The Roots of African Despotism
The Question of Political Culture
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2595226 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ibrahim K Sundiata (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1988 |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 9 |
| Publication date | 1988-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | African Studies Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-0206 • E-ISSN: 1555-2462 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/524581 |
| OpenAlex | W2063284156 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 21 |
Early in this decade a political observer, looking at one of Africa's least known and most sanguinary states, described Equatorial Guinea as “Cambodia minus ideology” (Pelissier, 1980:13). During the eleven year presidency (1968-1979) of Francisco Macias Nguema, up to half of the population was liquidated or went into exile. Little is known on the internal workings or ideology of the regime. However, just as we can no longer say that there are peoples without histories, we can no longer assume that there are rulers without ideologies. Much statistical and other information on Equatorial Guinea is fragmentary or missing. It is possible, however, to trace the lineaments of the rise and fall of the first post-independent government. It is the purpose of this essay to examine that development. We shall seek an explanation, although it be a partial one, of the ideological and economic conditions which provided the context for the creation of a mass concentration camp in the tropics. Since the nineteenth century, the materialist/idealist dichotomy has been at the center of much historiographical debate. A sub-theme has been the role of the individual in history. An increasingly wide range of scholars have used material conditions as the basis for their analysis. The individual is not an automous historical force, but rather represents a class and its interests as the class acts to maintain or establish its hegemony. Others, on the contrary, continue to maintain that the individual can, under certain circumstances, mold history to his or her will. It can and has been maintained that the idiosyncratic behavior of a leader can be an important independent variable in history
Political culture · Political science · Politics · African history and culture studies · Hispanic-African Historical Relations · Law · North African History and Literature
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African Sovereignty and Spain’s Slave Trading Agenda in the Gulf of Guinea Islands, 1778–1783
Hispanic and Bantu Inheritance, Trauma, Dispersal and Return
Elite strategy in resilient authoritarianism
The persistence of conflict in Africa
"Leandro Mbomio, the "Black Picasso
Protest and power in Black Africa.
The political economy of contemporary Africa
Ideology and development in Africa.
Bwiti
Neo-colonialism in West Africa
The Nature of Class Domination in Africa
Slaves, Peasants and Capitalists in Southern Angola, 1840-1926
Cultural Materialism
Slavery in the Twentieth Century
Soldiers and Kinsmen in Uganda, The Making of a Military Ethnocracy
Personal Rule in Black Africa
The Impact of the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War on Portuguese and Spanish Africa
Slavery in the New World
Materialism and Idealism in the History of Negro Slavery in the Americas
Sovereignty and Underdevelopment
Theories of Contemporary State Formation in Africa
The Resurrection of the Warrior Tradition in African Political Culture
Democracy in Africa
Imperialism and Fascism in Uganda
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,19 |
| Citation span | 1994 - 2025 (32) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 6 |