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Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective
Volume 1 | Number 1
Article 3
2006
Rethinking Imperialism and Resistance in West
Africa: Historiographic Connections for the
Classroom
Michael Christopher Low
[email protected]
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Journal ofGlobal Initiatives, Vol. 1, No.1, Spring 2006, pp. 43-57
Rethinking Imperialism and
Resistance in West Africa:
Historiographic Connections
for the Classroom
Michael Christopher Low
Even in the postcolonial era, West African history remains
plagued by Eurocentric myths and media-driven stereotypes.
Though specialists have been struggling with this problem for
decades, a rift remains between the elite world of academia
and the African history being taught in American schools.
In an attempt to bridge this gap, this essay provides a case
study and a list of suggested resources designed to help nonspecialist world history teachers rethink European colonial
power and its impact on our conception of African history.
Through its examination of how West African responses to
imperialism interacted with, adapted to, and were ultimately
conditioned by European power structures, this essay touches
on a range oftopics, including pre-colonial African history; the
partition of Africa; decolonization; linkages between slavery,
colonial labor coercion, and the spread of capitalism; and the
continuing impact of colonial rule on present-day conflict in
the postcolonial African states.
Perhaps in the future there will be some African history to teach. But at
present there is none; there is only the history of the Europeans in Africa.
The rest is darkness ... and darkness is not the subject of history.
-Hugh Trevor Roper, 1962
It has always happened in the struggle for freedom that such a people,
formerly lost in an imaginary maze, a prey to unspeakable terrors yet
happy to lose themselves in a dreamlike torment, such a people becomes
unhinged, reorganizes itself, and in blood and tears gives birth to very real
and immediate action.
-Frantz Fanon, The Wretched ofthe Earth, 1963
43
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Michael Christopher Low
The foregoing quotations from Hugh Trevor Roper and Frantz Fanon
should collectively serve as a reminder of Michel Foucault's explanation of
the relationship between power and knowledge (Gandhi, 1998, pp. 74-75).
According to postmodern and postcolonial thinkers, most notably Foucault and
Edward Said, "knowledge transforms power" from an aloof governmental-power
to an all-encompassing system of social exchange, which is in tum "reproduced in
discursive networks" (Gandhi, 1998; Foucault, 1970). It is in these ever-expanding
web-like systems of beliefs, assumptions, and propaganda that postmodern and
postcolonial thinkers have identified the most enduring foundations of colonial
domination. Unfortunately, even in this supposedly postcolonial era, the history
of West Africa still bears the crushing weight of such Eurocentric belief systems
(Blaut, 1993). As Barbara Bush argues in Imperialism, Race, and Resistance:
Africa and Britain, 1919-1945, the discursive tentacles of "cultural imperialism"
that "stamped the imprint of backwardness on 'non-European' cultures" are still
alive and well in the writings of many established imperial historians, many of
whom "have remained stubbornly resistant to incorporating postcolonial insights"
(Bush, 1999, pp. xiii, 3). Bush concludes that in light of recent humanitarian and
governmental crises in Africa some imperial historians have even drifted toward
the "moral rehabilitation of imperialism," extolling the virtues of empire as a
"civilizing force that swept away primitive rituals," and recasting the imperial
project in Africa as an "empire to be proud of' (Bush, 1999, pp. 2-3). Thus, it
would seem that, much like Frantz Fanon's imagery of the struggling freedom
fighter, historians, teachers, and students are still, more often than not, lost in a
discursive maze of false ideas, generated by colonial-era historiography, but still
projected into the history being written in the postcolonial era.
In all fairness, it should be noted that specialists in the field ofAfrican history
have long been interested in rectifying the mistakes ofEurocentric historiography;
however, it would appear that such efforts have not been adequately popularized.
