Territories In Africa Research Articles

Spain’s Remaining Territories in Africa, and the Ghost of São João Baptista De Ajudá

Ceuta, Melilla, Velez de la Gomera, Alhucemas and the Chafarinas Islands are Spanish territories that lie along Morocco’s northern coastline. Morocco has claimed the territories since its independence in 1956. The sovereignty of a further territory, the islet of Perejil, remains unresolved after a military confrontation between Morocco and Spain in 2002. The author examines the arguments in the ongoing sovereignty dispute. Morocco’s claim to Ceuta and Melilla is found to be weak. However, its claim to the remaining territories may be supported by the analogous case of Sao Joao Baptista de Ajuda, an unpopulated Portuguese fortress territory in Dahomey (Benin) that was singled out for ‘statutory decolonization’ by the UN.

Modelling of greenhouse gas emissions from municipal solid waste disposal in Africa

Data on waste management in Africa are poor. There is uncertainty over the quantity of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from waste management, notably from waste disposal. Data have been collected on solid waste management for territories in Africa and a multi-phase first order decay (FOD) model has been prepared to calculate GHG emissions from waste disposal in accordance with Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guidance. The multi-phase FOD model calculates the GHG emissions from waste disposal as 8.1% of the total GHG emissions in Africa in 2010. This is similar to the last published figure of 6.8% for 2004 data but considerably more than the world average figure of 3% GHG emissions from landfill. Probability modelling of the data used to calculate the multi-phase FOD model demonstrates that the data are variable, with a high standard deviation. The GHG emission rate from waste disposal in African territories will increase leading to further climate change as the population increases and becomes more urbanised. Whilst the UNFCCC is dedicated to minimise climate change globally, this paper demonstrates the need for the creation, at the African level, of a waste management body to assess the situation country by country with the objective to elaborate country specific recommendations for waste management.

The presence of the martyrs: Jesuit martyrdom and the Christianisation of Portuguese America

Since the beginning of Christianity, martyrdom has been one of the most important means of communion between the Church militant and the Church triumphant. The 16th century and the first half of the 17th constitute a period in which it was especially in evidence, both in narratives that recall and comment on the martyrs of the earliest centuries, and also in accounts of events in Christian daily life. The constellation of victims of the religious disputes in Europe, readily considered martyrs by their coreligionists, is relatively well known; this article focuses on a less well known group of martyrs, who died in different situations, in the context of the worldwide navigation and colonisation of vast territories in Africa, Asia, and America. Special attention is paid to the meanings given to martyrdom in the encounter between Christians and Indians in Portuguese America, and most especially between Jesuit missionaries and Tupi groups.

Vernacularization, globalization, and language economics in non-English-speaking countries in Africa

Research into language policy in Africa has addressed the impact of colonial language policies on efforts to formulate and implement post-colonial language policies aimed at vernacularization, defined as the use of indigenous African languages in higher domains such as education. What seems to have received very little attention to date, however, is the effect of globalization, through the medium of English, on vernacularization not only in Anglophone but also in non-English-speaking countries in the African continent. Focusing on the latter territories, this paper explores this issue from the perspective of recent theoretical developments in the field of language economics, an area of study whose focus is on the theoretical and empirical ways in which linguistic and economic variables influence one another. It argues that the spread of English to these historically non-English-speaking territories in Africa represents the second challenge to largely symbolic language policies aimed at promoting vernacularization, the first one being other western languages (e.g. French, Portuguese, Spanish). Drawing on language economics, the paper argues that the prospects for the indigenous languages will continue to be bleak, especially in the era of globalization, unless these languages are viewed as a commodity rather than as a token for cultural preservation, and are associated with some of the advantages and material gains that have for decades been the preserve of western languages. Resistance against, and successful case studies of, vernacularization informed by language economics in various parts of the world are presented in support of the proposed argument for the promotion of Africa’s indigenous languages in education.

Board Games Reconsidered: Mancala in the Balkans

Two mancala (one of the oldest games in the world) boards, which were found in the Lower Town of the Belgrade Fortress in 2006, present so far unique archaeological proof that this game was played in the region of the Balkan peninsula. Considering the fact that the knowledge regarding mancala is still quite modest, in this paper, we have also examined the different aspects of this game: the question of its origin, which is linked to the beginning of the Neolithic Age on the territories of Africa and the Near East; the link with the methods of geomantic divination; the anthropological knowledge regarding playing mancala in traditional communities; the distribution and the directions of its diffusion, as well as the archaeological finds in the area Mediterranean.

