Scramble For Africa Research Articles

How French Currency Imperialism in Africa Led to the Assassination of Muammar Gaddafi

AbstractWho was responsible for the assassination of Muammar Gaddafi, the president of Libya? The official story says it was Libyan rebels who were seeking justice against a political dictator. But there is more than meets the eye regarding this assassination, which was an orchestrated event. Yet, the mainstream media have ignored the evidence that counters the official narrative. Emails between former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her aide Sidney Blumenthal describe how French currency imperialism in Africa led to the death of Gaddafi. John Perkins, a former economic “hitman,” draws the same conclusion. In this article, we reveal why the French government had strong motives to silence Gaddafi and to put an end to his efforts to replace the CFA franc with a truly African currency not controlled by an imperial power.

China–Africa Relations in The Economist, 2019–2021

The ‘Scramble for Africa’ has historically been a concept used to describe the plunder of Africa by colonial powers, their subsequent economic capture of African resources, their political control and their racial domination of Africans. But, in recent times, many writers have pointed to Chinese ‘Scramble for Africa’. Of these depictions, The Economist’s has been both categorical and relentless. But is the set of relationships between China and African countries imperial? Does it amount to a Chinese ‘Scramble for Africa’? If so, what can be done; if not, why not? Neither content nor institutional analyses of 27 stories, sampled from 132 issues of The Economist from 2019 to 2021, show conclusive evidence that the relationship between China and Africa is imperial. Evidence of African indebtedness to China, Chinese opaque resource transactions in Africa, and the controlling effect of China’s Belt and Road Initiative typically emphasised by The Economist is serious. But it does not amount to economic plunder, political control, military destabilisation or racial domination. The Economist’s characterisation of China–Africa relations reflects wider processes of Westernisation. Its features include the use of mainstream economic analysis, (mis)representation of the Global South to maintain Western hegemony and inhibiting Southern struggle to break the Western chokehold on global development. As an elite newspaper, The Economist’s ‘frame analysis’ not only presents news, but also produces views that caricature Global South agendas, especially those that threaten Western liberalism and imperialism.

Colonialism, malaria, and the decolonization of global health.

This paper explores the decolonization of global health through a focus on malaria and European colonialism in Africa. We employ an historical perspective to better articulate what "colonial" means and to specify in greater detail how colonial ideas, patterns, and practices remain an obstacle to progress in global health now. This paper presents a history of malaria, a defining aspect of the colonial project. Through detailed analysis of the past, we recount how malaria became a colonial problem, how malaria control rose to prominence as a colonial activity, and how interest in malaria was harnessed to create the first schools of tropical medicine and the academic specialization now known as global health. We discuss how these historical experiences shape malaria policy around the world today. The objective of this paper is to advance discussion about how malaria and other aspects of global health could be decolonized, and to suggest directions for future analysis that can lead to concrete steps for action.

Cold War and Decolonisation: The British Response to Soviet Union Anti-colonialism in Sub-Saharan Africa

ABSTRACT This study examined the British response to the Soviet Union’s expansion and the rapid onset of the Cold War in sub-Saharan Africa in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The Soviet Union considered ‘The Third World’ the primary battlefield of the Cold War and took advantage of the international trend of anti-colonialism to exert pressure on the West. At the same time, the Soviet Union promised Africans economic development and improved living standards after African countries achieved independence and relentlessly disseminated anti-colonial propaganda at the United Nations and in the region. The Soviet Union’s anti-colonialist propaganda offended Britain by repudiating the liberal imperial ideas that British policymakers believed in and proclaimed at the time. As Britain faced criticism of neo-colonialism, the nation moved towards decolonisation, opting to continue with an ‘informal empire’ backed by the United States. The spread of anti-colonialism in sub-Saharan British Africa, as African nations strove for independence, and Britain’s response to this period of change should be read within a larger narrative rather than as a chapter in decolonisation history. This narrative offers clues to understanding Britain’s struggle for survival post-empire.