Despite the fact that this essay is by no means an empirical study of classroom
reform, based on my own teaching experiences, anecdotal experiences related
by' respected colleagues, and a familiarity with the frustrating dearth of quality
teaching materials available for teaching African content, it seems safe to
report that there is a deep divide between the elite sphere of African history
being recorded in academic journals and monographs and the African history
being taught in middle schools, high schools, and even the survey courses at
colleges and universities. In response to this problem, this essay seeks to take
the historiographic perspectives of specialists and make them more accessible to
the non-specialist world history teacher. While this project was originally slated
to be a more "scholarly" study of British and French colonial regimes and the
resistance movements they precipitated in West Africa, after participating in
the travel and lectures associated with Kennesaw State University's FulbrightHays Group Project Abroad in Ghana and Mali, which were the impetus for this
Rethinking Imperialism and Resistance in West Africa
45
essay, I modified the thrust of my interests in imperialism and resistance slightly. 1
As a result, the relationships between European imperialism and West African
resistance movements have been employed more as points of departure. Thus, the
primary goal of this essay is to suggest readings and a hisforiographic perspective
necessary for the average teacher to weave a more accurate, coherent narrative of
West African history for their students.
In an attempt to shed some of the Eurocentric baggage that plagues the
teaching of West African history, it is necessary to rethink not only the purposes
and organization of European power, but also how West African responses
interacted with, adapted to, and were conditioned by European power structures.
Traditionally both historians of European imperialism and Africanist specialists
have tended to geographically compartmentalize West Africa into British
and French spheres, emphasizing nationalistic and imperial rivalries and the
supposedly vast differences between their methods of administration (Asiwaju,
2001; Crowder, 1968, pp. 162-238). By insisting on the divergence of British
and French policies, historians have repeatedly denied, or at least obscured,
the overwhelming similarities between these empires and their economic goals
in tropical Africa as well as similar methods of resistance that each regime
engendered in their West African subjects. Time and again, historians have gone
to great lengths to distinguish between the supposedly milder British system of
"indirect" rule and the comparatively heavy-handed French system of "direct"
rule (Mamdani, 1996, pp. 16-25). By contrast, this essay seeks to reexamine the
colonial experience of both British and French West Africa by questioning the
binary categories of direct and indirect rule. While it would be counterfactual to
suggest that there were no differences between British and French methods of
administration in colonial Africa, it is perhaps more important to emphasize their
similarities. In other words, what common goals did both regimes share? What
were these regimes designed to foster and what were they designed to prevent?
Unity, particularly for the purposes of teaching ofAfrican history, is a highly
underrated concept. Geographically speaking, the partition of Africa, formally
inaugurated at the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, has trained us to think of
Africa as a continent of divisions and arbitrarily-imposed colonial and national
borders. Aside from conditioning a jigsaw-puzzle-view ofAfrican geography, this
emphasis on the partition ofAfrica, European conquest, and colonial rule has also
led historians and teachers to ignore equally important topics, such as the existence
of strong pre-colonial states; pre-colonial trade contacts with Europe; important
1. While it would be impossible to adequately express the gratitude owed to Dr. Akanmu
Adebayo of Kennesaw State University, it seems appropriate to mention his efforts in organizing the U.S. Department of Education grants and travel arrangements, which allowed a
small band of Georgia teachers and professors to intimately experience West African culture
and history. Aside from Dr. Adebayo, an expression ofthanks also goes to my fellow participants, our in-country liaisons in Ghana and Mali, and my colleagues and friends at Avondale
Middle School, Dekalb County Schools, and Georgia State University.
46
Michael Christopher Low
connections between capitalism, industrialization, and slavery; and the relative
effectiveness ofAfrican attempts to resist European domination throughout most
of the nineteenth century, all of which require knowledge extending well beyond
the partition ofAfrica in the 1880s. How then can we, as teachers and professors,
integrate all of these topics into an intelligible narrative?
