Colonial Territories Research Articles

French Decolonisation and Civil War: The Dynamics of Violence in the Early Phases of Anti-colonial War in Vietnam and Algeria, 1940–1956

This article draws together historical sources and political science insights to test the emergence of civil war at the end of empire. It focuses on civil conflict in two French colonial territories, Vietnam and Algeria, during and immediately after 1945. It investigates the civil war dynamics of local, often intra-ethnic contests among anticolonial oppositionists. Concentrating on the early, formative years of insurgent violence, we aim to demonstrate that elements of civil war pre-existed the supposed outbreak of decolonisation conflicts – 1946 in Vietnam and 1954 in Algeria. Our approach combines narrative assessments of the early phases of these conflicts with analysis of their civil war dynamics. As we seek to demonstrate, cycles of internecine killing, massacre and counter-massacre, normalized summary killing, maltreatment of detainees, and loss of distinction between civilians, seditionists, and ‘traitors’. Our argument is that decolonisation violence in both Vietnam and Algeria may be usefully rethought in civil war terms.

Radiation Evangelists: Technology, Therapy and Uncertainty at the Turn of the Century by Jeffrey Womack (review).

Reviewed by: Radiation Evangelists: Technology, Therapy and Uncertainty at the Turn of the Century by Jeffrey Womack Maria Rentetzi (bio) Radiation Evangelists: Technology, Therapy and Uncertainty at the Turn of the Century By Jeffrey Womack. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020. Pp. 288. Anyone who has worked on the history of radiation cannot avoid wondering at the public's faith in the commercial uses of X-ray technologies. For example, historian Rebecca Herzig estimates that tens of thousands of women across the United States and Canada may have taken X-ray treatments for hair removal, despite the fact that the practice was officially deemed harmful and taken off the market in 1946. In fact, women continued to use it well into the 1960s. But why has this been the case, despite the early warnings and signs of danger? In Radiation Evangelists, Jeffrey Womack poses this urgent question in relation to patients and practitioners of X-rays and radium in the early twentieth century. The answer is deceptively simple: operating in a context of uncertainty, radiation therapists needed faith. But faith in what? Womack's unique and exciting contribution to the history of radiation is the framing of X-rays and radium as new technologies that were transformed into therapeutic tools through a complicated and multifaceted process. Key actors in this transformation were the "radiation evangelists," a diverse group of [End Page 1230] practitioners who embraced both technologies and developed therapeutic procedures beyond any contemporary ethics. When talking about radiation during this early period, we often think of the cruel industrialists who ignored signs of radium's deadly effects on women dial painters, the radiologists who are usually portrayed as "martyrs" of an unexplored new discipline, or the well-known cases of radium poisoning due to excessive drinking of radium tonics. Womack's book changes our perception of this period by turning the spotlight on its complexities and the ways in which radiation therapy was entangled in bitter battles for professional legitimacy between licensed physicians, who quickly incorporated X-rays in their medical practice, and unlicensed practitioners, who opposed strict regulations and questioned the emphasis on licensure, training, and the standardization of uses of X-rays. As Womack gets to the bottom of these disputes, it emerges that these battles concerned the issue of who had the right to practice this new medical specialization. Interestingly enough, Womack reminds us that geopolitical conflicts, even in this early historical period, also influenced the development of both X-ray and radium therapy. For example, Western colonial powers promoted the early use of X-ray emitters through their military physicians in Sudan and Afghanistan. During and right after World War I, radium supplies became available from specific colonial territories. And despite military conflicts and war, knowledge of X-ray technologies continued to flow back and forth between national radiological communities in Europe. The focus on the professionalization of radiation therapy also brings issues of medical ethics to the forefront. Despite the great uncertainty involved in the use of X-ray technologies, Womack argues that understanding the medical practices of the early radiation evangelists presupposes a shift from the notion of ethics as the application of professional rules and codes of conduct to ethics as a matter of good character. X-ray therapy entailed a high risk for both patient and therapist. The "Golden Rule" of medical practice at the time required that a physician prescribe only the treatment he would feel comfortable prescribing to himself and his family. Instead of attributing ill motives to the early radium therapists, Womack's historiographical perspective allows a closer and more detailed look at what the Greeks would have called the "ethos" of these early radiation devotees: the moral nature of their character and guiding beliefs. Radiation Evangelists is not only a well-researched history of X-ray therapy. It also makes an important contribution to science and technology studies by providing a wonderful analysis and case study of Wiebe Bijker's notion of technological frame. To Womack, the cold cathode users of the 1900s shared an understanding of an artifact that they themselves constructed by interacting with it. This approach explains the persistent technological faith and optimism that...

