergence of new railway competition in the Sahara, prevented the railway companies from reaping the full reward for their efforts. On the map, if not in any practical sense, a territorially unified French African empire had been completed by 1900, whose origins can be traced directly to the activities of the railway lobby.

“The Citizen Who is Not:” Nicole Waligora-Davis’s <i>Sanctuary: African Americans and Empire</i>

“The Citizen Who is Not:” Nicole Waligora-Davis’s <i>Sanctuary: African Americans and Empire</i>

From El Wak to Sidi Rezegh: The Union Defence Force’s First Experience of Battle in East and North Africa, 1940-1941

After J.C. Smuts (1870–1950) had managed to unseat J.B.M. Hertzog (1866–1942) as Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa it was clear that the country would enter the Second World War on the side of Great Britain. In spite of extensive changes and an increased budget the Union Defence Force (UDF) found itself in a state of war on 7 September 1939 with a Permanent Force of only 5 400 men with limited training and antiquated equipment. While Hitler’s armies conquered Western Europe the Springboks prepared to go North and in spite of trepidations about the might of Mussolini’s East African Empire the First South African Infantry Division set sail for East Africa in mid-July 1940. In five short months, Mussolini’s East African Empire had been torn to shreds. Victorious in every major engagement, the South Africans embarked for Egypt in June 1941. Here they encountered similar logistical problems as were prevalent before they embarked for East Africa. With two divisions in the field and a third in training, UDF planners had a trying time marshalling enough motorised transport to enable the Springboks to keep pace with the increased mobility that was a hallmark of desert warfare. Expecting to build on their success over the Italians the South Africans confidently went into battle, but by November 1941, the 5 th South African Infantry Brigade was annihilated and the victors of East Africa badly mauled. Fighting low-moraled Italian armies in the bush and mountains of Abyssinia was quite easy; beating the Germans in the desert would be a different story altogether.

<em>A Glorious Age in Africa, Ghana, Mali, and Songhay: The Story of Three Great African Empires</em>, Daniel Chu and Elliott Skinner

<em>A Glorious Age in Africa, Ghana, Mali, and Songhay: The Story of Three Great African Empires</em>, Daniel Chu and Elliott Skinner

Sanctuary: African Americans and Empire / The Problem of the Future World: W. E. B. DuBois and the Race Concept at Midcentury

Sanctuary: African Americans and Empire / The Problem of the Future World: W. E. B. DuBois and the Race Concept at Midcentury

From hydroimperialism to hydrocapitalism: ‘French’ hydraulics in France, North Africa, and beyond

This article examines hydroimperialism and the subsequent emergence of hydrocapitalism in 19th- and 20th-century France and beyond. As the terms themselves suggest, both forms of ‘hydropower’ illustrate the fundamental connection between water, its management, and colonial or neocolonial relations in the modern era. The article develops the concepts of hydroimperialism and hydrocapitalism both historically and analytically. It examines some of the historical processes that fostered and shaped French hydroimperialism during the colonial era, with French North Africa serving as the empirical example. It also explores how French political and technical elites basically advocated hydroimperialism, often from France to its North African empire, but also from the colonies to the metropole. Obscuring these earlier mobilities and exchanges, French water specialists in the late 20th century have pushed for the export of their hydraulic expertise ‘globally’. Finally, although this study of hydroimperialism and hydrocapitalism is based on historical sources and methods, and their particular forms are thus situated in France, French North Africa, and parts of the global South, these concepts are analytically flexible. They facilitate historical comparisons while also helping to theorize the mutual constitution of science and technology, environmental management, and power in the modern world.

The Institute of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine of Lisbon and its Research in Medical Microbiology

th century, when, following the independence of Brazil and in the middle of tough disputes with the biggest colonizing powers in Europe (namely Germany and United Kingdom) for the possession and domain of its African territories, a national consciousness and pressure for the establishment of “civilizing stations” throughout the Portuguese African empire began to emerge [1]. By this time, it was recognized that no successful fixation of European colonists would be possible without prior control of the biggest tropical endemics that afflicted entire populations in the overseas’ colonies. The specialty of Tropical Medicine, mainly practiced by military doctors, was beginning to be seen as an indispensable complement of the colonization efforts. Indeed, the former Minister of the British colonies Joseph Chamberlain well translated this concern, by stating that “the fight against tropical diseases constitutes the real basis of the politics of colonization” [2]. The important biomedical discoveries in the field of Tropical Medicine by the late 19 th century led to the need for developing and deepening the research and teaching of this medical branch and, ultimately, to the creation, all across Europe, of several schools of Tropical Medicine: Liverpool, London (both in 1899), Hamburg (1900) and Lisbon (1902). Until 1935, the designation of ‘School’ well matched the essential role of the institution in providing support for healthcare in the tropical colonies of the Portuguese empire, aligned with the activities of the closely-located Colonial Hospital of Lisbon. This was carried out not only by the ‘indoors’ activities, but also through permanent and temporary working missions to the colonial territories; these missions assumed a predominant feature of headship in Africa and of advisory in Asia. After 1935, the Institute became formally named as ‘Institute of Tropical Medicine’. This shifting of the name from ‘School’ to ‘Institute’ corresponded to an increasing focus on teaching and research activities, attributes that resemble those of a university institution. During its long story, several internationally renowned entities in the field of Tropical Medicine taught and researched in the Institute, some of them even becoming directors. Some of these personalities were Ayres Kopke (one of the Institute’s founders), Joao Fraga de Azevedo, Francisco Cambournac (appointed in 1954, for the position of Director-General of the WHO for Africa) and Aldo Castellani (world-top specialist in the field of Tropical Medicine, he began to teach in the Institute in 1947). In 1958, the VI th Congress of Tropical Medicine and Malaria took place in the Institute, with the presence of many representatives from international organizations working in Tropical Medicine. It has been argued that the enormous success of this event was perceived in the Portuguese colonies and that such prestigious image rendered undeniable benefits even during the hard periods of active war for independence of the African colonies, when the working missions of the Institute were always allowed to circulate freely and to tackle their field tasks [2]. In 1972, the current ‘Institute of Hygiene and Tropical