Because both geography and the narratives of African history offered by
imperial historians, and subsequently passed on in the textbooks provided for our
students, are, more often than not, fragmented into sections, which jump from
slavery to colonialism to decolonization, treating the entire story from the European
or imperial perspective, the role and agency ofAfricans, particularly pre-colonial
Africans, tends to get 10st. 2 Yet, as John Thornton notes in Africa and Africans in
the Making ofthe Atlantic World, 1400-1800, pre-colonial states, such as Ashanti,
Dahomey, and Oyo, exercised control over the nature of their interactions with
Europeans, possessed manufacturing skills, substantial purchasing power, state
organization, and military prowess. Unfortunately, perspectives like Thorton's
remain buried beneath a landslide of assumptions about African weakness and
poverty generated by colonial historiography and present-day media perceptions
(Thornton, 1990, pp. 7, 122-125). In an attempt to remedy this situation and
the image of passivity and helplessness that it suggests, the first generation of
postcolonial historians emerging in the 1960s and 1970s eagerly forged a more
sensitive brand of history, one that more accurately reflects African resistance to
imperialism. As Frederick Cooper's review of African historiography, "Conflict
and Connection: Rethinking Colonial African History," points out:
African resistance to European conquest and colonization both ratified the
integrity of pre-colonial polities and structures (themselves a major topic) and
provided a link between them and the nationalist challenge to colonial rule.
Resistance was the key plot element in a continuous narrative ofAfrican history
(Cooper, 1994, p. 1520).
Indeed, the studies created by postcolonial or anti-colonial intellectuals, focusing
on African resistance, have not only shown the cruelty of European imperialism,
they have also shown that:
colonial conquests and heavy-handed interventions into African life were
vigorously challenged, that guerilla warfare within decentralized polities was
as important as the fielding of armies by African states, that women as well as
men engaged in acts of resistance, and that individual action-moving away
from the tax collector or labor recruiter, ignoring orders, speaking insolently, and
criticizing the claims of missionaries, doctors, and educators-eomplemented
collectjye actjons (Cooper, 1994, pp. 1520-1521).
2. Compare the narrative suggested in this essay with the content prescribed by the Georgia Performance Standards for World History and Geography, available from http://www.
georgiastandards.org; see also Georgia's earlier curriculum, the Quality Core Curriculum,
available from http://www.glc.kI2.ga.us/. For a more sophisticated curriculum alternative,
see San Diego State University's "World History for Us All," available from http://worldhistoryforusall. sdsu.edu.
Rethinking Imperialism and Resistance in West Africa
47
While recording the frequency and variety of resistance methods employed
was certainly one ofthe major tasks taken up by Africanists ofthe postcolonial era,
another major obstacle was to trace the historic connection between nineteenthcentury "primary resistance" efforts, such as the armed struggles of the Ashanti
and Tukolor empires, and "secondary resistance," such as the efforts of modem
strike-leaders, anti-colonial circles of the West African intelligentsia, PanAfricanists, and modem nationalist parties. As T. O. Ranger insists, resistance
efforts, however small in scale or ineffectual at the time, must be viewed as part
ofa longer tradition stretching from before the partition ofAfrica in 1885 until the
decolonization processes of the 1950s and 1960s (Ranger, 1968).3
However, because the semi-official historians ofempire in Britain and France
have typically characterized African resistance efforts prior to the formation of
nationalist political parties as fragmentary, isolated instances of "tribal" rebellion,
representing reactionary, backward-looking segments of society, Westerninfluenced methods of political organization and resistance have been privileged
in most survey texts. This perspective has also been reinforced by a tendency
to separate so-called rural/traditional and urban/modem forms of resistance into
separate, unrelated categories. Of course, this begs the question, from where does
this unnecessary bifurcation of rural/traditional and urban/modem resistance
originate? Simply put, the form of colonial rule shaped the nature of revolt
seeking to dismantle it.
Both the British and French colonial regimes were organized to ensure
that rural and urban forms of resistance were kept separate and fragmented.
According to Mahmood Mamdani's (1996) groundbreaking study, Citizen and
Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism, the West
African colonial state was purposefully "bifurcated." Designed for a small
minority of white administrators to control numerically superior populations of
Africans, the colonial state depended on a layered system of legal dualism and
ethnic pluralism. Urban populations were directly ruled through assimilationist
policies, which reflected the paternalistic rhetoric of the "civilizing mission,"
modernization, and the dangling promise of rights associated with citizenship.