Repatriation of ancient Benin bronzes to Nigeria: reflection on copyright and related issues

The 1897 invasion of Benin traditional empire by British soldiers led to the looting of ancient Benin bronzes. These have been at the centre of conversation around the repatriation of stolen African cultural heritage from Europe and America for a long time.1 There have been efforts in the past by the Nigerian government and the Benin Royal Palace to get stolen artefacts back from the UK.2 Recent global calls on colonial overloads for the return of looted artefacts from their previous colonial territories and for the atonement of colonial atrocities, which included the stealing of indigenous art,3 goaded the Nigerian government to reopen talks with foreign governments for repatriation of the looted bronzes. The awakened international consultations for the return of the looted ancient Benin bronzes forming part of the holdings of museums in Germany and the UK stirred schism among the governments of Edo State (sub-national), the Nigerian Federation and the Benin Royal Palace led by the Oba of Benin (the Oba Palace is located at the centre of Benin City, Edo State [Province], Nigeria). The schism was about who would control the ancient Benin bronzes upon their return. While the schism has been settled, as discussed in Section 3, the local ‘warring’ parties did not avert their minds to questions around who owns, would manage and benefit from the copyright relating to the ancient Benin bronzes. Nonetheless, the copyright and related issues have been identified as issues to be negotiated at the international consultation for the repatriation of the bronzes. Discussion of the copyright and related issues is important when viewed against the backdrop of the large-scale digitization project of the ancient Benin bronzes embarked upon by museums in Germany, for instance, in preparation for the repatriation of the bronzes. Viewed broadly, the discussion would serve to give useful insights into the copyright-related issues concerning other large-scale digitizations of cultural heritage, such as the Timbuktu Manuscripts recently digitized by Google Arts and Culture.4

The Architecture of Territory: The Lands Building and State Expansion in New South Wales

ABSTRACT The New South Wales colonial project was a land-centred enterprise that became dependent on the surveying and sale of land. The process of land alienation was a significant factor in the configuration of the colonial territory as well as the development, distribution and typologies of architecture. This article considers a building that was central to this project: the Lands Building in Sydney that housed the Lands Department, the bureaucracy responsible for implementing the governmental instruments relating to Crown land. An analysis of the building suggests that systems of governance were deeply entwined in its form, planning and use. Of particular concern is the integration of symbols and technologies of surveying and land recording that are integrated into the design of the building and its subsequent adaptation. These include the configuration and expression of the façade, the organisation of the plan, a domed observatory and measuring instruments. At stake is the reframing of the architecture of the State as a technology of governance with territorial reach.

Modernizing Royals and Capitalists of Kumase

Abstract British imperialism bequeathed sports to former colonies. In the immediate postwar period, colonial bureaucrats intensified the modernization agenda in many of their colonial territories. The institution of horse racing was associated with the upper echelons of society in many colonies. In colonial Asante, the royals and capitalists of Kumase established the Ashanti Turf Club as the first public limited liability company in the history of horse racing in Ghana. Horse racing in Kumase started with the active encouragement and patronage of the king of Asante (Asantehene). The Kumase royals and capitalists embraced the middle-class culture and bought shares in the Turf Club. The practice of betting linked the working-class to racing. Horse racing played a significant social role in Asante society by keeping residents entertained at the weekends. This article examines the Ashanti Turf Club Limited within the context of the modernization of postwar Asante. It shows how the history of horse racing in Kumase provides a lens to understand how Africans embraced middle-class culture and colonial modernity.

