by David Whitehouse (This article was originally posted on Imperial and Global Forum) On July 1, 1888, Charles Lavigerie, founder of the White Fathers Catholic missionary order, gave a speech to a packed Saint-Sulpice Church in Paris in which he denounced the evils of slavery in Africa. The event was a public relations triumph, with […]
Arguing about Empire: The Dreyfus Affair and the Fashoda Crisis, 1898
Something of a contrived crisis – or, at least, an avoidable one – Fashoda was also a Franco-British battle of words in which competing claims of imperial destiny, legal rights, ethical superiority, and gentility preserved in the face of provocation belied the local reality of yet more African territory seized by force.
My Alternative PhD in History
By Ben Weiss A recent piece in The Economist claims that, “One thing many PhD students have in common is dissatisfaction. Seven-day weeks, ten-hour days, low pay and uncertain prospects are widespread. You know you are a graduate student, goes one quip, when your office is better decorated than your home and you have a […]
Foreign Policy from Candidate to President: Richard Nixon and the Lesson of Biafra
By Roy Doron On November 19, 2016, President Barack Obama, speaking on the transition of power to Donald Trump said “once you’re in the Oval Office … that has a way of shaping … and in some cases modifying your thinking.” The 2016 election will undoubtedly be remembered as one of the most unconventional and […]
“What is African Literature?”: Uncovering One Woman’s Answers
In 1963, Dennis Duerden of the Transcription Centre in London and Henry Doré of the National Educational Television Centre in New York collaborated with prominent South African writer Lewis Nkosi to develop a television series featuring leading African artists and writers of late-colonial and early-independent Africa.
Charleston Shooting Exposes America’s Pro-Apartheid Cold War Past
In the wake of the shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, the United States has undergone a deep soul searching. Images of the confessed shooter posing with the Confederate Battle Flag have launched a long-overdue national debate about the meaning of Confederate imagery. But they have quickly overshadowed the shooter’s use of two other symbols: the defunct standards of Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and apartheid South Africa.
#BringBackOurGirls: A History of Humanitarian Intervention in Nigeria
by Brian McNeil #BringBackOurGirls has become ubiquitous on the internet, with a wide gamut of politicians and celebrities taking up the cause of the nearly 300 Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by the terrorist organization Boko Haram. While the efficacy of this sort of hashtag activism, or slacktivism, has been questioned by scholars—and openly mocked by some […]
Toyin Falola on Africa and the United States
Often wrongly considered to be on the periphery of the history of the United States, Africa has played an important role politically, economically, and culturally from before American independence until the present day.