“Savage War” as “People’s War”: Nineteenth-Century African Wars, European Perceptions, and the Future of Warfare

This article first looks at how British, French, and German officers assessed the specifics of nineteenth-century colonial warfare and how they distinguished it from wars in Europe. Part 2 explores, on the basis of war reports from the nineteenth century and secondary literature, the significance of specifically African war traditions from precolonial times and how these came into play when, in the second half of the century, within a few decades the European colonial powers divided the continent among themselves with enormous brutality in their “scramble for Africa.” In their mental baggage Europeans brought ideas about war as having to “take a different form in Africa,” to quote a Prussian observer of the Franco-Moroccan War. What did this imply for their own style of warfare? Part 3 intervenes in the politically charged debate about how the European experience of nineteenth-century colonial warfare shaped war, and genocide, in twentieth-century Europe. The wars in nineteenth-century Africa, both precolonial and colonial, were not “contained” (gehegt) wars, to use Carl Schmitt’s term. Following 1815, in most of Europe the containment of warfare—that is, the separation of combatants and the civilian population—worked for a hundred years. After that, no more. Why? Does the experience of colonial warfare offer an explanation? This article tests an explanation that hinges on an unconventional comparison of what Europeans called “savage war” in Africa and “people’s war” (Volkskrieg) in Europe.

Oil Palm: A Global History

Oil Palm: A Global History

Sport, War and the British: 1850 to the Present

The intersection of Britain's military and civilian worlds during wartimes has received no shortage of attention. Yet these explorations largely overlook or underplay the role of sport. What distinguishes Peter Donaldson's text is his analysis of how sporting language and imagery were used to both shape and reveal popular understandings of military service and war. His emphasis on sporting metaphors as cognitive tools that entangled war with cultural values, thereby evoking emotional responses to conflict by blurring literal and figurative boundaries, is particularly revealing. “Packaging conflict in the language and imagery of sport,” Donaldson observes, “helped to promote self-sacrifice on the frontline, sustain bellicosity on the home front and mitigate grief for the bereaved” (3). This exploration of conceptual metaphors in the narration of Britain's wars—how they were packaged, configured, and presented to the public, most of whom experienced war vicariously—gives insights into the cultural values of the time from which that narration is produced.Sport, War and the British comprises five chapters, spanning more than 150 years of military endeavors. Each chapter deals with a period of military engagement, from Victorian imperial conquests to the South African War, through the First and Second World Wars to wars in the nuclear age. This longitudinal study allows Donaldson to show continuities and shifts in how war was understood by the wider public against the backdrop of changing material conditions within society. He identifies popular understandings of the sport-war intersection as representative of ideologies and values which were characteristic of a particular sociocultural present.Donaldson begins his text with an exploration of the Victorian notion that the sports pitch and battlefield paralleled one another. While his key analysis is the conceptual metaphors used by civilians and combatants to make sense of Britain's wars, he also explores the pervasive mythology that sport served as a prelude to war. The cult of athleticism, as spread through the public schooling system, engrained physical endeavor upon generations of young men as a central pillar of British national identity and imperial power, making sporting ability widely held as perhaps the key marker of an effective combatant. The “sporting warrior” was believed to possess the physical fitness and aptitude for war originating from a sense of fair play, moral purpose, teamwork, and self-sacrifice derived from the sports field and which were easily transposed onto the battlefield. The effect, Donaldson shows, is that the sporting imagery employed to represent imperial conquests in Africa and India to the British public served to legitimize, but also obscure, the brutal realities of colonial warfare.From here on, the “sporting warrior” became an increasingly tenuous concept. The appropriateness of the cult of anti-intellectual athleticism, which underscored British public schooling and, accordingly, much of its military corps, was called into question during the South African War when soldiers struggled to suppress Boer guerrillas. Yet the perceived martial benefits of physical activity kept the army devoted to an all-embracing sporting culture. The mechanized warfare of the two world wars exposed the notion that sport could be an ideal training ground for military service. Although recourse to sporting imagery and language remained tools to impose meaning and nobility upon combat, these wars severely challenged the morality of viewing conflict as extensions of the sports field. While representation of war through sporting metaphors endures, amongst the armed forces, sport has come to be held as something in which soldiers partook recreationally, rather than as a substitute for the professional study of war.Donaldson shows that throughout Britain's wars, and despite numerous challenges, sport remained firmly embedded in the popular consciousness of civilians and combatants and served as an enduring frame of reference to make sense of conflict. For soldiers, sport made the foreignness of war more familiar while also demonstrating that they had not abandoned their civilities amid the brutalities. For civilians, sporting language was a shorthand to make sense of wartime complexities and legitimate conflict.Sport, War and the British is effectively a cultural history of a dominant ideology embedded in middle- and upper-class value systems. Donaldson draws extensively on those who, in their day, comprised the ruling classes and opinion leaders within society—headmasters, novelists, journalists, war correspondents, newspaper and magazine editors, politicians, high-ranking military officials, and artists. The transmission of this ideology is evident in the way, for instance, children's books socialized young boys into the “sporting warrior” image and how adults were reminded of the virtues of amateur sport through war novels, memoirs, and biographies, which linked military success to athletic prowess. Donaldson's use of Mass Observation surveys, while enabling wider conclusions about popular beliefs, demonstrates how entrenched the ideology around sport was. This text captures many of the continuities of a British sporting ethic molded in the value system of the late-Victorian genteel, for whom amateur sport helped to counter the perceived decadent forces within the British Empire.