Where Caciques and Mapmakers Met: Border Making in Eighteenth-Century South America by Jeffrey Alan Erbig Jr.

Reviewed by: Where Caciques and Mapmakers Met: Border Making in Eighteenth-Century South America by Jeffrey Alan Erbig Jr. John Rennie Short Where Caciques and Mapmakers Met: Border Making in Eighteenth-Century South America. By Jeffrey Alan Erbig, Jr. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2020, p. 259, $24.95. Colonial territories in South America, as elsewhere around the world, were mapped as they were claimed and appropriated. In this book, Jeffrey Alan Erbig, Jr. examines the complex interaction between two imperial powers and indigenous people in the making of a boundary in the eighteenth century between Brazil and Spanish South America in the area now known as Uruguay. Portugal and Spain signed two treaties, the1750 Treaty of Madrid and the 1777 Treaty of San Ildefonso, to determine the border between Brazil and Spanish South America. A general map of the continent was drawn up in Europe and Portuguese and Spanish diplomats drew more detailed instructions for the border. Mapmakers then traveled to South America to survey the border line. It was a massive enterprise that involved numerous teams surveying the almost 10,000-mile boundary. This book focuses in on one region, the Rio de la Plata. It was complex space of Portuguese and Spanish colonial settlements, Jesuit missions, and indigenous encampments, tolderías of about 30 to 100 people There were complex interactions in this settlement archipelago. The mobile lifestyle of indigenous people widened their access to resources in the interior, allowing them to trade with the colonial settlers and control vital trade routes. In the complex trading system that developed, the colonial settlers had to acknowledge the territorial control of the indigenous people. Boundary-marking and border-making were not a simple projection of imperial domains onto this complex space. Border-making had to accept the diffused power in the region. It was a social process that involved the founding of forts and strategic settlements to mark and guard the boundary, population reshufflings, displacement, and new forms of interactions. The indigenous people played a major role in the complex interactions between imperial agents, religious foundations and settlers. The delimiting of competing imperial powers increased indigenous power in certain places, at least for a time. While the creation of the border involved the displacement and dispossession of indigenous people, some local groups used the process to extend their territorial reach and extend their trading networks. Indigenous groups further from the border were more firmly situated inside imperial control, while those closer to the border could leverage their liminal position to expand trade routes and subvert the border. But, over time, as the border hardened, the indigenous people were squeezed by the imperial authorities. The late 18th century [End Page 348] border-making provided opportunities for certain indigenous leaders, but these disappeared once the border failed to restrict the movement of imperial agents. The book is based on a detailed study of numerous maps produced at the time and a careful reading of 700 manuscripts. The result is a very granular description of the process. At times, the granularity, when combined with shifting temporal frame, makes it easy to lose your bearings in the complex text. The book would have benefitted from either a more straightforward linear narrative or a more overt signaling of the shifting temporal context. At times the text elides over decades and centuries without much warning to the reader. Despite this criticism, the book adds to our knowledge of the complexity of colonial settler societies and highlights the social nature of boundary drawing and border making. The work highlights an interesting shift in territorial possession from legal access to resources to legal ownership of resources. It provides a case study of the imperial monopolization of property and the drive for territorial exclusivity. The book also indicates how the maps drawn by European cosmographers, so easy to draw up from the comfort of courts in Europe, were difficult to express on the ground. The author highlights the enormous gap between imperial designs and local implementation. There is much to find much to learn from the book. It is an important contribution to our understanding of how boundaries are made and their social consequences in settler colonialism...

