Alexander Keese
Biographic Data
| ID | 293082 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alexander Keese |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alexander |
| FAMILY NAME | Keese |
| SIGNATURE | KEESE A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Geneva |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2836-2084 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 64 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Forced Labour and the System of Overburdening in the Interwar Middle Congo: Congolese Populations between Administrative Violence and Local Runaway Schemes, 1918–1948
Forced labour in the Middle Congo was characterized in the interwar period by, on the one hand, a declining role of the notorious French concession companies, and, on the other hand, the growing importance of forced recruitment and forced labour orchestrated by the colonial state. The article attempts to analyse and understand the overall setup of overburdening created by these conditions. Based on new French and Congolese archival resources, it …
What’s in a Regime Change? Analysing the Social History of Transformation in a “Problematic Region”: The Southern Volta Region, 1966–1972
The south of Ghana’s Volta Region, a theatre of secessionist mobilisation under colonial rule and an area of oppositional activity under the Nkrumah regime, is a privileged test case for social and political change during the early phase of the “long 1970s” (between 1966 and 1972). At the same time, it is one of Ghana’s regions for which better analysis of the regional archives (the Ho Branch of the PRAAD) makes a huge difference. This article di…
Postcolonial Security: Britain, France, and West Africa's Cold War by Marco Wyss
The study of post-independence defense links between new West African governments and former metropoles is a challenging task. The main problem lies in the source base. Even recent studies that attempt an ambitious enquiry in African archives, such as Riina Turtio's analysis of the creation of armies as social history (in State-Building and National Militaries in Postcolonial West Africa: Decolonizing the Means of Coercion), have ended up with re…
Between Land Reform and Postcolonial Frustration: Understanding the Social Roots of Local Opposition to the Paigc/Paicv in Santo Antão, Cabo Verde, 1975–91
This study discusses the processes of increasing social malaise and an “oppositional mood” in the Cape Verdean island of Santo Antão, where growing frustration between 1975 and 1990 led to the building of massive political opposition against the single-party regime in the archipelago. Early scrutiny of the shortcomings of independent administration, anger about the installation of a new police force, resettlement schemes, a failed agrarian reform…
Researching post-independence Africa in regional archives: Possibilities and limits in Benin, Cabo Verde, Ghana and Congo-Brazzaville
Africa's regional archives offer crucial records to explore the continent's postcolonial past. Although these archives are often difficult to locate and access and are exposed to several challenges that might even threaten their existence, this article presents a solid case for reconsidering their importance. Recent trends, aptly labelled 'postcolonial African archival pessimism', have mainly pointed to problems and often to the limited accessibi…
Living at the Margins of Repression: Everyday Life and Hidden Challenges in the Azores’ Central Group, 1954–1960
At the periphery of Portuguese right-wing authoritarian rule, in the Atlantic archipelago of the Azores and its Central Group, political repression remained part of local life in the period after the Second World War. However, in spite of the Portuguese political police being installed in Terceira (in the Central Group) in 1954, this repression remained porous, and many Azoreans used the loopholes for their own advantage. The everyday life histor…
The Art of Running Away: Escapes and Flight Movements During the Great Depression in São Tomé e Príncipe, 1930–1936
As a coerced labour force living under repressive conditions, contract workers in São Tomé e Príncipe's cocoa plantations belong to a wider phenomenon of global plantation experience during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Flight appears as an important element of that experience and this article is an attempt to interpret the strategies of runaways in São Tomé's turbulent Great Depression years after 1930. The work set out here benefitted…
Petitioning about the Revolutionary Nation: Social History and Communication under the Early Kérékou Regime in Benin, 1975–1977
In Benin under the authoritarian regime installed by Mathieu Kérékou in 1972—officially “Marxist-Leninist” from 1974 onwards—individuals sent an impressive number of petitions to the president himself. Those were analyzed and commented on by the presidential office (the cabinet civil), and put into wider debates on “revolutionary norms” and “social realities” in the postcolonial society. Categorizing them into the three narratives of conspiracy a…
