Distant Shores

A Historiographic View on Trans-Saharan Space

Bibliographic Data

ID8976082
AuthorsBaz Lecocq (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume56
Issue1
Pages23-36
Publication date2015-01-30
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of African History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-8537 • E-ISSN: 1469-5138
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0021853714000711
OpenAlexW2116830838
LanguageEN
Citations received28
References cited36

This article addresses how scholarship has formulated human connections and ruptures over the Sahara. However, these formulations were, and still are, based in both physical and discursive realities that have been developed in Africa itself. The idea of a dividing Sahara is based on historical political divisions – despite a homogenous political culture in the region – and by locally developed notions of race and religion, brought about by trade and justified in Islamic religious discourse. The Saharan divide acquired a new reading in colonial historiography, which, in turn, informed scholarly work until well into the 1960s. I will suggest that both colonial and postcolonial research on the differences and connections between the Saharan shores are suffering from a civilisational bias towards North Africa

Archaeology · Colonialism · Historiography · Islam · Linguistics · Political science · Politics · Race (biology · Reading (process · Scholarship · Sociology · Space (punctuation) · African Studies and Ethnography · African Studies and Geopolitics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philosophy

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