‘Upholding the Cause of Civilization’: The Australian Death Penalty in War and Colonialism

The abolition of the death penalty in Queensland in 1922 was the first in Australian jurisdictions, and the first in the British Empire. However, the legacy of the Queensland death penalty lingered in Australian colonial territories. This article considers a variety of practices in which the death penalty was addressed by Australian decision-makers during the first half of the 20th century. These include the exemption of Australian soldiers from execution in World War I, use of the death penalty in colonial Papua and the Mandate Territory of New Guinea, hanging as a weapon of war in the colonial territories, and the retrieval of the death penalty for the punishment of war crimes. In these histories, we see not only that the Queensland death penalty lived on in other contexts but also that ideological and political preferences for abolition remained vulnerable to the sway of other historical forces of war and security.

Microbes of Empire

Microbes of Empire Priscilla Wald (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Anti-Asian hate crimes rose dramatically during the pandemic. This poster appeared in the New York subway in February 2021. Credit: STAR MAX file photo via AP. [End Page 706] In memory of Amy Kaplan We are living in a moment in which the natural world and the social world are manifesting dramatic chaos, beset with reminders of the precarity of human existence in the form of pandemics, climate catastrophes, and seemingly endless examples of structural racism. In the ancient world, plague spoke in the language of the gods: it was the natural—which is to say divine—world's way of manifesting a rupture in the social order. The ancients' understanding of the connection between these worlds has been severed over time, but perhaps the contemporary moment can return us to that sacred insight. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world has witnessed a proliferation of devastating climate disasters in the form of record-setting temperatures, especially heat waves, and accompanying droughts, fires, hurricanes, cyclones, tornados, monsoons, and landslides. Glaciers are melting, and air and water are becoming increasingly unhealthy to breathe or drink. Social tensions are escalating worldwide. The pandemic is at once a symptom and an accelerant, putting on display the inequities in the United States and abroad that find expression in discrepancies in morbidity and mortality rates from COVID-19 and other health disparities and from state violence at "home" and abroad, the embodiment of the racism of US imperialism that Amy Kaplan documents in The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture. If, as Kaplan suggests, the incorporation of colonial (or postcolonial) territories and populations posed a threat to the ostensible coherence of the national (American) body politic, the conventional story that circulates in science, the media, and popular fiction and film about the bodily threat of microbes materializes the threat to American bodies.1 COVID-19 is certainly not the first, but it is the most recent and perhaps most widespread of what epidemiologists and other medical professionals have dubbed "emerging infections." In the 1980s, the identification of a catastrophic communicable disease that had similarly circled the globe—AIDS—drew the [End Page 707] attention of medical science and epidemiology to what appeared to be a new phenomenon: the emergence of catastrophic communicable diseases that humanity had not previously encountered. In 1989, the epidemiologist Stephen S. Morse organized a meeting of medical professionals to discuss what they labeled "Emerging Viruses: The Evolution of Viruses and Viral Diseases." The eradication of naturally occurring smallpox and other dramatic developments in the identification and treatment of communicable diseases in the 1960s and 1970s had imparted an air of sanguinity to the medical community. The increasing control over communicable disease was hailed as an emblem of progress: human conquest over nature. AIDS and other emerging infections challenged that story. In the analysis that surfaced at the 1989 conference, the new viruses emerged as evidence of the unforeseen and disastrous consequences of that progress: the technological and other advances that contributed to increasing globalization and development practices, including improved transportation that moved people and goods more rapidly around the globe and the settlement of a growing population in previously sparsely inhabited or uninhabited areas around the world. Emerging infections, that is, were material expressions of the dangerous expansiveness and uncontrolled forces of what Kaplan—following W. E. B. Du Bois—called the "anarchy of empire." The message of the conference was clear: the world could not rely on scientific medicine alone to contain this new threat; humans had to change the way we inhabit the planet. As Morse explained in a postconference publication, the deadly outbreaks were the result of "ecological or demographic changes including deforestation, dam building, changes in agricultural products or in land use, and major demographic changes such as population migrations," and humans were the "major engineers of biological traffic."2 The biologist Rachel Carson had issued an analogous warning in her chilling 1962 account of how the "fanatic zeal" to dominate the nonhuman world—"the crusade to create a chemically sterile, insect-free world"—had turned...

