Conquest And Resistance To Colonialism In Africa

The articles collected in this study, first published in 1993, concentrates on African struggles to maintain their autonomy. Although the history of interaction between African peoples and those from outside that continent is old, for most of Africa colonial domination by European powers was both relatively recent and relatively short phenomenon. In 1970 most Africans lived in independent societies; by 1915 all by two African states had been conquered by Europeans. Resistance to European domination by Africans was continuous, although the level on which is occurred varied. As the articles in this collection show, the costs of conquest to Africans was great. This title will be of interest to students of African history and Imperialism.

Originally published in 1971, this book is a study by 9 historians of West Africa, three of whom are themselves African, of the military response to the colonial occupation of West Africa. Apart from the fact that the extent and effectiveness of African resistance to 19th Century European invasion of Africa has been underestimated by historians, those studies of the African campaigns that have been made have been primarily concerned with the military strategy and problems of European invaders. Very little attention has been paid to the way African military commanders reorientated their military strategies and deployed their armies against the better-armed European invaders.

This work investigates the social, economic and political impact of the European colonial wars in Africa on both the victors and the vanquished. It examines the role of both the imperial powers and the African people who joined with or resisted them. Examining the experiences of Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, Portugal and Italy, it offers a comprehensive study of the military processes of conquest.; Adopting both indigenous and imperial perspectives, the author, explores how the historical memory of conquest and resistance has shaped the evolution of a modern African identity. It is aimed at students of imperial, commonwealth and military history, as well as African history.

Intended for those interested in the African continent and the diversity of human history, this work looks at Africa's past and reflects on the changing ways it has been imagined and represented. It illustrates key themes in modern thinking about Africa's history with a range of historical examples.

In 1944, Raphael Lemkin coined the term “genocide” to describe a foreign occupation that destroyed or permanently crippled a subject population. In this tradition, Empire, Colony, Genocide embeds genocide in the epochal geopolitical transformations of the past 500 years: the European colonization of the globe, the rise and fall of the continental land empires, violent decolonization, and the formation of nation states. It thereby challenges the customary focus on twentieth-century mass crimes and shows that genocide and “ethnic cleansing” have been intrinsic to imperial expansion. The complexity of the colonial encounter is reflected in the contrast between the insurgent identities and genocidal strategies that subaltern peoples sometimes developed to expel the occupiers, and those local elites and creole groups that the occupiers sought to co-opt. Presenting case studies on the Americas, Australia, Africa, Asia, the Ottoman Empire, Imperial Russia, and the Nazi “Third Reich,” leading authorities examine the colonial dimension of the genocide concept as well as the imperial systems and discourses that enabled conquest. Empire, Colony, Genocide is a world history of genocide that highlights what Lemkin called “the role of the human group and its tribulations.”

This work provides insights into important moments in the European colonization project in Africa, and into structural intersections between the active agents of colonialism and the different layers of Africa's socio-political structures. It reveals the indispensability of the African peoples, their pre-colonial establishments, and knowledge of the colonial encounter. The book also clarifies the significant impact that African people's choices, chances, mistakes, and internal politics had in structuring their colonial experience and European dominance. Colonized Africans and colonizing Europeans had to negotiate the nature of their relationship: the grid, nexus, and hierarchy of colonial power and authority were constantly under construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction. African Agency and European Colonialism expounds upon these beclouded features of Africa's engagement of colonialism. It is appropriate for students, scholars, political analysts, sociologists, and other professionals interested in the social and political history of Africa. Book jacket.