THE NEW SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA’S OIL: IMPLICATION FOR LABOUR AND EMPLOYMENT

Purpose: The new scramble for Africa is marked by an influx of direct investment for the extraction and exploitation of the region’s natural resources, which has undoubtedly boosted the expansion of African commodities such as oil and minerals, as well as promoting rapid economic growth in several countries in the continent. Regrettably, Africa’s labour has been largely ignored, as most oil and mineral investments are capital-intensive and are likely to displace labour in local production, while also jeopardizing the continent’s job prospects. The study looked at the impact of FDI in the oil sector on labour employment in ten oil-rich African countries from 1995 to 2018 as part of its investigation into the new scramble and labour in Africa. Methodology/approach: The study used the Instrumental Variable (IV) regression in the context of the system Generalized Method of Moment (SGMM) estimator, based on dynamic panel modelling. Findings: The findings suggest that foreign investments in the oil sector have a positive, but not significant, impact on African labour employment. This suggests that during the review period, foreign investment in the oil sector did not result in a considerable increase in productive job opportunities in the oil-rich African countries. This study established that the new scramble for Africa in the shape of foreign investments in the oil sector did not result in job creation in the region. Originality/value: First, there is sparse literature on oil sector FDI-employment relations in Africa and this study extends literature by employing 10 oil-rich African nations. Second, unlike prior studies, this study applied advanced econometric techniques to account for the problems of unobserved heterogeneity specific to individual countries, cross-sectional dependence, serial correlation and endogeneity issues which are common in panel data regression. Third, this study will assist policymakers in the region to develop policies that will maximize the gains from the oil sector in Africa.