Colonial Suspects: Suspicion, Imperial Rule, and Colonial Society in Interwar French West Africa

Colonial Suspects: Suspicion, Imperial Rule, and Colonial Society in Interwar French West Africa

Militarizing Marriage: West African Soldiers’ Conjugal Traditions in Modern French Empire

Militarizing Marriage: West African Soldiers’ Conjugal Traditions in Modern French Empire

Perverse Aliens: On Chinese Indentured Labour, Sodomy, and Canadian Nation-Building

Although the socio-political histories of the Opium Wars (1839–1842 and 1856–1860), Canadian Pacific Railway, and 1885 Royal Commission on Chinese Immigration have been studied, they have not often been interconnected. This article examines these socio-political histories at the intersection of sexual and race subject-making, alongside Canadian nation-building. I investigate Chinese coolie labour, the opium trade, and sexuality by analyzing historical records from both the British and Canadian Houses of Commons. The indexing of sodomy in the 1885 Royal Commission of Chinese Immigration: Report and Evidence illustrates the simultaneous racialization and sexualization of Chinese bachelor communities. I argue that the deeming of practices and desires as perverse was used to justify the alienation and exclusion of full citizen-subjects. In this examination of these histories of racialization, abstraction of labour, and the perverse alienation of bodies in settler colonial territory, I offer the term “perverse aliens” to nuance early Chinese migration.

The Imperial Precipice: Jurists and Diplomats of the French Empire at the United Nations War Crimes Commission

Abstract Delving into world-spanning legal agencies, histories of exiled diplomats and lawyers, this paper explores how Free France defended at the United Nations War Crimes Commission the vision of the interwar liberal order, one that reached across the global territories of the mandate system administered by the League of Nations, into the colonial territories of the French empire. From London to Chongqing, facing Vichy collaborationist authoritarian dictatorship in metropolitan France and anti-colonial pressures from the turbulent colonial frontiers, a handful of Free French jurists and politicians worked day and night to establish the imperial sovereignty of the French exile committee of general Charles de Gaulle, and restore French republicanism rooted in the legal tradition of Nicolas Fouquet, Jacques de Maleville and Léon Duguit. Drawing upon newly-unsealed UN and French archival materials, this paper documents Free France’s intervention at the UNWCC, the activities of its representatives and reflection on empires, race and international law.

Case Note: Fitisemanu v. United States: U.S. Citizenship in American Sāmoa and the Insular Cases

This article considers the problematic place of individual American Sāmoans who have been denied full membership within the American political community, first due to the colonialist arcane notion of being unfit for full membership in the American community on racial and cultural grounds embodied in the Supreme Court’s Insular Cases, and second, because these same cases have been repurposed, ostensibly to protect Indigenous culture. To that end, this article reviews the United States Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals’ recent decision in Fitisemanu et al.v. United States, where a split panel reversed the U.S. District Court recognition of birthright citizenship to those born within American Sāmoa. The Appeals Court’s decision determined that American Sāmoa was not within the scope of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution through a controversial repackaging of the so-called Insular Cases, which have been criticized as being emblematic of racialist and colonialist jurisprudence that justified the denial of rights to inhabitants of American colonial territories.

Imperialism, Evangelization, and the Moroccan Landscape

Christian missionary evangelization reached its culminating point during the nineteenth century. Many experts in the field of missionary studies owe this flurry of Christian missions to an equivalent extending reach of imperialism, which, they contend, had largely facilitated the work of the Christian missions, providing them with the necessary logistic and financial support. The present paper puts forward a different view based on the trajectory of the Christian missions in Morocco at the epoch. It argues that the grand aims of imperialism were far from being spiritual. Furthermore, the political situation of Morocco during the colonial era, being a highly disputed colonial territory amongst the then superpowers, Britain and France, generated a conflict of interests that influenced the missions’ strategies of work there. The claim that Christian missionaries served as imperial agents in Morocco, working on promoting the high interests of their colonial countries, is open to question.

