Why Europe Intervenes in Africa

Why Europe Intervenes in Africa
Author: Catherine Gegout
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2017
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190845163

Gegout's book offers a sharp rebuke to those who believe that altruism is the guiding principle of Western intervention in Africa.

Making Morocco

Making Morocco
Author: Jonathan Wyrtzen
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2016-02-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501704249

"There is no question that the value of a detailed account of Moroccan colonial history in English is an important addition to the field, and Wyrtzen's book will undoubtedly become a reference for Moroccan, North African, and Middle Eastern historians alike." ―American Historical Review Jonathan Wyrtzen's Making Morocco is an extraordinary work of social science history. Making Morocco’s historical coverage is remarkably thorough and sweeping; the author exhibits incredible scope in his research and mastery of an immensely rich set of materials from poetry to diplomatic messages in a variety of languages across a century of history. The monograph engages with the most important theorists of nationalism, colonialism, and state formation, and uses Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory as a framework to orient and organize the socio-historical problems of the case and to make sense of the different types of problems various actors faced as they moved forward. His analysis makes constant reference to core categories of political sociology state, nation, political field, religious and political authority, identity and social boundaries, classification struggles, etc., and he does so in exceptionally clear and engaging prose. Rather than sidelining what might appear to be more tangential themes in the politics of identity formation in Morocco, Wyrtzen examines deeply not only French colonialism but also the Spanish zone, and he makes central to his analysis the Jewish question and the role of gender. These areas of analysis allow Wyrtzen to examine his outcome of interest—which is really a historical process of interest—from every conceivable analytical and empirical angle. The end-product is an absolutely exemplary study of colonialism, identity formation, and the classification struggles that accompany them. This is not a work of high-brow social theory, but a classic work of history, deeply influenced but not excessively burdened by social-theoretical baggage.

Foreign Intervention in Africa

Foreign Intervention in Africa
Author: Elizabeth Schmidt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2013-03-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0521882389

This book chronicles foreign political and military interventions in Africa from 1956 to 2010, helping readers understand the historical roots of Africa's problems.

Modern Colonization by Medical Intervention

Modern Colonization by Medical Intervention
Author: Nicole Trujillo-Pagan
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2013-09-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9004243712

Modern Colonization by Medical Intervention adds to our understanding of the political and economic transformations establishing colonial modernity in Puerto Rico. By focusing on influential physicians’ clinical work and their access to a remote and inaccessible rural population, this volume details how rural areas suffered the ravages of social dislocation, unemployment and hunger. The colonial administration’s hookworm campaign involved many Puerto Rican physicians in complex struggles with other elites, rural peasants and U.S. colonial administrators for political legitimacy. Puerto Rican physicians did not gain the professional autonomy their counterparts in the United States enjoyed. Instead, they became centrally implicated in the struggle between labor and capital enforcing the island’s subordination to a colonial modernity and the development of capitalism on the island.

Against Decolonisation

Against Decolonisation
Author: Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò
Publisher: Hurst Publishers
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2022-06-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1787388859

Decolonisation has lost its way. Originally a struggle to escape the West’s direct political and economic control, it has become a catch-all idea, often for performing ‘morality’ or ‘authenticity’; it suffocates African thought and denies African agency. Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò fiercely rejects the indiscriminate application of ‘decolonisation’ to everything from literature, language and philosophy to sociology, psychology and medicine. He argues that the decolonisation industry, obsessed with cataloguing wrongs, is seriously harming scholarship on and in Africa. He finds ‘decolonisation’ of culture intellectually unsound and wholly unrealistic, conflating modernity with coloniality, and groundlessly advocating an open-ended undoing of global society’s foundations. Worst of all, today’s movement attacks its own cause: ‘decolonisers’ themselves are disregarding, infantilising and imposing values on contemporary African thinkers. This powerful, much-needed intervention questions whether today’s ‘decolonisation’ truly serves African empowerment. Táíwò’s is a bold challenge to respect African intellectuals as innovative adaptors, appropriators and synthesisers of ideas they have always seen as universally relevant.

White Malice

White Malice
Author: Susan Williams
Publisher: Hurst Publishers
Total Pages: 688
Release: 2021-09-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1787385825

Accra, 1958. Africa’s liberation leaders have gathered for a conference, full of strength, purpose and vision. Newly independent Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and Congo’s Patrice Lumumba strike up a close partnership. Everything seems possible. But, within a few years, both men will have been targeted by the CIA, and their dream of true African autonomy undermined. The United States, watching the Europeans withdraw from Africa, was determined to take control. Pan-Africanism was inspiring African Americans fighting for civil rights; the threat of Soviet influence over new African governments loomed; and the idea of an atomic reactor in black hands was unacceptable. The conclusion was simple: the US had to ‘recapture’ Africa, in the shadows, by any means necessary. Renowned historian Susan Williams dives into the archives, revealing new, shocking details of America’s covert programme in Africa. The CIA crawled over the continent, poisoning the hopes of 1958 with secret agents and informants; surreptitious UN lobbying; cultural infiltration and bribery; assassinations and coups. As the colonisers moved out, the Americans swept in—with bitter consequences that reverberate in Africa to this day

Undoing Border Imperialism

Undoing Border Imperialism
Author: Harsha Walia
Publisher: AK Press
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2014-02-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 184935135X