Between State and Empire, Or How Western European Imperialism in Africa Redefined the Polish Nation

The Warsaw positivists, one of Poland’s most influential intellectual collectives, emerged in the 1860s with an ambitious plan to strengthen the Polish nation. The self-proclaimed progressives, enamored with trends popular in Europe’s contemporary liberal circles, declared that Poles were a backward nation stuck in the feudal era. Consequently, they proposed comprehensive national reforms inspired by Western Europe, or the region that the Warsaw positivists designated to be the beacon of progress and civilization. However, as Western European empires intensified their colonial efforts in Africa in the final quarter of the nineteenth century, the Warsaw positivists felt compelled to reassess Western Europe through the lens of its ongoing imperial politics. This article examines the Warsaw positivist critique of Western European imperialism in Africa and argues that while the Warsaw positivists denounced Western European imperial methods, they stopped short of condemning imperialism per se. That allowed them to decry Western Europe for exploiting Africa and simultaneously justify Western European plans to subjugate the continent. Most importantly, the positivist critique of Western European actions in Africa opened space to redefine the place of Poles on the axis of progress and civilization. While never employing the category of whiteness explicitly, the Warsaw positivists included Poles in the increasingly racialized categories of civilization, progress, and Europeanness, even if, or perhaps particularly because, as a nation, Poles were politically vulnerable under the control of Russia, Germany and the Habsburg Empire, functioned on Europe’s margins, and in so many ways lagged behind Western Europe.

Borderland, Migration and the Question of National Identity in Nigeria, 1914-1991

Prior to the European conquest of Africa, the area of study was made up of various political entities with different ethnic and religious backgrounds. However, the British colonization and subsequent 1914 amalgamation brought all ethnic nationalities and regions together to form what is now Nigeria. Nevertheless, the nature of political boundaries in Africa separated people with common ethno-religious and political experiences. Thus, most of the people at the borderlands freely migrate to and from Nigeria to neighbouring countries without respect for immigration laws which made it difficult for national identity in the West African sub-region. Therefore, nationalism and independence in Nigeria/Africa have failed to correct such colonial mistakes which made it difficult to address the question of national identity. Above all, the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) which was established by the NIMC Act No. 23 of 2007 to address the issue of immigrants is still battling the question of national identity.

An Unequal Ethiopia in an Unequal World: Global and Domestic Hierarchies in Afäwärḳ Gäbrä-Iyyäsus’s and Käbbädä Mikael’s Political Thought (1908 and 1949)

ABSTRACT The Ethiopian empire retained its political independence through the European Scramble for Africa. The imperial elites oversaw the transformation of the empire into a territorially-bounded state, part of an international system of states regulated by international law and by international institutions such as the League of Nations, and later the UN. Ethiopian intellectuals were keenly aware that Ethiopia had joined this international system from a subordinated position and that its sovereignty remained at risk. The struggle for sovereignty was fought not only at a diplomatic level, but also at a narrative level. Afäwärḳ Gäbrä-Iyyäsus’s 1908 Traveller’s Guide to Abyssinia and Käbbädä Mikael’s 1949 Ethiopia and Western Civilisation pushed back against the European depiction of Ethiopia as intrinsically inferior and intrinsically unable to develop. Both Afäwärḳ and Käbbädä rejected the rigid determinism of stagist models of development, and argued that Ethiopia and Europe were natural allies by virtue of their shared Christian heritage. Global power hierarchies rigidified Ethiopia’s domestic power hierarchies. The article shows how the way in which Afäwärḳ and Käbbädä defended Ethiopia’s place in an unequal world had important consequences on their vision of domestic nation building, resulting in hierarchical assimilationist policies that marginalised Ethiopia’s non-Christian citizens.

International Fascism and Imperialism in Africa during the Interwar and War Periods: Actors, Motivations and Goals

International Fascism and Imperialism in Africa during the Interwar and War Periods: Actors, Motivations and Goals

Samori Touré and the Portable God: Imagining the Phonographic Conquest of West Africa

During the “Scramble for Africa,” proponents of imperialism imagined the new phonograph as a potential tool of colonization that could use disembodied, recorded voices to enchant indigenous listeners and manipulate them into submission, what I call “phonographic imperialism.” This article studies the iconography of a major turning point in French colonial history—the capture and sentencing of Samori Touré in French Sudan in 1898—and the implications of these sources for the notion of phonographic imperialism within the French empire. By comparing fictitious portrayals of the phonograph in Africa, from French advertisements to a Mande legend from Samori’s native region, we may begin to lay bare the assumptions about listening and fidelity that underpin the concept of the “phonograph-fetish,” a trope that would remain popular for nearly the entire span of the Second French Colonial Empire.