Impact of Colonialism on Environment: A Socio-Ecological Study of Twilight in Delhi

Massive devastation of indigenous social ecology was envisaged during the colonial expansion in almost all parts of the world since the 16th century. This colonial craze resulted in the exploitation of the natural resources of the colonial territories, which leads to environmental degradation. The alarming consequences of economic expansion including depletion of the ozone layer, air pollution, loss of forests and biodiversity, extinction of animal and plant species, loss of marine life, water and soil pollution have occurred at an alarming rate. Substantial destruction has greatly affected the global environment in the shape of global warming, urbanization, and massive industrialization among other grave issues. Modern intelligentsia and academia give rise to environmental consciousness through multiple campaigns including the celebration of “Earth Day”, the emergence of environmental activist organizations like “Friends of the Earth”, “Earth First”, “Sea Shepherd” and the formation of “Association for the Study of Literature and Environment ASLE” in America, the vis-à-vis start of Environmental studies and Ecocriticism at universities all over the world. Soon it prospered into further interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary fields of studies, in addition to the environmental campaigns activated across the world.

일본의 근대 철도 건설에 참여한 조선인 노동자

In modern Japan, civil engineering construction projects played a leading role in achieving the political and military objectives, such as colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula and securing economic benefits from the Chinese mainland. In particular, the construction of railroads played the most important role in building the modern nation state and expanding colonial territories. In short, the construction of railways was the process of building the ‘blood vessels of the empire’. The Japanese civil engineering construction industry, in the process of building Empire Japan, faced the challenge of labor shortage. In order to solve this urgent problem, foreign workers were introduced. Hiring Korean workers while building the Gyeongbu Line in Korea, Japan’s civil engineering construction industry experienced the first direct labor relationship with Korean workers. From this experience, Japanese civil engineering construction companies noticed that unskilled Korean workers were excellent labor force. In order to build Japanese modern railways, Korean workers were introduced to the construction sites by migrating them from Korea to Japan. Completing the construction of railways, the Japanese civil engineering construction companies built many railway monuments and memorials. Some of these monuments and memorials, built in the 1900s and 1910s, shows how Korean workers had moved into Japan. One is Tetsudoukouchoujunnanbyoubotsushatsuitoukinenhi(the Memorial Monument for Those Died of Diseases and Accidents during the Railway Construction), built by Hazamakumi in October 1908, and the other is Tetsudoukoujichuushokuheibyoubotsushashuukonhi(the Evocation Monument for the Deceased Workers during the Railway Construction), built by Tetsudoukougyougoushigaisha(the Unlimited Partnership Company of Railway Industry) in October 1911. The Korean workers’ names engraved on those railway memorial monuments have become historical records to prove the entry of Korean workers into Japan and henceforth changes in the Japanese labor market. Korean unskilled workers were an alternative labor force in the Japanese civil engineering construction industry facing labor shortages. Korean workers, migrated from Korea into Japan by the Japanese civil engineering construction industry, were the first bearers of the foreign workers’ issues in Japan.

