By Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra Luanda and Benguela became the busiest, most profitable slaving ports in the transatlantic slave trade in the seventeenth century precisely because these two ports set up tribunals to hear tens of thousands of enslaved petitioners demand freedom. Paperwork in local tribunals set hundreds of thousands free, even at the risk of bankrupting […]
Africa
The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, by Frederick John Dealtry Lugard (1965)
by Ogechukwu Ezekwem Born to an English family in India in 1858, Frederick Lugard rose to become the colonial Governor of Nigeria, Britain’s most valued African possession. His The Dual Mandate, first published in 1922, became a handbook for all British administrators in tropical Africa, and influenced British colonial policies across the continent. It offered […]
The Cross-Cultural Exchange of Atlantic Slavery
The Atlantic slave trade between Africa and the Americas connected merchants, Portuguese colonists, convicts, and slaves in cultural and economic relationships, reconfiguring the space of the southern Atlantic. The work of Mariana Candido and Roquinaldo Ferriera shows how creolization and the economic prosperity created by the slave trade was a two-way street.
People Are Not the Same by Eric Silla (1998)
This book follows an academic tradition that illuminates the historical experience of everyday people, particularly individuals and groups hidden from the limited vision of African nationalist historiography. Eric Silla, scholar and leading member of a think-tank on African Affairs in the US Department of State, brings his skill to an assessment of leprosy, otherwise known as Hansen disease, in Mali.
A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul (1979)
Much like its eponymous waterway, V.S. Naipaul’s A Bend in the River meanders steadily through the dark reality of postcolonial Africa, alternately depicting minimalist beauty and frightening tension. Like Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, subtle prose reveals the timelessness of the continent’s remote corners alongside human corruptibility.
Gender and Decolonization in the Congo: The Legacy of Patrice Lumumba (2010)
In the 1960s the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) emerged as a political ‘hot spot’ in Africa. The transition from decades of Belgian colonial brutality and paternalism to independence, as historical records reveal, did not go smoothly.
African Americans in Ghana: Black Expatriates and the Civil Rights Era by Kevin K. Gaines (2007)
In his response to the recent resignation of Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, President Barack Obama situated the event within a longer history of popular freedom struggles. His references to Gandhi and the fall of the Berlin Wall evoked powerful images for most Americans, but Obama’s allusion to the small West African nation of Ghana may be less familiar.
Securing Africa: Post-9/11 Discourses on Terrorism ed. Malinda S. Smith (2010)
Islam has a long tradition in Africa dating back to the seventh century. Today, Islam plays a crucial role in the political, socio-cultural, religious, and economic lives of the population.
Great Books on Africa and the U.S.
More on the historical interactions between the US and Africa
The Rebel’s Hour by Lieve Joris (2008)
Lieve Joris recounts the true story of Assani, a student, rebel, soldier, and statesman, in a genre she refers to as literary reportage. Joris begins Assani’s story in Kinshasa during the fragile peace of 2003, when he is serving in the disparate forces that constitute the Congolese military.