By contrast, the colonial administrative method of indirect rule was employed
for rural populations. It was a flexible, decentralized system designed to uphold
traditional or "tribal" authority, so-called customary laws, and ethnic divisions
(Mamdani, 1996, pp. 1-23).
3. Similarly, the "Ibadan" school ofhistoriography emphasized the integrity ofpre-colonial
societies and their importance as precedents for post-independence African nations. In the
words of 1. F. Ade Ajayi, colonialism was an "episode in African history," which broke an
otherwise continuous tradition of African political agency. Ajayi's train of thought is also
echoed in a similar Francophone discourse on the "colonial parenthesis." For example, see
Ajayi (1968). The Continuity of African Institutions under Colonialism. In T. O. Ranger,
(Ed.). Emerging Themese in African History (pp. 189-200). London: Heinemann.
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Michael Christopher Low
The architect of this strategy of indirect rule was Lord Frederick Lugard.
Lugard developed indirect rule in both Uganda and Nigeria and eventually
wrote a kind of colonizer's handbook on the subject in 1922, titled The Dual
Mandate in Tropical West Africa. According to Lugard, the first step in building
a regime of "indirect rule" is to "endeavour to find a man of influence as chief,
and to group under him as many villages or districts as possible, to teach him to
delegate powers, and to take an interest in his 'Native Treasury,' to support his
authority, and to inculcate a sense of responsibility" (Kirke-Green, 1969, p. 53).
As Mamdani points out, Lugard's tribalized system of indirect rule in rural areas
was able to "create a dependent but autonomous system ofrule, one that combined
accountability to superiors with a flexible response to the subject population,
a capacity to implement central directives with one to absorb local shocks"
(Mamdani, 1996, p. 60). Thus, local chiefs were responsible for maintaining dayto-day order within their particular British district or French cercle. Essentially,
these native authorities were co-opted as representatives--desperately needed,
given the paucity of European administrators available-of the British District
Commissioner or, in the French system, the Cercle Commander. However, far
from independent, each chief was subject to appointment and dismissal by their
colonial masters. As the French Resident at Futa-Jalon (Guinea) coldly stated
in 1897: "The chief will attend to the tax and furnish manpower, or he will be
smashed like glass" (Suret-Canale, 1988, p. 155). As Adu Boahen succinctly puts
it, indirect rule "was the most indirect way of ruling directly" (1986, p. 127).
To further underscore the contrived and destructive nature of this system,
many of these puppet-chiefs were simply appointed and imposed upon areas
that did not already have a chief or a recognizable political structure in the eyes
of Europeans. Thus, far from maintaining traditional rule or ruling indirectly,
such practices illustrate what Eric Hobsbawm and T. O. Ranger refer to as "the
invention of tradition," whereby Europeans invented supposedly "traditional"
tribes and chiefs, which were expedient to their political needs, but were by no
means considered legitimate or accountable to the populations they governed
(Ranger, 1983).4
As has already been noted, native authorities in the Lugardian system of
indirect rule were "shock absorbers," however, their role as political cushioning
for European authority should be placed in a larger context than that of colonial
administration. By pointing out the role of the puppet-chieftancy in the colonial
system to students, one can expand a lesson on colonial rule into one which
encompasses pre-colonial Africa, slavery, and the rise and expansion ofcapitalism.
As Mahmood Mamdani and countless others have asserted, "the end of formal
slavery ... opened the possibility of a new era of compulsions short of formal
slavery"(1996). Here lies the importance of puppet-chiefs: local chiefs, ruling
rural populations outside of the more urban coastal centers of West Africa, which
4. See also Mamdani's discussion ofthe illegitimacy of cheifs under colonial rule in Citizen
and Subject, pp. 39-41.