일본의 근대 철도 건설에 참여한 조선인 노동자

In modern Japan, civil engineering construction projects played a leading role in achieving the political and military objectives, such as colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula and securing economic benefits from the Chinese mainland. In particular, the construction of railroads played the most important role in building the modern nation state and expanding colonial territories. In short, the construction of railways was the process of building the ‘blood vessels of the empire’. The Japanese civil engineering construction industry, in the process of building Empire Japan, faced the challenge of labor shortage. In order to solve this urgent problem, foreign workers were introduced. Hiring Korean workers while building the Gyeongbu Line in Korea, Japan’s civil engineering construction industry experienced the first direct labor relationship with Korean workers. From this experience, Japanese civil engineering construction companies noticed that unskilled Korean workers were excellent labor force. In order to build Japanese modern railways, Korean workers were introduced to the construction sites by migrating them from Korea to Japan. Completing the construction of railways, the Japanese civil engineering construction companies built many railway monuments and memorials. Some of these monuments and memorials, built in the 1900s and 1910s, shows how Korean workers had moved into Japan. One is Tetsudoukouchoujunnanbyoubotsushatsuitoukinenhi(the Memorial Monument for Those Died of Diseases and Accidents during the Railway Construction), built by Hazamakumi in October 1908, and the other is Tetsudoukoujichuushokuheibyoubotsushashuukonhi(the Evocation Monument for the Deceased Workers during the Railway Construction), built by Tetsudoukougyougoushigaisha(the Unlimited Partnership Company of Railway Industry) in October 1911. The Korean workers’ names engraved on those railway memorial monuments have become historical records to prove the entry of Korean workers into Japan and henceforth changes in the Japanese labor market. Korean unskilled workers were an alternative labor force in the Japanese civil engineering construction industry facing labor shortages. Korean workers, migrated from Korea into Japan by the Japanese civil engineering construction industry, were the first bearers of the foreign workers’ issues in Japan.

Military Training and Decolonisation in the British Empire

ABSTRACT Previous research has shown that military training at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst was used by the UK in the post-World War II period as a soft foreign policy tool in anticipation of decolonisation. This article builds on this work by first detailing how early attempts to introduce military training for foreign cadets replicated racial hierarchies. Second, it describes how, as the programme was re-conceived to embrace the colonial territories, race and British belonging continued to be a source of both diplomatic and domestic friction. Third, it illustrates how the programme was a contested and occasionally conflictual process within the metropole.

POLITICAL SANKOFA: THE AFRO-ATLANTIC ROOTS AND ROUTES OF WALTER RODNEY\S INTELLECTUAL FORMATIONS

This essay broaches the historical concept of Political Sankofa. For West Africans, and the larger African Diaspora, the Akan concept of Sankofa engenders a look into the past to remember what has been lost. This step towards Africaness, whether physical or psychological, was strengthened by peripatetic Pan Africans, however, that era of collaboration is over, and Pan African politics has transformed. This unique collaboration reached its climax in the 1960s when most colonial territories in Africa and the Caribbean began to achieve political independence, however, independence was not enough to secure sustainable socioeconomic and spiritual progress. Political Sankofa attempts to fill that void in which positive values from an African past are used as a gauge to determine vigilance and vision. This essay attempts to offer an analysis by securing the voices of those who were directly responsible for coalescing the diaspora into a Pan African community. Also, the Walter Rodney Archives was instrumental in providing the personal desires and fears of this very Pan African, who I regard as one of the last of a dying breed. His work throughout Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States solidify one of this essays thesis that the routes are tantamount to the roots and the Homeland is not paramount to the Caribbean homeland, where many have sacrificed their lives to secure a future for their progeny. Ultimately, the quality of identity and leadership is at the crux of this essay, and the contemporary implications regard the cultural and economic sensibilities of the African Diaspora and the wider global agenda.

A Preliminary Solution to the Indigenous Issues in South Africa Colony

South Africa is an important colony in the colonial territory of the British Empire. In the process of British colonization, the nonstandard management and unconstrained colonial behavior caused considerable troubles and injuries to the indigenous people. Evangelical Thomas Fowell Buxton and missionary John Phillips contributed to solving the local indigenous problems. The indigenous problems in Cape colony promoted the establishment of the select committee on Aborigines (British settlements), which gave relevant suggestions to solve the indigenous problems in South Africa, and to some extent eased the contradiction between colonists and indigenous people.