Rescuing, Interpreting, and, Eventually, Digitizing Regional Postcolonial Archives: Endangered Archives and Research in Pointe-Noire, Republic of Congo
This is a study of research and conservation activities into a newly rediscovered and opened regional archive in the Préfecture of Pointe-Noire in the Republic of Congo. The study illustrates the constraints attaching to complicated post-independence materials and the need for flexibility in approaching them. Begun as an initially well-defined project targeting a vanished colonial territorial archive, the work turned instead into the finding and …
A Social History of Parastatal Employees in Southern Benin, 1989–1990: Contesting Decline and Unemployment During “Africa’s Second Democratization”
The huge parastatal sectors in postcolonial African societies interested sociologists in the 1970s and 1980s, but have never found a historical discussion – and the experience of change towards the democratization (eventually) has not yet been interpreted by historians. This study attempts to bring both elements together for the case of Benin, a country particularly shaken by massive economic decline, lay-offs and unemployment in the second half …
Between Violence, Racism and Reform: São Tomé e Príncipe in the Great Depression Years, 1930–7
The effects of the Great Depression on the important cocoa plantation sector of the archipelago of São Tomé e Príncipe – a Portuguese colonial laboratory for social change in plantation agriculture shifting between coercive practices and attempts at accommodation – were drastic: initially backed by a right-wing authoritarian government, plantation managements lowered workers’ wages and made already repressive conditions of worker exploitation wor…
Imagining a Better Future: Anti-colonial Protest and Social Debates in Santo Antão, Cabo Verde, 1945–1975
How did the populations of a remote Cape Verdean island—Santo Antão—construct and formulate their goals of emancipation and social reform in the late colonial period? This article revisits the experiences of anti-colonial mobilisation in the island in the late 1960s, bringing them together with other narratives of social needs formulated by Santo Antão's populations. Those include the fears of being recruited for plantation labour in São Tomé e P…
Colonial suspects: Suspicion, imperial rule, and colonial society in interwar French West Africa
Colonial suspects: suspicion, imperial rule, and colonial society in interwar French West Africa." Modern & Contemporary France, 27(3), pp. 402–403
Just Like in Colonial Times? Administrative Practice and Local Reflections on ‘Grassroots Neocolonialism’ in Autonomous and Postcolonial Dahomey, 1958–65
In Dahomey (Benin) during the period of autonomy and the first years of independence, the reference to a colonial past was an important instrument and point of debate. Members of a new group of politicians used it to accuse trade union leaders to make unrealistic claims; local peasants mobilized it as their point of reference against infrastructure projects; officials discussed it to make sense of tax refusals, while locals invoked older forms of…
A Nervous State: Violence, Remedies, and Reverie in Colonial Congo by Nancy Rose Hunt
Reviewed by: A Nervous State: Violence, Remedies, and Reverie in Colonial Congo by Nancy Rose Hunt Alexander Keese Hunt, Nancy Rose – A Nervous State: Violence, Remedies, and Reverie in Colonial Congo. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2016. Pp. 353, xviii. A Nervous State is certainly one of the most elegant books I have seen over the last years and an impressive attempt at entangling, and at discussing entangled, narratives. It follows …
Protektorate als koloniale Herrschaftsmodelle und Erinnerungsorte. Der Fall Barotseland in Zentralafrika
Hunting “Wrongdoers” and “Vagrants”: The Long-Term Perspective of Flight, Evasion, and Persecution in Colonial and Postcolonial Congo-Brazzaville, 1920–1980
In Central Africa, and especially in the former Middle-Congo, flight as temporary migration was an important defense against brutal forced labor under the colonial state. The impact of flight movements thus became one side of a shifting balance of terror. This article seeks to follow compulsory labor and migration from the decline of concession company rule after World War I to the continuities of postcolonial labor services in the 1960s and 1970…
Hunting “Wrongdoers” and “Vagrants”: The Long-Term Perspective of Flight, Evasion, and Persecution in Colonial and Postcolonial Congo-Brazzaville, 1920–1980
In Central Africa, and especially in the former Middle-Congo, flight as temporary migration was an important defense against brutal forced labor under the colonial state. The impact of flight movements thus became one side of a shifting balance of terror. This article seeks to follow compulsory labor and migration from the decline of concession company rule after World War I to the continuities of postcolonial labor services in the 1960s and 1970…