People in Motion: Introduction to Transnational Movements and Transwar Connections in the Anthropological and Genetic Study of Human Populations

People in Motion: Introduction to Transnational Movements and Transwar Connections in the Anthropological and Genetic Study of Human Populations

The ‘Native Question’ in Australia Exploring the Anglo-Australian Humanitarian Response, 1904–1939

ABSTRACT In the first thirty years of the twentieth century the ‘native question’ loomed large in the heart of the British Empire in the context of heightened imperialism in Africa. This reverberated in Australia in the context of the Commonwealth government gaining Dominionhood, making contributions to the League of Nations as an independent mandatory power, and becoming responsible for the administration of the tropical North. A local humanitarian network developed encouraged by what they saw as more humane ideas around ‘Native’ administration emanating from the League and promoted by the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines’ Protection Society. This alignment provides an opportunity to explore relations between empire and nation in connection to this question at a formative moment for both. In particular, it points to the tension created by the vernacularisation of British humanitarian ideals into an advanced settler colonial society and the reach and limits of a humanitarian settlement in the local context.

Reflections on Higher Education in Ghana and Peter Ekeh’s Two Publics

<h3>ABSTRACT:</h3> Peter Ekeh (1975) theorizes in “Colonialism and the Two Publics in Africa: A Theoretical Statement” that, primarily, two publics emerged out of European colonialism in Africa—the primordial public (akin to the ethnic groupings) and the civic public (the state and its bureaucracies). Contrasting dispositions and moral etiquettes are exhibited toward these publics; positing that, while the primordial is seen as vulnerable, and thus nurtured, the civic is an item for exploitation. The dynamics of these publics and the associated interplay of values have become fluid and complex in contemporary Ghana. However, attempting to interrogate these attitudinal dispositions requires an examination of the nature of socialization that occurs in Ghana’s higher education (university) system. The article, therefore, reflects on the colonial antecedents of Ghana’s university education, arguing that it was molded predominantly by the economic aspirations of the colonial enterprise. It is geared toward the production of people who use it to bolster their own economic position, usually through the perpetuation of amoral arrangements. However, the motivation for pursuing higher education is not the desire to confront or alter these established exploitative values and schemes, but the idea of it as an avenue to be co-opted into its bureaucracies. Going forward, I contend that universities must remain cognizant of the colonial foundations and corresponding value systems, and how they consciously or unconsciously sustain them. Universities should engage in critical rethinking in order to nurture a critical mass interested in the development of an equitable society.

Die probleem van historiese skuld in Suid-Afrika The problem of historical guilt in South Africa

