Collaborative Research Group African History

Online Sources and Journals

• Clio en Afrique: l'Histoire africaine en langue française

• Afrika Focus

Book Announcements

Rethinking White Societies in Southern Africa, 1930-1990s edited by Duncan Money and Danelle van der Zyl-Hermann, Routledge Studies in Modern History of Africa, open access

Rethinking White Societies in Southern Africa challenges the geographical and chronological limitations of existing scholarship by presenting case studies from Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe that track the fortunes of nonhegemonic whites during the era of white minority rule. Arguing against prevalent understandings of white society as uniformly wealthy or culturally homogeneous during this period, it demonstrates that social class remained a salient element throughout the twentieth century, how Southern Africa’s white societies were often divided and riven with tension and how the resulting social, political and economic complexities animated white minority regimes in the region. The book is fully open access and can be read and downloaded here.

Identités sahéliennes en temps de crise: histoires, enjeux et perspectives edited by Baz Lecoq and Amy Niang, Lit Verlag Münster, €44,90.

Cet ouvrage multidisciplinaire présente une série des réflexions critiques sur les dynamiques identitaires dans un Sahel « en crise ». Si cette dernière constitue un moment de rupture et de renouvellement des règles socioculturelles des sociétés sahéliennes, elle révèle également les aspects structurants et fondateurs de l’identité comme logique de reproduction, instrument politique et enjeu international majeur. Cet ouvrage montre que la pratique de l’identité produit à la fois des temporalités, des contingences, des idéologies, des légitimités et des imaginaires constamment réactualisés à travers le conflit, l’expression esthétique, le mouvement, ainsi que l’invention de nouvelles formes de vie.

This multidisciplinary publication presents critical reflections on the dynamics of identity formation in a Sahel “in crisis”: a moment of sudden rupture and change that radically alters the social and cultural structures shaping the present of Sahel societies, but which also reveal them to be political instruments with an international significance. The contributions show how conflict, movement, and aesthetics shape identity practices that produce temporal, contingent and constantly changing ideologies, legitimacies, imaginaries, and new ways of life in the Sahel.

Travail forcé et mobilisation de la main-d'œuvre au Sénégal (années 1920-1960) by Romain Tiquet, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, €26.

Based on original administrative archives, press articles and oral interviews, this book provides a social history of forced labour in West Africa. It focuses on the many actors who have shaped and adapted the colonial political econmy on a daily basis. At the crossroads of labour history, African history and colonial history, this monograph proposes a renewed reflection on the "mise en valeur" of colonial territories. More broadly, it interrogates the impact of forced labour on the rhetoric and manpower mobilization practices of postcolonial elites in the aftermath of Senegal's independence in 1960. With a preface by Alexander Keese and an afterword by Andreas Eckert.