Rethinking Imperialism and Resistance in West Africa
49
had already been integrated into the capitalist world economy prior to the partition
of Africa, became the nexus connecting the world market-economy and the nonmarket economy of interior Africa. Chieftancy and indirect rule were basically
part of a regime of economic coercion, which sought to shift the African role in
the world economy from slavery to wage labor and "legitimate" trade in cash
crops (Mamdani, 1996, p. 23; Crowder, 1968, p. 169).5
By driving land and labor into the modem world economy, puppet-chiefs served
as a regime of coercion for the expansion of capitalism, administering the day-today violence of imperial exploitation with a wide range of compulsions: forced
labor, forced crops, forced sales, forced contributions, and forced removals. As
Nigerian nationalist, Nnamdi Azikiwe, once described it, the puppet-cheiftancies
were "the velvet glove on the iron hand" of colonial power and capital (Azikiwe,
1930). Thus, while European notions of the "civilizing mission," ostensibly
dedicated to the "protection" and betterment of "inferior races" were employed by
imperial officials to "seduce" their citizens, and "even themselves, into supporting
colonization [and capitalism] as forcers] for good," in actuality these concepts
were a mask for a cynical process of economic exploitation with eerie similarities
to slave labor (Conklin, 1998, p. 421; Conklin, 1997).
By connecting colonial administrative practice to the objectives of expanding
capitalism, students will be better able to comprehend the link between more
nuanced forms of coercive labor practice during the colonial era and the rather
straightforward evils of slavery. Secondly, by connecting economic exploitation
before and after the partition of Africa, pre-colonial history is brought back into
the fold. Finally, it cannot be stressed enough, one of the best ways to tie all of
these themes together is through illustrations of the continuous process ofAfrican
struggle and resistance to exploitation.
As Adu Boahen's Africa under Colonial Domination, 1880-1935 makes
clear, armed resistance and rebellions were widespread and lasted all the way up
through World War I. As the following list of representative examples indicates,
the objectives of these rebellions were tri-fold: to regain independence and
sovereignty by expelling colonial rule completely, to redress specific practices
of abuse or oppression perpetrated by the colonial regime, and to seek a more
equitable accommodation with the colonial regime.
1885-1887: Mamadou Lamine in Senegal
1898-1901: Fode Silla and FodeKabba in the Gambia
1898: The Hut Tax Rebellion in Sierra Leone
1900: The Ashanti Rebellion led by Yaa Asantewaa
1908-1914: Mossi Rebellions in the Upper Volta
1908-1914: Numerous Revolts in Guinea
1913-1914: Rebellion in Dahomey
5. For a parallel discussion on colonial attempts to force ex-slaves in Jamaica into wage
labor, see Holt, T. (1992). The Problem ofFreedom: Race, Labor, and Politics in Jamaica
and Britain, 1832-1938. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins.
50
Michael Christopher Low
However, it should also be noted that armed resistance, especially in light of
the often overwhelming technological forces arrayed against West African rebels,
was not the only form of resistance employed. This period also witnessed mass
migrations protesting harsh conditions resulting from forced labor, collective
punishments, and unfair legal practices in a particular area (particularly in French
colonies); strikes by urban workers, most l)otably railway and dockworkers;
boycotts, petitions, and delegations orchestrated by elite associations such as the
Aborigines' Rights Protection Society, the Young Senegalese Club, the People's
Union, and the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines' Protection Society; and ideological
and religious/millenarian forms of protests from independent Christian churches,
Muslim mahdist movements and sufi brotherhoods, and practitioners ofTraditional
African Religions (Boahen, 1985, pp. 68-71).
While illustrating examples of African agency in struggling toward the
mass movements that eventually precipitated Pan-Africanism, nationalism, and
ultimately decolonization processes, it should be noted, however, that until the late
interwar and post-Word War II eras efforts at rebellion and resistance were largely
unsuccessful. As both Alice Conklin and Frederick Cooper point out, British and
French administrators continued to adapt to the challenges laid down by their
colonial subjects. Especially in French West Africa, a growing frustration with the
level of rebellion expressed during World War I conscription drives led to a move
away from the "civilizing mission," assimilationist policies, and direct rule. After
World War I, a higher priority was placed on "conserving" African society and
"tribal" structures. The more conservative views on colonial administration that
emerged in French West Africa after World War I closely mirrored the policies of
British West Africa (Mamdani, 1996, p. 49).6 While it might be easy to mistake
such policies for a kind of cultural sensitivity or loosening of direct rule, there
were political and economic imperatives driving this shift toward indirect, more
decentralized rule (Conklin, 1997, pp. 7, 171-175; Copper, 2005, p. 1531).