OPSOMMING Historiese skuld is ten beste 'n baie problematiese konsep. Dit word duidelik geïllustreer deur die Duitse geskiedenis sedert 1945, toe die Duitsers vir hulself rekenskap moes gee van hul optrede in die jare 1933-1945.1 Wié het wát aan wié gedoen? Wie besluit oor die vraag van skuld of onskuld van wie? En wie of wat gee hulle die reg om dit te doen? Welke morele of regsbeginsels word in die proses gebruik? Ook: Hoe ver moet in die tyd teruggegaan word? Na Columbus se aankoms in die Nuwe Wêreld in 1492? Na Jan van Riebeeck se koms na die Kaap in 1652? Na die "Scramble for Africa" in die negentiende eeu? Die verwoesting van die Boererepublieke en die groot sterfte van die Republikeinse burgerlike bevolking in die konsentrasiekampe in 1899-1902? Die begin van apartheid in 1948? Dit is vrae wat nie so maklik beantwoord kan word nie. Tog, gebeure wat 'n sekere morele grens oorskry - soos die volksmoord op die Jode in die Tweede Wereldoorlog, die Rwandese volksmoord van 1994, of die etniese "suiwering" in die Balkan in dieselfde tyd - het uitgekristalliseer in 'n bepaalde konsensus oor internasionale optrede rakende menseregte in die breedste sin van die woord, en dit is geformaliseer in 'n sekere juridiese benadering oor die saak. Oor die kwessie van historiese skuld in Suid-Afrika is, in elk geval op politieke vlak, reeds besluit. Die paradigma wat die ANC aan die Waarheids-en-Versoeningskommissie (WVK) voorgehou het - wat, met sekere nuanses, basies deur die WVK aanvaar is - was dat daar twee kante in die bevrydingstryd was. Oorvereenvoudig, was dit die "siegte ouens" (die apartheidsregering) teen die "goeie ouens" (die bevrydingsbewegings, veral die ANC/SAKP). Trefwoorde: Apartheid, kommunisme, ANC/SAKP, Nazisme, Karl Jaspers, Alfred Nzo, Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela, pres. FW de Klerk, Afrikanernasionalisme, Lenin, Gandhi, Albert Luthuli, Kabwe, MK, Chris Hani, WVK, Joe Slovo ABSTRACT South Africans are very quick to accuse one another of having been very bad in the past. Afrikaners are accused of severe race discrimination in the form of apartheid. They are portrayed as uniquely evil, almost as bad as the Nazi's in the Second World War. At the same time, especially the ANC/SACP is accused of severe transgressions, such as terrorism in the name of a freedom struggle, supportfor a totalitarian system in the form of Marxism-Leninism, and extreme intolerance of deviant viewpoints in the liberation movement. It would be wrong to view the matter in a simplified way, as the problem of historical guilt is a complex one. In this article, the problem is, firstly, examined from an ethical perspective. Apartheid must be recognised as - when viewed from a Christian viewpoint - immoral and wrong. The policy is examined in detail, with the conclusion that, while there were fleeting moments in which things could have developed more positively, these moments were still-born. Subsequently, the accusation that apartheid was akin to Nazism is examined. It is concluded that, while there were superficial similarities, the differences were too deep, in principle, to be taken seriously. Another aspect that should be seriously considered is why the Afrikaners actually acted in a particular way. Without defending what they had done, it is clear that they, in their own minds, were convinced that the very survival of Afrikaners as a people was at stake amidst threatening historical circumstances exemplified by the political, cultural and economic onslaught of British imperialism, as well as the looming shadow of a vastly superior majority of black people. Lastly, there is the question as to whether the ANC/SACP also has historical guilt to carry. In the light of the way in which the very Kremlin-loyal SACP during the years took over the leadership of the alliance, the answer must be yes. The alliance wanted to replace apartheid with Communism, a policy which has as severe ethical problems as may be ascribed to apartheid. Also, the alliance handled dissenters in an extremely intolerant way by locking them up in concentration camps, where they were treated very cruelly. It is hoped that a nuanced treatise like this could promote a public debate in South Africa. Keywords: Apartheid, communism, ANC/SACP, Nazis, Karl Jaspers, Alfred Nzo, Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela, President FW de Klerk, Afrikaner nationalism, Lenin, Gandhi, Albert Luthuli, Kabwe, MK, Chris Hani, TRC, Joe Slovo

“The Land of Our Fathers”: Black Internationalist Thought and the Congo Free State