The Incorporation of Muslim Elites into the Colonial Administrative Systems of Sierra Leone, The Gambia and the Gold Coast

This article focuses on relations between British colonial administrations in three West Africa territories during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Sierra Leone, the Gambia and the Gold Coast were centers of trade organized by Muslim merchants and places of Muslim settlement before the British arrived and the subsequent administrations developed policies and programs which incorporated Muslim communities into the colonial system. The British adapted the existing economic, political and religious institutions to the policy of indirect rule, financially supported these institutions and successfully made alliances with Muslim elites. Colonial policies and programs contributed to the strengthening of Islamic communities throughout the colonial era.

Migrants, Settlers and Colonists: The Biopolitics of Displaced Bodies

AbstractAll through the nineteenth century, Madeirans migrated from their Atlantic island to places as remote as Hawaii, California, Guyana and, later, South Africa. Scarcity of land, a rigid social structure, periodic famines and rampant poverty made many embark to uncertain destinies and endure the harsh labour conditions of sugarcane plantations. In the 1880s, a few hundred Madeirans engaged in a different venture: an experience of “engineered migration” sponsored by the Portuguese government to colonize the southern Angola plateau. White settlements, together with military control, scientific surveys and expeditions, contributed to strengthen the claims of European nations over specific territories in Africa. At that time, the long lasting claims of Portugal over African territories were not matched by sponsored colonial settlements or precise geographic knowledge about the claimed lands. There was little else representing Portugal than the leftover structures of the slave trade, the penal colonies and the free‐lance merchants that ventured inland. In fear of losing land to the neighbouring German, Boer and British groups in south‐western Africa, the Portuguese government tried then to promote white settlements by attracting farmers from the mainland into the southern plateau of Angola. As very few responded to the call, the settlement consisted mostly of Madeiran islanders, who were eager to migrate anywhere and took the adventure of Angola as just another destiny out of the island where they could not make a living. Their bodies and actions in the new place became highly surveilled by the medical delegates in charge of assessing their adaptation. The reports document what were then the idealized biopolitics of migration and colonization, interweaving biomedical knowledge and political power over displaced bodies and colonized land. At the same time, those records document the frustrations of the administration about the difficulties of the settlement experience and the ways in which colonial delegates blamed their failure on the very subjects who enacted and suffered through it. The eugenicism and racialism that pervade those writings, a currency during the age of empire, may now be out of taste both in science and in politics; however, they are not fully out of sight, and the subtle entrance of social prejudice into the hard concepts of biomedical science is still with us. Learning from this example may help analysing contemporary processes of medicalizing diversity or pathologizing the mobile populations, or, in other words, the biopolitics of migration in the 21st century.

British and French language and educational policies in the Mandate and Trusteeship Territories

This paper assumes that language and educational policies are manifestations of the interdependence between linguistic thought and the prevailing zeitgeist, and hence that an investigation of these policies from an historical perspective falls squarely within the history of linguistics. The policies discussed here are those by the British and French, as pursued in their League of Nations Mandates and later their UN Trusteeship Territories in Africa. A contrastive look at their policies – as revealed in historical documents – yields insights into the philosophical and political discourse of that period and sheds light on the competing dominant positions in this discourse, as well as on the views of language expressed in it.

Educating the "Native": A Study of the Education Adaptation Strategy in British Colonial Africa, 1910-1936

