Development challenges in Africa are often blamed on the colonial legacy of coercion and cooptation, just as social transformations on the continent are considered “inventions” of the colonial twentieth century. These explanations are useful in helping us understand Africa’s current political and economic issues and the historical roots of some of its social crises. But they are only part of the story. In the last four decades, Africanist scholarship has made significant inroads in unpacking the complexity of Africa’s colonial experiences, highlighting the agency and resilience of individuals and groups who found ways to chart a new course for themselves despite colonial violence and displacements. Aptly described as “tensions of empire” by Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, the ambiguity of colonial policies and actions exposed critical fault lines of the colonial enterprise in Africa, providing opportunities for colonized populations to carve niches for themselves within the crevices of colonial power. However, accounts of local agency are often omitted from dominant narratives in favor of stories that emphasize authenticity and difference. The reason is not far-fetched.
African history as an academic field emerged from the crucibles of colonialism. As most African countries intensified demands for self-government from the 1950s, pioneer Africanist historians set out to prove that Africa’s past contained many notable civilizations of relevance. This “nationalist historiography” as it came to be called, revolutionized the knowledge of African history – even if momentarily – by inspiring an interdisciplinary approach to the histories of pre-literate societies, reviewing the colonial archive, and recentering Africans as subjects rather than objects of their histories. But as with every school of history, nationalist historiography had its shortcomings. Within the first two decades of its emergence, it became obvious that the frantic search for proto-nationalist heroes and general focus on validating Africa’s political and territorial sovereignty could not mitigate the daunting challenges of nation-building in post-colonial Africa.
Among other things, the need to authenticate African history revealed its rich cultural diversity, as quests for territorial sovereignty by various political entities challenged the homogenizing visions of early postcolonial leaders, raising questions of legitimacy and nationhood for the new states The new nation-states had to be united in many cases by brutal suppression of rival or minority views. The result was a general affirmation that while the nationalist school wanted history to converge around a shared history of anti-colonial resistance, it failed to address the roots of the problems of emerging African states.
Part of the problem was its continuing reliance on the colonial archive due to the paucity of written records in sub-Saharan Africa. Also, the need to prove that Africa had long, noble traditions of state-building meant that pioneer African historiography was structurally masculinized, with a focus on political history and area studies, thus undermining other crucial themes. As Philip Zachernuk has argued, “modern African history is framed around the opposition of ‘African’ and ‘European’ forces, cast variously as native vs foreign, nationalism vs imperialism, and even good vs evil. Undeniably compelling at the moment of independence, this powerful but simple framework has become increasingly unsatisfactory especially as the scope of African historical inquiries has widened in recent years, moving beyond nationalism and politics to include issues of food production, gender, civil society, and culture.” While this literature remains relevant to African historical scholarship, its conception of history is wedded to a “single story” of resistance, authenticity, and difference – replicating colonially induced binaries.
It is important to highlight the distinctive qualities of African cultures and “traditions.” It is also crucial to understand that the fine lines between African and European systems of thought, knowledge, and politics have been fundamentally blurred by centuries of interaction between both “worlds.” As we tell the story of African colonial encounters, it is pertinent to appreciate its variousness and ambiguities – factors that shaped the many forms of engagements with imperial presence and defined colonial outcomes across the continent. My next blog will analyze these local engagements with imperial forces in various cultural contexts.
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