Egypt’s African Empire: Samuel Baker, Charles Gordon and the Creation of Equatoria

Book Review| October 01 2011 Egypt’s African Empire: Samuel Baker, Charles Gordon and the Creation of Equatoria Egypt’s African Empire: Samuel Baker, Charles Gordon and the Creation of Equatoria, Alice Moore-Harell Robert S. Kramer Robert S. Kramer Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Northeast African Studies (2011) 11 (2): 145–147. https://doi.org/10.2307/41932056 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Robert S. Kramer; Egypt’s African Empire: Samuel Baker, Charles Gordon and the Creation of Equatoria. Northeast African Studies 1 October 2011; 11 (2): 145–147. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/41932056 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressNortheast African Studies Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2011 Michigan State University2011 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Arabic Language as a source of Diplomatic Relations between Sokoto Caliphate and its Neighbours

The idea of sending massages from one person to another is a tradition that is as old as man in history. With the development of the art of writing, Arabic language played and still plays an important role in communication as a medium of expression. In most of the West African empires, Arabic served as the official language of administration. For instance, in old Ghana Empire, Mali, Songhay, and Kanem-Borno, the role of Arabic was very prominent. In the Sokoto Caliphate, it was a language of administration used for keeping records and documents. More importantly, it was a language of literacy, civilization and cultural attainment of the period. This paper discusses Arabic language as a source of diplomatic relations between the Sokoto Caliphate and its neighbours. In doing this, we began by looking at the historical foundation of Sokoto Caliphate. We then discussed the historical background of Arabic and literary works of some scholars. In the second part of the paper, we looked at the role of Arabic language in the official correspondence within the Sokoto Caliphate on one hand and between the Sokoto Caliphate and its neighbours on the other hand. The third part of this paper focused on the official correspondence, the probable dates and location of the letters with examples.

Fascist Italy and the Middle East, 1933-40, by Nir Arielli

This book meticulously puts flesh and blood on Mussolini's pretensions to make Fascist Italy the dominant Mediterranean imperial power, concentrating on the usually underestimated attempts to make an impression on the Middle East, where British and French interests ruled supreme. It inserts itself carefully into the continuing historiographical debate, largely conducted between British and American historians of Fascism and the conservative nationalist De Felician school of Italian historians, about Mussolini's real intentions in the Mediterranean. It partly validates the De Felician view that Mussolini's Middle Eastern policies were largely dictated by the vicissitudes of the relationship between Britain and Fascist Italy. Italian foreign policy was very anti-British after the Italian conquest of Ethiopia in 1935–6, less so after the so-called Easter Accords of 1938, which appeared to settle a range of contested issues between the two powers in the Mediterranean, from the Spanish Civil War to Arabia, and secured for Mussolini British recognition of Italy's East African empire. But the book ultimately parts company with the De Felician viewpoint that Mussolini's policies were only ever intended to bring about a recognition of imperial parity with Britain in the Mediterranean. De Felice's interpretation makes Britain's reluctance to accept the offer of Mediterranean parity the real cause of the breakdown of Anglo-Italian relations and Fascist Italy's entry into the Second World War on the side of its Axis partner, Nazi Germany. Instead, the book makes clear that Mussolini was serious about achieving Mediterranean hegemony, rather than parity in agreement with Britain; thus, when the Middle East became a major theatre of war for Fascist Italy and the Axis, this was in fact the culmination, or extension into war, of inter-war policies which aimed to bring the region into the Italian Fascist sphere of influence.

Egypt's African Empire: Samuel Baker, Charles Gordon, and the Creation of Equatoria – By Alice Moore‐Harell

Egypt's African Empire: Samuel Baker, Charles Gordon, and the Creation of Equatoria – By Alice Moore‐Harell

In the Shadow of the Algerian War: The United States and the Common Organisation of Saharan Regions (OCRS), 1957–62

The traumatic decolonisation of Algeria has tended to overshadow more peaceful transfers of power elsewhere in the French African Empire. This is particularly so in the case of the Sahara, where local populations accommodated themselves exceptionally well to colonial rule after the First World War. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the political stability of the region, combined with its newly discovered energetic resources and strategic value as a nuclear testing site, led the French to reflect upon ways of preparing for the Sahara a future separate from the rest of Algeria, the fate of which was increasingly clear as de Gaulle had no choice but to gear his policy towards self-determination. The Common Organisation of Saharan Regions (OCRS) intended to merge all French territories in the Sahara, in an attempt to guarantee prolonged French control over the region while justifying it on the grounds that oil revenue was to finance the development of the areas where extraction took place. The widely publicised developmental concerns of the initiative were at odds with its neo-colonial undertones, and it could not have escaped the attention of the two successive US administrations that had to deal with the controversial question of their position vis-à-vis a NATO ally embattled in what seemed a lost colonial cause. The role of the US in post-war decolonisation processes has been given more prominence in recent historiography, but it had never been studied in the case of the Sahara, in spite of repeated French fears of American interest in Saharan oil resources at the time of the Algerian war. Based on State Department archives, this paper throws lights upon an often-forgotten aspect of Franco-American relations in the context of the decolonisation of European empires.