Colonialism and Fugitive Communities in West Central Africa, 1920–1955: Seeking Parallels with Maroon Societies
Why Stay? Forced Labor, the Correia Report, and Portuguese–South African Competition at the Angola–Namibia Border, 1917–1939
The so far unknown report by Norberto Correia, Portuguese administrator of the Baixo-Cunene border district, is an impressive document on forced labor and flight at the Angola-Namibia border, written by a controversial official fallen into disgrace after a regime change in the metropole. Correia’s acerbic and detailed analysis allows fresh interpretations of a border situation that is only at first glance well-known. By contrasting the Correia re…
Ethnicity and the Colonial State: Finding and Representing Group Identifications in a Coastal West African and Global Perspective (1850–1960)
Ethnicity and the Colonial State analyses, through a comparison of three West African communities (Wolof, Temne, and Ewe), the ways in which ethnic labels and arguments are used (or omitted) in dealings with colonial administrations. It follows these strategies and choices over more than a century, between the conquest periods and independence. Where state structures were weak as a factor of group cohesion, ethnic arguments were especially likely…
Developmentalist Attitudes and Old Habits: Portuguese Labour Policies, South African Rivalry, and Flight in Southern Angola, 1945-1974
At first glance, processes of colonial policy and subsequent migratory flows at the Angola–South West Africa border, in the region of the Kunene river, seem to present a straightforward narrative. In the period between the First and Second World Wars, we find an established pattern of Kwanyama/Ovambo leaving Portuguese Angola to escape repressive practices of forced labour, and as a reaction to the mistreatment of political leaders. Flight moveme…
Forced Labour in the “Gorgulho Years”: Understanding Reform and Repression in Rural São Tomé e Príncipe, 1945–1953
The crossroads of nationalist historiographies in sub-Saharan Africa and of the history of developmentalist attempts that characterise the European late colonial states, have left us with very incomplete images of important trajectories. In the seemingly more “liberal” large colonial empires—notably the French and British—sails were set by 1945 towards a policy of investment and economic change. Some of the scholarly debates question whether this…
Slow Abolition within the Colonial Mind: British and French Debates about “Vagrancy”, “African Laziness”, and Forced Labour in West Central and South Central Africa, 1945–1965
After World War II, French and British administrations in the African continent were in theory obliged to end forced labour. According to the rhetoric, compulsory labour practices disappeared altogether. However, the scrutiny of processes on the ground, comparing French Equatorial Africa and Northern Rhodesia under British rule, shows that the practicalities of the abolition of such labour practices were far more complex. In the French case, colo…
Francophone Africa At Fifty
Slow Abolition within the Colonial Mind: British and French Debates about “Vagrancy”, “African Laziness”, and Forced Labour in West Central and South Central Africa, 1945–1965
After World War II, French and British administrations in the African continent were in theory obliged to end forced labour. According to the rhetoric, compulsory labour practices disappeared altogether. However, the scrutiny of processes on the ground, comparing French Equatorial Africa and Northern Rhodesia under British rule, shows that the practicalities of the abolition of such labour practices were far more complex. In the French case, colo…
Hunting “Wrongdoers” and “Vagrants”: The Long-Term Perspective of Flight, Evasion, and Persecution in Colonial and Postcolonial Congo-Brazzaville, 1920–1980
In Central Africa, and especially in the former Middle-Congo, flight as temporary migration was an important defense against brutal forced labor under the colonial state. The impact of flight movements thus became one side of a shifting balance of terror. This article seeks to follow compulsory labor and migration from the decline of concession company rule after World War I to the continuities of postcolonial labor services in the 1960s and 1970…
Ethnicity and the Colonial State: Finding and Representing Group Identifications in a Coastal West African and Global Perspective (1850–1960)
Ethnicity and the Colonial State analyses, through a comparison of three West African communities (Wolof, Temne, and Ewe), the ways in which ethnic labels and arguments are used (or omitted) in dealings with colonial administrations. It follows these strategies and choices over more than a century, between the conquest periods and independence. Where state structures were weak as a factor of group cohesion, ethnic arguments were especially likely…
Searching for the Reluctant Hands: Obsession, Ambivalence and the Practice of Organising Involuntary Labour in Colonial Cuanza-Sul and Malange Districts, Angola, 1926–1945