This essay discusses how examinations were used as an strategy beginning in 1910 when British examinations boards were invited to assist with the conduct of secondary school examinations in colonial territories in Africa. Although adaptation covered all aspects of formal schooling, this study focuses on secondary education because of its importance as the highest level of education available, and its significant impact on colonial society at the time. Much of recent literature on the adaptation question has focused on the various levels of schooling beyond basic village education in rural areas. (1) The essay examines the responses, particularly in Nigeria, to the suggestion that secondary education should be adapted to local needs, and the results of the adaptation efforts, culminating in the introduction of the Overseas School Certificate Examination for Nigerian candidates in 1936. The foundation of Western education in Africa was laid by Christian missionaries who were eager to use literacy training to introduce Christianity and win converts to their religion. (2) The missionaries also used Western education to train as catechists, messengers, and other positions needed to assist them in realizing the social and economic development and transformations desired by the European missionaries and their agents. Merchants and traders also required qualified personnel to handle their business transactions. Thus after considerable consultations between the Church Missionary Society (CMS), founded by the Church of England to promote evangelization, and the local merchants and traders, the first secondary school in Nigeria, the Church Missionary Society Grammar School, was founded in Lagos in 1859. (3) It is by no means surprising that the first secondary school in Nigeria was established by the Church Missionary Society (CMS). Its secretary from 1841 to 1872, Henry Venn, firmly believed in the development of adequate human resources, and that the school must be self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating, and should employ African personnel. (4) The African commercial and business elite also required personnel that was well-trained and equipped to handle political and economic transactions between and outsiders involving record keeping and correspondence regarding the exchange of European and African goods and services. (5) also gradually began to recognize the advantages and the attractions of post-primary education, especially the increased salaries and wages, and improved conditions of service. Historian Andrew Paterson has observed that in South Africa, Africans perceived education to be an alternative source for economic security in a time of land dispossession. (6) In a quick succession, additional secondary schools were established by the CMS in various parts of Nigeria, and by other missionary organizations, including the Baptist Mission, the Catholic Mission, and the Wesleyan Methodist Mission, beginning in the 1870s. The Qua Iboe, the Primitive Methodist Society, established secondary schools mostly in Eastern Nigeria starting in 1922. Secondary schools also gradually began to spring up in various other parts of Africa, as community colleges, high schools, and secondary grammar schools, often in cooperation with Christian missions that provided the teachers, the curriculum, and the necessary contacts; however, the local communities provided the buildings and raised funds for these educational services. (7) This was the background to the establishment of various mission schools in Africa. In Nigeria, for example, ethnic-based secondary schools such as Oduduwa College, Ile-Ife; Edo College, Benin City; and Imade College, Owo began to sprout up to attend to the various needs of communities and individuals eager to take advantage of the new opportunities for advancement and promotion in the new society that emerged with the coming of the missionaries and the colonial administrative bureaucracy. …

The decolonization of French-speaking territories in Africa as reflected in the South African press

The events surrounding the independence of the Belgian Congo and Algeria were reported on in considerable detail in the South African press between 1960 and 1962. Because of its relative proximity to South Africa, the conflict in the Congo was considered by the Afrikaans-speaking press in particular to be a potential danger to the Union of South Africa, since it gave the opportunity for Soviet imperialism to make further inroads into Africa. The Algerian war of independence provided a more direct parallel with South Africa. In both countries a large white population was in danger of losing its identity. General de Gaulle was hailed by the English and Afrikaans press alike as being the strong leader who was needed to deal with this explosive situation. He was seen by some editorialists as having done all he could, while for others he did not go far enough, since he gave full autonomy to Algeria and sacrificed the white population.

Construire l’association entre l’Europe communautaire et l’Afrique indépendante

This article is in connexion with talks about the implementation of the Association with Overseas territories (cooperation for the development) such as organized by the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1958. We shall try to confront the African vision of the Association and that of France, main initiator of this policy among States members. We shall also see that if the Association was considered by France as a means to continue her "colonial mission” in Tropical Africa, after all it had to allow former French territories in Africa to keep free themselves to a certain extent from the French trusteeship.

European Integration, European Identity and the Colonial Connection

The significance of colonialism and decolonization for the dawning of European integration and their subsequent bearing on notions of European identity still constitute a largely unexplored field within research. In seeking to problematize and amend this state of things, this article embarks on charting a set of historical developments which provide a case for arguing that theoretical and empirical studies on the nexus of European integration and European identity need to pay much closer attention to questions pertaining to colonialism and decolonization. As such, the article seeks to offer a glimpse of what it takes to be a critical background against which scholarly debates on contemporary notions of European identity need to be considered. Such an approach, it is suggested, should be of particular value for research trying to come to terms with Brussels' current endeavour to foster a collective sense of European identity in the Union. In expanding on this exact point, the article also broaches the question concerning all those `non-European' territories in Africa, South America and elsewhere that are incorporated into the present-day European Union, but which, nevertheless, hardly ever surface as such in studies on the EU and its politics of European identity.