“The Land of Our Fathers”Black Internationalist Thought and the Congo Free State Jeannette Eileen Jones (bio) In January 1886, D. Augustus Straker, an African American lawyer, published an article in the New York Freeman wherein he reflected on the Berlin Conference on Africa that convened during the winter of 1884/1885. The Kongokonferenz, as Kaiser Wilhelm II and German Chancellor von Bismarck called it, assembled primarily to address European concerns about free trade in the Congo Basin—the world’s second largest river basin—which was replete with rubber plants and other natural resources. One year after the conference, Straker questioned the avowed benevolence of the “scramble for Africa.” He framed the article around the query “Why Are the European Powers Grasping African Territory?” He explained, It is a matter of no small concern to the sons and daughters of Africa, wherever assembled upon the face of the globe, to perceive the deep interest which the civilized powers of the earth are taking in the development of the resources of the “Dark Continent.” These men and women would “observe the attention which said powers seem now ready to give to the civilization of its races,” understanding that “it is a matter of right and duty that we, who are identified with the African race, the native land of our forefathers … should discuss this topic.” Straker believed that the African heritage of Blacks in the West, particularly that of African Americans, positioned them as legitimate stakeholders in any international actions regarding Africa. He offered an assessment of African affairs, querying whether “the insatiable lust for dominion and wealth” or a “Christian duty” to civilize Africans motivated Europeans to colonize the continenttaking special “interest in the Congo Region.”1 [End Page 26] Access to the Congo Basin, via free navigation of the Congo River and its tributaries, could facilitate European access to the lucrative ivory trade and provide European merchants with a direct route to traverse the continent from east to west. The General Act of the Berlin Conference, ratified in 1886, established European and Ottoman spheres of influences in Africa, sanctioned the creation of foreign protectorates and colonies, ensured the free navigation of the Congo and Niger rivers, promoted free trade throughout the Congo Basin, and formally recognized the Congo Free State (État indépendant du Congo) as a sovereign polity. The act couched the actions of its signatories as necessary for “civilizing” and modernizing Africa. Straker believed that if European motives “be the uplifting of Africa from a state of mental darkness, intellectual inanition and commercial stagnation, to the position of a civilized and prosperous state” based on Christian principles and Westerns arts and sciences, then their work was noble. He reasoned, “The conquest of a barbarous people by a civilized power is justifiable through its benefits.” Accordingly, European efforts in Africa would “establish an era in the world’s progress unprecedented in the past.” Whatever European intentions, Straker emphasized that Blacks should not ignore or take an impartial stance toward the African Question. They had to participate in discussions about the future and status of Africa during this pivotal time in “world” history.2 Straker’s comments reveal an awareness of the geopolitical ramifications of imperialism in Africa from a broad perspective, during a period when most black internationalist strategies and efforts regarding the continent focused on Liberia and Sierra Leone. African Americans’ seeming fixation with the republic of Liberia and the British colony of Sierra Leone stemmed from perceptions of these locales as familial and cultural gateways to Africa. Emigration and abolitionist politics linked many African Americans to Americo-Liberians and settlers in Sierra Leone. While a visible number of settlers in Liberia were what Sharla Fett calls “recaptured Africans,” Liberia bore the political, cultural, and familial markers of African Americans. Similarly, Sierra Leone’s importance to American blacks derived from its status as a potential site for black migration to Africa. Black internationalists who paid attention to Liberia did not situate their concerns about the republic in the politics of empire. They did not view Liberia— despite its settler colonial origins—as an US imperial possession. In their minds, Liberia was not...