In the 1930s, administrative control over the unruly hinterlands of Angola was established by the Portuguese colonisers, and officials at Lisbon's colonial ministry attempted to set up efficient mechanisms to force local populations to work. However, the experience and the attitudes of the administrators of the local posts—the chefes de posto—and of the small subdivisions were full of ambivalences and insecurities; their interaction with the Afri…
First Lessons in Neo-Colonialism: The Personalisation of Relations between African Politicians and French Officials in sub-Saharan Africa, 1956–66
In scholarly debates, ‘French neo-colonialism’ is defined as the social history of relations between Francophile African elites and French decision-makers in African policy, and it is frequently interpreted as a sinister manipulation of rather passive African populations. Exploring the newly accessible French archival documents, it is now possible to understand better how French officials became neo-colonial players, from the frustration of the l…
Researching post-independence Africa in regional archives: Possibilities and limits in Benin, Cabo Verde, Ghana and Congo-Brazzaville
Africa's regional archives offer crucial records to explore the continent's postcolonial past. Although these archives are often difficult to locate and access and are exposed to several challenges that might even threaten their existence, this article presents a solid case for reconsidering their importance. Recent trends, aptly labelled 'postcolonial African archival pessimism', have mainly pointed to problems and often to the limited accessibi…
The Constraints of Late Colonial Reform Policy: Forced Labour Scandals in the Portuguese Congo (Angola) and the Limits of Reform under Authoritarian Colonial Rule, 1955–61
The District of Congo in northern Angola was, due to the post-war coffee boom, one of the regions under Portuguese colonial rule where a stable labour force was most urgently needed. Up until the 1950s, a good part of this labour force was not composed of voluntary workers. The unfavourable labour conditions led to the flight of (involuntary) labourers to the neighbouring territory of the Belgian Congo, making a clear case for labour reform. Howe…
Just Like in Colonial Times? Administrative Practice and Local Reflections on ‘Grassroots Neocolonialism’ in Autonomous and Postcolonial Dahomey, 1958–65
In Dahomey (Benin) during the period of autonomy and the first years of independence, the reference to a colonial past was an important instrument and point of debate. Members of a new group of politicians used it to accuse trade union leaders to make unrealistic claims; local peasants mobilized it as their point of reference against infrastructure projects; officials discussed it to make sense of tax refusals, while locals invoked older forms of…
Developmentalist Attitudes and Old Habits: Portuguese Labour Policies, South African Rivalry, and Flight in Southern Angola, 1945-1974
At first glance, processes of colonial policy and subsequent migratory flows at the Angola–South West Africa border, in the region of the Kunene river, seem to present a straightforward narrative. In the period between the First and Second World Wars, we find an established pattern of Kwanyama/Ovambo leaving Portuguese Angola to escape repressive practices of forced labour, and as a reaction to the mistreatment of political leaders. Flight moveme…
Imagining a Better Future: Anti-colonial Protest and Social Debates in Santo Antão, Cabo Verde, 1945–1975
How did the populations of a remote Cape Verdean island—Santo Antão—construct and formulate their goals of emancipation and social reform in the late colonial period? This article revisits the experiences of anti-colonial mobilisation in the island in the late 1960s, bringing them together with other narratives of social needs formulated by Santo Antão's populations. Those include the fears of being recruited for plantation labour in São Tomé e P…
The Constraints of Late Colonial Reform Policy: Forced Labour Scandals in the Portuguese Congo (Angola) and the Limits of Reform under Authoritarian Colonial Rule, 1955–61
Alexander Keese, The Constraints of Late Colonial Reform Policy: Forced Labour Scandals in the Portuguese Congo (Angola) and the Limits of Reform under Authoritarian Colonial Rule, 1955–61, Portuguese Studies, Vol. 28, No. 2 (2012), pp. 186-200
A Culture of Panic: "Communist" Scapegoats and Decolonization in French West Africa and French Polynesia (1945–1957)
La confrontation entre militants communistes et gouvernement français à la fin des années quarante et la sympathie des pays du bloc soviétique pour les mouvements de libération en Indochine et au Maghreb influença aussi la vision des administrateurs français dans les deux parties de l'Union française qui étaient largement épargnées de conflits armés violents. En Afrique subsaharienne et en Polynésie, les fonctionnaires coloniaux élaborèrent leur …
Forced Labour in the “Gorgulho Years”: Understanding Reform and Repression in Rural São Tomé e Príncipe, 1945–1953