Africa in Chaos (review)

Issues of continental African development/underdevelopment have been hotly debated within the last forty-five years. Immediately after World War II, a number of Pan-African students, intellectuals, ex-service men, labor union leaders, and others began to actively agitate for the liberation of European colonized territories in Africa. In 1947 Kwame Nkrumah was invited to be publicity secretary of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) Party in present-day Ghana, under [End Page 244] the leadership of Pan-Africanist, Kwame Nkrumah. In 1963 and 1965, President Nkrumah published his Africa Must Unite and his Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism, respectively. By the 1970s the debate over African development/underdevelopment was wide open, and two major schools of thought had emerged. Walter Rodney (1972) argued, in his How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, that European colonialism, Western Education, the Atlantic Slave Trade, and the unequal trade relations between Europe and Africa held Africans down; in his Neo-Colonialism, Nkrumah saw political freedom but not economic liberation from Western Multinational Corporations. American and European scholars saw that Africa's economic problems derived from Africa's internal conditions. If only African countries could adopt Western paradigms of development, they would be well on their way to industrial development. As such, Africans needed an educated manpower, industrial plants, hydroelectric power stations, massive road construction projects, financial aid, and technological transfer from Europe and the United States.

“Colonized Body,” “Oriental Machine”: Debating Race, Railroads, and the Politics of Reconstruction in Germany and East Africa, 1906–1910

Theyears 1906–1910 were a period of crisis and unstable consensus in German colonial history. In contrast to the debates of the previous two decades following Chancellor Otto von Bismarck's 1884 decision to establish overseas protectorates, colonial discourse in Germany after 1905 shifted decisively away from abstract considerations of the desirability of colonies for economic and imperialist expansion to focus on the more practical matters of colonial policy and long-term developmental reform. Indeed, given the fact that by 1905 the German colonial empire covered a sprawling expanse of land six times the size of the German state, including territories in Africa, the South Pacific, and a naval base (Tsingtao) on the coast of China, the enormous challenges of managing its far-flung and costly possessions were becoming increasingly difficult to meet. For better or for worse, the Kaiserreich had become a de facto colonial power, and German society was increasingly and uncomfortably being forced to recognize the hazards and burdens of its fledgling global empire.

Slamming the ‘Open Door’: British Protectionist Fiscal Policy in Inter-War Nigeria

Until recently, when it ceased to be an important pastime, scholars engaged in debate over the motives behind, and the nature of, European imperial enterprise in the colonial territories of Africa. Opinion was divided between those who stressed the altruistic goals and the positive impact of the European ‘civilising’ mission in Africa and others who highlighted the ulterior motives behind, and the uncomplimentary features of, colonial rule. One issue in contention as far as British imperialism was concerned, was the policy of ‘free trade’ in the colonies. It was held by some that Britain operated the ‘imperialism of Free Trade’, that is, it hid under the espousal of that policy in order to acquire colonies and to gain advantage over its rivals in the contest for colonial trade. On the other hand, much was made of Britain's ‘open door’ policy in its colonies as contrasted with the French, for example, who were for the most part protectionists. Yet, as a number of studies have shown, the British were no less protectionist given certain circumstances, and this case study provides further examples of this tendency in inter-war Nigeria. To place the discussion in a proper context, we shall clarify the nature of the fiscal system in British colonies, for this was the linchpin of the administration and the key to understanding economic policy.