In an attempt to contain the protests of Western-educated elites in urban
centers, both the British and French attempted to vest more and more power in
the hands of "traditional" authorities. Clearly the reason for this shift was an
increasing "white paranoia," which reflected growing anxieties that attacks from
the urban intelligentsia and labor movements would merge with rural rebellions
(Bush, 1999, p. 113). As urban activists challenged the anti-democratic nature of
the colonial system during the interwar years, they were met with increasingly
autocratic responses from defensive colonial governments, which described
their legal and journalistic efforts as the "lying propaganda" of "Bolshevists"
and "race-conscious" radicals (Bush, 1999, p. 113). This rhetoric is extremely
6. The shift from the "civilizing mission" to a more conservative "ethnographic" state can
be traced back far beyond the post-World War I shift witnessed in French West Africa.
In the British context, both Nicholas Dirks and Mahmood Mamdani trace this shift to the
Indian Mutiny of 1857-1858. For more, see Dirks, N. (2001). Castes ofMind: Colonialism
and the Making ofModern India. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Rethinking Imperialism and Resistance in West Africa
51
revealing. Accusations of Bolshevism reflected the fear that urban activists would
derail the extension of the extractive economy of cash-crop production (cotton,
cocoa, palm oil) from being carried out in the hinterland. As Alice Conklin points
out, the interwar period marked the height of labor coercion and forced cash-crop
production in French West Africa. Thus, it would seem that the adaptations and
restructurings ofthe colonial system were less concerned with preserving political
power than protecting its extractive, capitalist economy (Conklin, 1987).7
In an effort to protect their hold on capital and cash-crop production in
West Africa, European colonial regimes sought to fragment resistance efforts,
separating rural and urban, "traditional" and modem, "tribal" and civil society.
As Mamdani explains:
The form of rule shaped the form of revolt against it. Indirect rule at once
reinforced ethnically bound institutions of control and led to their explosion from
within. Ethnicity (tribalism) thus came to be simultaneously the form of colonial
control over natives and the form of revolt against it. It defined the parameters of
both the native authority in charge of the local state apparatus and of resistance
to it (Mamdani, 1996, pp. 24-25).
Unfortunately, the effects of European policies of "tribalization" have been
far reaching. When the need for fiscal austerity in the post-World War II era
drove Britain and France to reconsider the costs and benefits of their colonial
responsibilities, they handed power over to the very same Western-educated
nationalists they had previously sought to marginalize. As a result of the colonial
state's previous bifurcations of power and resistance, postcolonial African states
have been plagued with continued expressions of urban versus rural resentments
and "tribalisms" ofboth ethnic and religious persuasions, which have undermined
national governments, civil society, and democracy. And despite having abdicated
political authority over West Africa, capital has remained concentrated in London
and Paris and exploitation continues in the guise ofneocolonialism (Cooper, 1994,
p. 1531; Mamdani, 1996, pp. 24-25).8
As students come to the doors of our classrooms and lecture halls with mediadriven preconceptions and stereotypes that "write off Africa as a continent of
disasters and bad government," it is our responsibility as teachers to contextualize
and challenge these beliefs. Thus, rather than presenting slavery, pre-colonial
African history, imperialism, capitalism, and present-day problems as unrelated
7. For similar themes in British West Africa, see also Developing the Estates: Slavery and
Forced Labor. In Phillips, A. (1989). The Enigma of Colonialism: British Policy in West
Africa (pp. 26-58). London and Bloomington: James Currey and the Indiana University
Press.
8. For more on the fragmented nature of postcolonial states and the relationship between
capitalism and colonial governance, see the Subaltern Studies classic, Guha, R. (1997).
Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India. Cambridge and
London: Harvard.
52
Michael Christopher Low
lessons, it is our responsibility to weave these themes together and historicize
the present. While this essay is far from comprehensive, its goal has been to fill
in the gaps in textbooks and lessons that I have observed in my experiences as
both a student and teacher of world, and therefore African, history. It is no longer
acceptable to claim ignorance. It is our responsibility to expose and attempt
to ameliorate the legacy of exploitation and Eurocentric historiography that
continues to creep into our classrooms. As a first step toward these lofty goals, I
have provided a list of suggested readings to aid in this endeavor. 9
References
Asiwaju, A. J. (2001). West African Transformations: Comparative Impacts of
French and British ColoniqJism. Ikeja, Nigeria: Malthouse Press.
Azikiwe, N. (1930 May). Murdering Women in Nigeria. The Crisis, 37, 13-166.
Boahen, A. (1985). Africa under Colonial Domination, 1880-1935. Berkeley and
London: University of California Press and James Curry.
Boahen, A. (1986). Topics in West African History, 2nd ed. Harlow, U.K.:
Longman.
Bush, B. (1999). Imperialism, Race and Resistance: Africa and Britain, 19191945. London and New York: Routledge.
Conklin, A. (1997). A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in
France and West Africa, 1895-1930. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Conklin, A. (1998, April). Colonialism and Human Rights, A Contradiction in
Terms? The Case of France and West Africa, 1895-1914. The American
Historical Review 103(2).
Cooper, F. (1994, Dec.) Conflict and Connection: Rethinking Colonial African
History. The American Historical Review 99(5).
Crowder, M. (1968). West Africa under Colonial Rule. London and Benin City,
Nigeria: Hutchinson of London in Association with Ethiope Publishing
Corporation.
9. For an excellent supplement to the more narrowly-focused reading list provided below,
see also Northrup, D. (2004, November). Suggested Readings in African History for NonSpecialists: An Annotated List. World History Connected, 2(1), available from http://www.
worldhistoryconnected.press.uiuc.edu.
Rethinking Imperialism and Resistance in West Africa
53
Fanon, F. (1990). The Wretched of the Earth, 3rd. ed. (C. Farrington, Trans.).
Harmondsouth: Penguin.
Foucault, M. (1970). The Order ofThings: An Archaeology ofthe Human Sciences.
London: Routledge.
Gandhi, L. (1998). Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Holt, T. (1992). The Problem ofFreedom: Race, Labor, and Politics in Jamaica
and Britain, 1832-1938. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins.
Kirke-Green, A. H. M. (1969). Lugard and the Amalgamation of Nigeria: A
Documentary Record. London: Frank Casso
Mamdani, M. (1996). Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy
ofLate Colonialism. Princeton and Ikeja, Nigeria: Malthouse Press.
Ranger, T. O. (1968). Connexions between "Primary Resistance" Movements and
Modem Mass Nationalism in East and Central Africa. Part 1. The Journal of
African History 9(3), 437-453.
Ranger, T. o. (1983). The Inventions of Tradition in Colonial Africa. In E.
Hobsbawm & T. O. Ranger (Eds.), The Invention ofTradition (pp. 211-262).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Pantheon.
Suret-Canale, J. (1988). The End of Chieftancy in Guinea. In Essays on African
History: From the Slave Trade to Neocolonialism. Trenton, NJ: Africa World
Press.
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Michael Christopher Low
Suggested Reading
Achebe, C. (1959). Things Fall Apart. New York: Anchor Books.
Amin, S. (1988). Eurocentrism. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Asiwaju, A. I. (2001). West African Transformations: Comparative Impacts of
French and British Colonialism. Ikeja, Nigeria: Malthouse Press.
Boahen, A. with Ade Ajayi, J. F., & Tidy, M. (1986). Topics in West African
History. 2nd ed. Harlow, U.K.: Longman.
Boahen, A. (1987). African Perspectives on Colonialism. Baltimore: The Johns
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