The crossroads of nationalist historiographies in sub-Saharan Africa and of the history of developmentalist attempts that characterise the European late colonial states, have left us with very incomplete images of important trajectories. In the seemingly more “liberal” large colonial empires—notably the French and British—sails were set by 1945 towards a policy of investment and economic change. Some of the scholarly debates question whether this…
Managing the Prospect of Famine: Cape Verdean Officials, Subsistence Emergencies, and the Change of Elite Attitudes During Portugal's Late Colonial Phase, 1939–1961
In early 1959, Luiz Rendall Silva, Cape Verdean administrator of the concelho (district) of Fogo, on the volcano island of that name in the Sotavento group (Leeward Islands), wrote a very energetic report to his Portuguese superiors. He complained to the Governor of Cape Verde about the lack of decisiveness in Portugal's colonial welfare policy, and about the absence of clear programmes for the future of the islands. In his words, he wished “for …
Building a New Image of Africa: Dissident States” and the Emergence of French Neo-colonialism in the Aftermath of Decolonization
Bâtir une nouvelle image de l’Afrique: les “États dissidents” et l’émergence du néocolonialisme français au lendemain de la décolonisation. — En 1958, l’État français perdit le contrôle de deux de ses anciens territoires africains, la Guinée et le Togo. Dans un premier temps, cette perte de contrôle fut totale mais les dirigeants togolais établirent rapidement une relation de travail avec Paris. Survenus entre la promulgation de la loi-cadre et l…
Quelques Satisfactions d'Amour-propre’: African Elite Integration, the Loi-cadre, and Involuntary Decolonisation of French Tropical Africa
On 21 March 1956, the French Overseas Minister, Gaston Defferre, addressed the Assemblée Rationale , presenting a project with especially far-reaching implications. A loi-cadre was planned in order to enable a greater degree of participation by the indigenous populations in the sub-Saharan African overseas territories. The responsibility of the local Assemblées Territoriales was to be increased in various fields. Conseils de Gouuemement were prop…
Quelques Satisfactions d'Amour-propre’: African Elite Integration, the Loi-cadre, and Involuntary Decolonisation of French Tropical Africa
On 21 March 1956, the French Overseas Minister, Gaston Defferre, addressed the Assemblée Rationale , presenting a project with especially far-reaching implications. A loi-cadre was planned in order to enable a greater degree of participation by the indigenous populations in the sub-Saharan African overseas territories. The responsibility of the local Assemblées Territoriales was to be increased in various fields. Conseils de Gouuemement were prop…
First Lessons in Neo-Colonialism: The Personalisation of Relations between African Politicians and French Officials in sub-Saharan Africa, 1956–66
In scholarly debates, ‘French neo-colonialism’ is defined as the social history of relations between Francophile African elites and French decision-makers in African policy, and it is frequently interpreted as a sinister manipulation of rather passive African populations. Exploring the newly accessible French archival documents, it is now possible to understand better how French officials became neo-colonial players, from the frustration of the l…
French Colonialism Unmasked: The Vichy Years in French West Africa, by Ruth Ginio
The fall of the Third French Republic in 1940 and the establishment of the authoritarian, right-wing government of Marshall Pétain in unoccupied Vichy France left one of France's largest colonies, the federation of French West Africa (AOF), with a choice. The colonial administration in the AOF declared their loyalty to Pétain and for 3 years, from 1940 to 1943, AOF would be one of the few places where the new, patriotic-conservative Vichy ideolog…
A Culture of Panic: "Communist" Scapegoats and Decolonization in French West Africa and French Polynesia (1945–1957)
La confrontation entre militants communistes et gouvernement français à la fin des années quarante et la sympathie des pays du bloc soviétique pour les mouvements de libération en Indochine et au Maghreb influença aussi la vision des administrateurs français dans les deux parties de l'Union française qui étaient largement épargnées de conflits armés violents. En Afrique subsaharienne et en Polynésie, les fonctionnaires coloniaux élaborèrent leur …
Building a New Image of Africa: Dissident States” and the Emergence of French Neo-colonialism in the Aftermath of Decolonization
Bâtir une nouvelle image de l’Afrique: les “États dissidents” et l’émergence du néocolonialisme français au lendemain de la décolonisation. — En 1958, l’État français perdit le contrôle de deux de ses anciens territoires africains, la Guinée et le Togo. Dans un premier temps, cette perte de contrôle fut totale mais les dirigeants togolais établirent rapidement une relation de travail avec Paris. Survenus entre la promulgation de la loi-cadre et l…