King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa

Reviewed by: King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa Paul Gordon Lauren King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998). All the great advances in human rights have been—and will continue to be—made at that critical moment of moral judgment when men and women confronted with abuse react with outrage and make a decision. They decide that despite all of the tradition, prevailing assumptions, pressures from vested interests, and resistance aligned against them, they will no longer be willing to simply accept things as they are, no longer be passive, and no longer be silent. They become willing to risk their families, their friendships, their jobs, their reputations, their security, and sometimes even their lives on behalf of those who suffer. Once they became aware of the unspeakable suffering of the Middle Passage across the Atlantic, for example, Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce determined to commit their lives toward ending the slave trade. The personal experience of holding wounded soldiers writhing in agonizing pain without medical attention led Henry Dunant to create the International Red Cross. Witnessing the terrible plight of thousands of helpless people fleeing their homelands in the wake of war and revolution in order to save their lives convinced Fridtjof Nansen to devote himself to protecting the rights of refugees. The realization of the unimaginable genocide of the Holocaust convinced many in the world, like Eleanor Roosevelt, of the need to work tirelessly on behalf of establishing international standards of human rights. The arbitrary arrest of students for toasting “to freedom” moved Peter Beneson to launch a letter writing campaign that eventually became Amnesty International. All of these actions, and countless others by those known and unknown from the globe to the grassroots, flow from decisions made at moments of moral choice. This essential element in understanding and appreciating the historical evolution of human rights is captured in all of its drama, pain, and courage by Adam Hochschild in his blistering book, King Leopold’s Ghost, and appropriately subtitled A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. At the end of the nineteenth century, King Leopold of Belgium became obsessed with seizing control of territory in Africa. Like many other Europeans and Americans of his day, he viewed the continent as if it were without Africans: a vast expanse of uninhabited space, just waiting with unlimited possibilities for prestige and profit. The Congo appeared ripe for the taking. With charm, seductive rhetoric, political guile and deviousness, propaganda and sham organizations, bribes, hidden accounting, manipulation, the ruthless use of the military power of the state, and boundless greed, Leopold set out to make the Congo his personal fiefdom. Brutal exploitation and the forcible extraction of tons of ivory, and then shiploads of rubber, soon brought him staggering wealth. Like all oppressive regimes, of course, the success of Leopold’s operation [End Page 535] required those willing to follow orders. He needed explorers, military officers and men, steamboat captains, state functionaries, concession company officials, foremen, and soldiers of fortune, among others, willing to accept the prevailing attitudes of racial superiority over indigenous peoples, to do exactly what the system told them to do without asking troublesome questions, to inflict pain or kill, and to keep quiet. He had no difficulty finding such people. Indeed, an important measure of his success in this regard can be seen in the fact that he was able to hide the brutality of his operation and actually portray himself as a philanthropic monarch and the Congo as a veritable model of progress and civilization for years without challenge. But not everyone can be bought or persuaded. Through Hochschild’s impassioned and riveting account, we find visitors with different eyes and different values traveling by foot around the lower rapids and by steamer up the river into Leopold’s hidden and lucrative Congo. One of these is a black American named George Washington Williams, a Baptist minister and writer. To his shock, he dis-covers not the paradise of a benignly ruled colony and well-treated people as described by...