“Harsha Walia has played a central role in building some of North America’s most innovative, diverse, and effective new movements. That this brilliant organizer and theorist has found time to share her wisdom in this book is a tremendous gift to us all.”—Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine Undoing Border Imperialism combines academic discourse, lived experiences of displacement, and movement-based practices into an exciting new book. By reformulating immigrant rights movements within a transnational analysis of capitalism, labor exploitation, settler colonialism, state building, and racialized empire, it provides the alternative conceptual frameworks of border imperialism and decolonization. Drawing on the author’s experiences in No One Is Illegal, this work offers relevant insights for all social movement organizers on effective strategies to overcome the barriers and borders within movements in order to cultivate fierce, loving, and sustainable communities of resistance striving toward liberation. The author grounds the book in collective vision, with short contributions from over twenty organizers and writers from across North America. Harsha Walia is a South Asian activist, writer, and popular educator rooted in emancipatory movements and communities for over a decade. Praise for Undoing Border Imperialism: “Border imperialism is an apt conceptualization for capturing the politics of massive displacement due to capitalist neoglobalization. Within the wealthy countries, Canada’s No One Is Illegal is one of the most effective organizations of migrants and allies. Walia is an outstanding organizer who has done a lot of thinking and can write—not a common combination. Besides being brilliantly conceived and presented, this book is the first extended work on immigration that refuses to make First Nations sovereignty invisible.”—Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, author of Indians of the Americas and Blood on the Border “Harsha Walia’s Undoing Border Imperialism demonstrates that geography has certainly not ended, and nor has the urge for people to stretch out our arms across borders to create our communities. One of the most rewarding things about this book is its capaciousness—astute insights that emerge out of careful organizing linked to the voices of a generation of strugglers, trying to find their own analysis to build their own movements to make this world our own. This is both a manual and a memoir, a guide to the world and a guide to the organizer's heart.”—Vijay Prashad, author of The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World “This book belongs in every wannabe revolutionary’s war backpack. I addictively jumped all over its contents: a radical mixtape of ancestral wisdoms to present-day grounded organizers theorizing about their own experiences. A must for me is Walia’s decision to infuse this volume’s fight against border imperialism, white supremacy, and empire with the vulnerability of her own personal narrative. This book is a breath of fresh air and offers an urgently needed movement-based praxis. Undoing Border Imperialism is too hot to be sitting on bookshelves; it will help make the revolution.”—Ashanti Alston, Black Panther elder and former political prisoner

Africa and the Formation of the New System of International Relations

Africa and the Formation of the New System of International Relations
Author: Alexey M. Vasiliev
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2021-09-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3030773361

This book discusses the prospects for the development of the African continent as part of the emerging system of international relations in the twenty-first century. African countries are playing an increasingly important part in the current system of international relations. Nevertheless, even 60 years after gaining their independence, most of them are confronted with regional and global issues that are directly related to their colonial past and its influence. Due to Africa’s wealth of natural and geopolitical resources, the possibility of interference in the internal affairs of African countries on the part of new and traditional global actors remains very real. Leading Africanists, together with international scholars from both international relations and African studies, examine the experience of decolonization, the impact of the emergence of a unipolar world on the African continent, and the growing influence of new international actors on the African continent in the twenty-first century. In addition, the importance of African countries’ foreign policy concepts and ideological attitudes in the post-bipolar period is revealed. “This volume strengthens the intellectual bridge between Russian, African and Western scholars of international relations. Strongly recommended!” Vladimir G. Shubin, Institute for African Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences “This book presents a wide range of prominent global scholars who bring a wealth of knowledge on the subject of Africa and the world.” Gilbert Khadiagala, Jan Smuts Professor of International Relations and Director of the African Centre for the Study of the USA (ACSUS) at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. “As a genuine contribution to the field of international relations and Global South Agency, this book should be in every institution of higher education’s library.” Lembe Tiky, Director of Academic Development, International Studies Association.

Britain, France and the Decolonization of Africa

Britain, France and the Decolonization of Africa
Author: Andrew W.M. Smith
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2017-03-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1911307746

Looking at decolonization in the conditional tense, this volume teases out the complex and uncertain ends of British and French empire in Africa during the period of ‘late colonial shift’ after 1945. Rather than view decolonization as an inevitable process, the contributors together explore the crucial historical moments in which change was negotiated, compromises were made, and debates were staged. Three core themes guide the analysis: development, contingency and entanglement. The chapters consider the ways in which decolonization was governed and moderated by concerns about development and profit. A complementary focus on contingency allows deeper consideration of how colonial powers planned for ‘colonial futures’, and how divergent voices greeted the end of empire. Thinking about entanglements likewise stresses both the connections that existed between the British and French empires in Africa, and those that endured beyond the formal transfer of power.

Neo-Colonialism and the Poverty of 'Development' in Africa

Neo-Colonialism and the Poverty of 'Development' in Africa
Author: Mark Langan
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2017-10-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3319585711

Langan reclaims neo-colonialism as an analytical force for making sense of the failure of ‘development’ strategies in many African states in an era of free market globalisation. Eschewing polemics and critically engaging the work of Ghana’s first President – Kwame Nkrumah – the book offers a rigorous assessment of the concept of neo-colonialism. It then demonstrates how neo-colonialism remains an impediment to genuine empirical sovereignty and poverty reduction in Africa today. It does this through examination of corporate interventions; Western aid-giving; the emergence of ‘new’ donors such as China; EU-Africa trade regimes; the securitisation of development; and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Throughout the chapters, it becomes clear that the current challenges of African development cannot be solely pinned on so-called neo-patrimonial elites. Instead it becomes imperative to fully acknowledge, and interrogate, corporate and donor interventions which lock many poorer countries into neo-colonial patterns of trade and production. The book provides an original contribution to studies of African political economy, demonstrating the on-going relevance of the concept of neo-colonialism, and reclaiming it for scholarly analysis in a global era.