Racism in Modern Russia: From the Romanovs to Putin by Eugene M. Avrutin

Reviewed by: Racism in Modern Russia: From the Romanovs to Putin by Eugene M. Avrutin Kimberly St. Julian Varnon (bio) Eugene M. Avrutin, Racism in Modern Russia: From the Romanovs to Putin (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022). 140 pp., ill. Index. ISBN: 978-1-350-09728-5. Eugene M. Avrutin's Racism in Modern Russia: From the Romanovs to Putin is a new release in Bloomsbury's Russian Shorts series. The brief, easy-to-read monograph is a timely and excellent addition to the literature on race and racism in Russia and the Soviet Union. The volume begins with the 2013 Biryulevo protests, which remain a frightening reminder of the power of racism in driving violence against Central Asians in contemporary Russia. Avrutin uses Biryulevo to underscore how Central Asian migrants in Russia are racialized as Black and how the Russian crowds use inflammatory, white supremacist language to mark Central Asians and Caucasians as others (P. 3). From these scenes, the reader learns that "Russia for Russians" and other racist sentiments are not new but a continuation of racialization and othering of ethnic minorities dating back to the tsarist period of Russian history. The introduction also provides readers with a cursory but helpful overview of the treatment of race in the secondary literature in Russian [End Page 377] and Soviet history. Avrutin argues that due to Russia's lack of an overseas empire, its absence in both the African slave trade and the Scramble for Africa, and the international image of the anti-racist Soviet Union, racism and racial thinking in Russia have often been overlooked in academic discourse. He correctly points out that race has often been portrayed as a nonissue in Soviet historiography. He asks: What factors account for this silence (dismissing race-based thought and practices)? Why have scholars shown so little interest in historical and theoretical discussions of race? (P. 4). Avrutin powerfully demonstrates that racial ideologies and racial hierarchies have been part of Russian cultural and social history throughout the 150 years that his book covers. From the premise of the "messy" color line – one in which the ideas and process of racialization are not fixed nor stable – Avrutin diagrams for readers the forms and functions of race in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. He argues that race did not dictate citizenship or social position in Russia or the Soviet Union, "but by rejecting the premise that an individual could belong to multiple identities, the state's classification system primed people to see the world in unambiguous racial terms" (P. 7). Thus, the classification and ordering of groups within the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union according to nationality or ethnicity can be better contextualized in a paradigm of race. The book is organized chronologically into four chapters. Chapter 1, "The Empire's Races," relates the development of anthropological and "scientific" thinking on race in the ethnically and culturally diverse Russian Empire. The chapter also places Russia within Western European discourses on race and racial differences in the nienteenth century. One of the most interesting sections of this chapter examines how Russian anthropologists and race ideologues approached Jews and other ethnic minorities within the empire. Race scientists such as the anthropologist Aleksei Arsen'evich Ivanovskii were confounded by Russia's Jewish population and categorized them as a distinct, non-Russian, race. Imperial expansion merged with the development of social sciences making the myriad of ethnic groups within the empire's borders a boon for Russian anthropologists and reified the idea that Russia was unique relative to its European imperial counterparts. Chapter 2, "Boundaries of Exclusion," builds on the previous chapter's explanation of how race and racial difference were discussed and applied in academics and research. It explores the execution of racialization through how Russianness was defined and utilized by the [End Page 378] tsar and the imperial government to engender public support, maintain political order, and oppress minority nationalities. This chapter draws on Avrutin's expertise in Jewish history with a fascinating discussion of the 1913 Beilis trial that ties the Russian reaction to the case to similar racist attitudes in the United States toward African Americans in the post–Reconstruction Era. Another...

Africa’s Revolutionary Nineteenth Century and the Idea of the “Scramble”

Abstract This paper seeks to position the Scramble for Africa in the context of the continent’s transformative, global nineteenth century. While imperial historiography develops apace, Africa-facing analyses of the continent’s partition and the processes which led to it are increasingly rare. European expansion into Africa was characterized by an aggressive dynamism, and millions of Africans experienced profound crisis in the process of the establishment of colonial rule. Yet Africa’s revolutionary nineteenth century was both driven by, and culminated in, complex processes of co-option on the part of Africans and Europeans. The paper proposes that a more Africa-centered assessment of the Scramble is possible, one which aims to contextualize the partition of the continent as part of an ongoing, endogenously shaped but often exogenously connected, transformation in political, economic, and social organization and behavior. While no single overarching theory can apply to the entire continent, it is possible to identify dynamics and processes for change that recur across Africa, from political and military reform to economic innovation. These point toward possibilities for reframing Africa’s development in the late precolonial period, and enable us to challenge the hegemony long enjoyed by scholars of European empires.