Die blockierte Erinnerung: Portugals koloniales Gedächtnis und das Ausbleiben kritischer Diskurse 1974 -2010
In 1974, the Portuguese colonial empire fellwith the end of the authoritarian Estado Novo in the metropolis. The strong links between the success of the regime and the maintenance of the colonial territories, constantly insisted upon by leading figures in Portuguese politics over this period, rendered a post-revolutionary discussion about the nature of the colonial experience and the violent way towards decolonization, feasible. However, there wa…
The Constraints of Late Colonial Reform Policy: Forced Labour Scandals in the Portuguese Congo (Angola) and the Limits of Reform under Authoritarian Colonial Rule, 1955–61
Alexander Keese, The Constraints of Late Colonial Reform Policy: Forced Labour Scandals in the Portuguese Congo (Angola) and the Limits of Reform under Authoritarian Colonial Rule, 1955–61, Portuguese Studies, Vol. 28, No. 2 (2012), pp. 186-200
Managing the Prospect of Famine: Cape Verdean Officials, Subsistence Emergencies, and the Change of Elite Attitudes During Portugal's Late Colonial Phase, 1939–1961
In early 1959, Luiz Rendall Silva, Cape Verdean administrator of the concelho (district) of Fogo, on the volcano island of that name in the Sotavento group (Leeward Islands), wrote a very energetic report to his Portuguese superiors. He complained to the Governor of Cape Verde about the lack of decisiveness in Portugal's colonial welfare policy, and about the absence of clear programmes for the future of the islands. In his words, he wished “for …
The Constraints of Late Colonial Reform Policy: Forced Labour Scandals in the Portuguese Congo (Angola) and the Limits of Reform under Authoritarian Colonial Rule, 1955–61
The District of Congo in northern Angola was, due to the post-war coffee boom, one of the regions under Portuguese colonial rule where a stable labour force was most urgently needed. Up until the 1950s, a good part of this labour force was not composed of voluntary workers. The unfavourable labour conditions led to the flight of (involuntary) labourers to the neighbouring territory of the Belgian Congo, making a clear case for labour reform. Howe…
Francophone Africa At Fifty
Searching for the Reluctant Hands: Obsession, Ambivalence and the Practice of Organising Involuntary Labour in Colonial Cuanza-Sul and Malange Districts, Angola, 1926–1945
In the 1930s, administrative control over the unruly hinterlands of Angola was established by the Portuguese colonisers, and officials at Lisbon's colonial ministry attempted to set up efficient mechanisms to force local populations to work. However, the experience and the attitudes of the administrators of the local posts—the chefes de posto—and of the small subdivisions were full of ambivalences and insecurities; their interaction with the Afri…
Forced Labour in the “Gorgulho Years”: Understanding Reform and Repression in Rural São Tomé e Príncipe, 1945–1953
The crossroads of nationalist historiographies in sub-Saharan Africa and of the history of developmentalist attempts that characterise the European late colonial states, have left us with very incomplete images of important trajectories. In the seemingly more “liberal” large colonial empires—notably the French and British—sails were set by 1945 towards a policy of investment and economic change. Some of the scholarly debates question whether this…
Slow Abolition within the Colonial Mind: British and French Debates about “Vagrancy”, “African Laziness”, and Forced Labour in West Central and South Central Africa, 1945–1965
After World War II, French and British administrations in the African continent were in theory obliged to end forced labour. According to the rhetoric, compulsory labour practices disappeared altogether. However, the scrutiny of processes on the ground, comparing French Equatorial Africa and Northern Rhodesia under British rule, shows that the practicalities of the abolition of such labour practices were far more complex. In the French case, colo…
Colonialism and Fugitive Communities in West Central Africa, 1920–1955: Seeking Parallels with Maroon Societies
Why Stay? Forced Labor, the Correia Report, and Portuguese–South African Competition at the Angola–Namibia Border, 1917–1939
The so far unknown report by Norberto Correia, Portuguese administrator of the Baixo-Cunene border district, is an impressive document on forced labor and flight at the Angola-Namibia border, written by a controversial official fallen into disgrace after a regime change in the metropole. Correia’s acerbic and detailed analysis allows fresh interpretations of a border situation that is only at first glance well-known. By contrasting the Correia re…
Ethnicity and the Colonial State: Finding and Representing Group Identifications in a Coastal West African and Global Perspective (1850–1960)