White Skins, Black Masks?: Celticism and Négritude

WHITE SKINS, BLACK MASKS?: CELTICISM AND NÉGRITUDE DECLAN KIBERD the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century program of cultural decolonization in Ireland is an important precursor of a related struggle in Africa more than forty years later. Undoubtedly England’s only European colony differed from imperial territories in Africa, most obviously as a result of Ireland’s centuries of enforced intimacy with England—an intimacy based on proximity and affinities of climate, temperament, and culture. And while Europe’s race for empire in Africa occurred in the latter half of the nineteenth century, England had occupied Ireland for more than 700 years. Thus at the time of Irish decolonization, the imperial culture had penetrated far more deeply than in Africa or Asia. Despite such differences, however, the shapers of modern Africa (as well as India) looked on occasion to Ireland for guidance. But if Ireland once inspired many leaders of the “developing world,” today the country has much to learn from them. In spite of episodic involvement with India’s decolonization, Irish nationalists and writers were slow to identify with other resistance movements , preferring to see their own experiences as unique. Moreover a strain of white triumphalism, running from John Mitchel to Arthur Griffith, would never countenance Irish solidarity with the anti-imperial struggles of other racial groups. And although many nineteenth-century Irishmen, serving in the British army, had assisted in the conquest of India and Africa, the English colonizers imputed many of the same qualities to natives in these remote territories that they were attributing to the Irish. A comparative cross-cultural study identifies significant similarities between the Irish experience and those of other emerging nations. In addition , postcolonial theory from Africa, India, or the West Indies provides useful interpretation of Irish resistance, a movement less richly theorized than later decolonizations. In both Ireland and Africa, for example, the central role of the artist was to question the assumption that culture arises only WHITE SKINS, BLACK MASKS?: CELTICISM AND NÉGRITUDE 163 when imperialists arrive. The comparable roles of an alienated urban elite in African and Irish nationalisms, similar debates about the role of native languages, and parallels between cultural movements like Celticism or Négritude (arising in French Africa) reveal how native cultures the world over contain, in the words of West African polemicist Amicar Cabral, the seeds of resistance. In Ireland, anti-imperialism emerged in different stages, often creating an identity merely reactive to that imposed by the ruling colonial class. Thus if England characterized its subject people as imaginative, childlike, or feminine, political nationalists, in reaction, created a hyper-masculine identity . The limitations of Celticism (and Négritude in Africa) emerge from its sources in such a binary opposition to imperial definitions, a reaction with origins in a sense of inferiority rather than in a vision of liberation. However, Irish cultural nationalists—such as Douglas Hyde, through his founding of the Gaelic League in 1893, or William Butler Yeats in his early poetry—sought to create alternative modes of expression for a nation struggling to invent an autonomous identity. Hyde’s project of deanglicization , as well as Yeats’s use of fairy lore and Gaelic saga material in his early poetry, drew on an explicitly Irish cultural memory. Both writers, although never moving from cultural nationalism to political resistance, emphasized returning to the sources of a national identity. Like John Millington Synge, Hyde and Yeats avoided a narrowly anti-British focus of a politicized Irish-Irelandism, even as they provided the cultural basis for liberation. This process pioneered by Hyde and Yeats had followers also in Africa. The subtle program of cultural freedom mapped by Amilcar Cabral, the scourge of Portuguese colonialism, was one that “without underestimating the importance of positive accretions from the oppressor” (Cabral 43) found in native culture the seeds of resistance. Because the conquest of Africa had been confined to major cities and their immediate hinterlands, the urban middle class there seemed to have assimilated the new codes, which led its members foolishly to consider themselves superior to their own people (very much in the manner of Ireland’s “Castle Catholics” and “West Britons”). Outside of these centers, the influence...

Reflections on the Studying and Teaching About Africa in America

Is there an African Studies establishment in the United States? Of course there is. The academic study of Africa has mushroomed since the end of the Second World War as federal dollars were invested in graduate training programs so that the United States would be able to cope with the challenges posed by the coming to independence of former colonial territories in Africa from 1956 onward. Most of this money went to major research universities. Accordingly, the training in African Studies that evolved at these centers was rooted in the historical development of western academic disciplines, the history of race and power in America, and hegemonic control over the discourse on Africa in America.

Dutch Expansion in the Indonesian Archipelago Around 1900 and the Imperialism Debate

Few works on modern imperialism (1880–1914) include Dutch political and military behaviour in the Indonesian archipelago. Theories concerning colonial expansion in this period have been based almost exclusively on the activities of the big powers, scrambling for new territories in Africa. The small country of the Netherlands, expanding its colonial frontiers within its nominal sphere of interest, did not arouse much interest, the less so as its history and sources are not easily accessible due to an internationally little known language.

Making mothers: Missionaries, medical officers and women's work in colonial Asante, 1924-1945.

For four days in June, 1931, government, church and business representatives from eight European countries and from several colonial territories in Africa met in Geneva to discuss the welfare of African children.' Summoned by the Save the Children International Union during the depths of the world-wide Depression, the participants discussed the application of the 1924 Declaration of Geneva and its provisions for the protection of children to the children of colonized Africa. Echoing much of the broader discourse surrounding maternal and infant welfare of the late 1920s and early 1930s, the conference participants blamed social diseases, poverty, 'native midwives and their anti-hygienic practices', mothers' 'carelessness' and 'irrational feeding' of infants, superstition and, finally, 'lack of sufficient medical aid' for infant mortality rates which exceeded seventy percent in some areas. Although the conference repudiated the 'tendency to blame the mother', its published conclusions focussed almost exclusively on the education of mothers and children and avoided pronouncements on the effects of migrant and forced labour, cash-cropping or taxation.3 Indeed, as Evelyn Sharp, the conference's chronicler, wrote, 'the urgent need for education . . . was brought persistently to the notice of the delegates, although the questions before them were nominally pathological and economic'. In short, 'Making African History at Geneva' (the title of Sharp's first chapter) required, above all, the making of African mothers.