Ethnicity and the Colonial State analyses, through a comparison of three West African communities (Wolof, Temne, and Ewe), the ways in which ethnic labels and arguments are used (or omitted) in dealings with colonial administrations. It follows these strategies and choices over more than a century, between the conquest periods and independence. Where state structures were weak as a factor of group cohesion, ethnic arguments were especially likely…
Developmentalist Attitudes and Old Habits: Portuguese Labour Policies, South African Rivalry, and Flight in Southern Angola, 1945-1974
At first glance, processes of colonial policy and subsequent migratory flows at the Angola–South West Africa border, in the region of the Kunene river, seem to present a straightforward narrative. In the period between the First and Second World Wars, we find an established pattern of Kwanyama/Ovambo leaving Portuguese Angola to escape repressive practices of forced labour, and as a reaction to the mistreatment of political leaders. Flight moveme…
Protektorate als koloniale Herrschaftsmodelle und Erinnerungsorte. Der Fall Barotseland in Zentralafrika
Hunting “Wrongdoers” and “Vagrants”: The Long-Term Perspective of Flight, Evasion, and Persecution in Colonial and Postcolonial Congo-Brazzaville, 1920–1980
In Central Africa, and especially in the former Middle-Congo, flight as temporary migration was an important defense against brutal forced labor under the colonial state. The impact of flight movements thus became one side of a shifting balance of terror. This article seeks to follow compulsory labor and migration from the decline of concession company rule after World War I to the continuities of postcolonial labor services in the 1960s and 1970…
Hunting “Wrongdoers” and “Vagrants”: The Long-Term Perspective of Flight, Evasion, and Persecution in Colonial and Postcolonial Congo-Brazzaville, 1920–1980
In Central Africa, and especially in the former Middle-Congo, flight as temporary migration was an important defense against brutal forced labor under the colonial state. The impact of flight movements thus became one side of a shifting balance of terror. This article seeks to follow compulsory labor and migration from the decline of concession company rule after World War I to the continuities of postcolonial labor services in the 1960s and 1970…
A Nervous State: Violence, Remedies, and Reverie in Colonial Congo by Nancy Rose Hunt
Reviewed by: A Nervous State: Violence, Remedies, and Reverie in Colonial Congo by Nancy Rose Hunt Alexander Keese Hunt, Nancy Rose – A Nervous State: Violence, Remedies, and Reverie in Colonial Congo. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2016. Pp. 353, xviii. A Nervous State is certainly one of the most elegant books I have seen over the last years and an impressive attempt at entangling, and at discussing entangled, narratives. It follows …
Colonial suspects: Suspicion, imperial rule, and colonial society in interwar French West Africa
Colonial suspects: suspicion, imperial rule, and colonial society in interwar French West Africa." Modern & Contemporary France, 27(3), pp. 402–403
Just Like in Colonial Times? Administrative Practice and Local Reflections on ‘Grassroots Neocolonialism’ in Autonomous and Postcolonial Dahomey, 1958–65
In Dahomey (Benin) during the period of autonomy and the first years of independence, the reference to a colonial past was an important instrument and point of debate. Members of a new group of politicians used it to accuse trade union leaders to make unrealistic claims; local peasants mobilized it as their point of reference against infrastructure projects; officials discussed it to make sense of tax refusals, while locals invoked older forms of…
Petitioning about the Revolutionary Nation: Social History and Communication under the Early Kérékou Regime in Benin, 1975–1977
In Benin under the authoritarian regime installed by Mathieu Kérékou in 1972—officially “Marxist-Leninist” from 1974 onwards—individuals sent an impressive number of petitions to the president himself. Those were analyzed and commented on by the presidential office (the cabinet civil), and put into wider debates on “revolutionary norms” and “social realities” in the postcolonial society. Categorizing them into the three narratives of conspiracy a…
Rescuing, Interpreting, and, Eventually, Digitizing Regional Postcolonial Archives: Endangered Archives and Research in Pointe-Noire, Republic of Congo
This is a study of research and conservation activities into a newly rediscovered and opened regional archive in the Préfecture of Pointe-Noire in the Republic of Congo. The study illustrates the constraints attaching to complicated post-independence materials and the need for flexibility in approaching them. Begun as an initially well-defined project targeting a vanished colonial territorial archive, the work turned instead into the finding and …
Political science (32 works) · Law (28 works) · African history and culture studies (26 works) · Law (24 works) · Sociology (23 works) · History (22 works) · Colonialism (21 works) · Politics (20 works) · History (18 works) · Ethnology (14 works)