Spring, 2006 CHE 2108 Prof. PAUL LANDAU

Tuesday and Thursday at 9:30-10:20 & sec. 2132 Taliaferro Hall

Prof. Landau’s office hrs.: TTh. 11:00-12:00 Phone: 5-4291; e: PLandau@umd.edu

Teaching assistant: Jay Metz

HIST 123 Africa since 1800

Room: CHE 2108

See added text and material for May 9, 11 below.

McKeldin Reserves with links for e-res. readings

The course explores the history of colonial and post-colonial Africa from the decline of the trans-Atlantic slave-trade to today.

Topics will include: African states and nationalities; race and racism; European exploration, missionaries, and conquest; colonial ideologies and colonial rule; African labor, health, mining and peasant farming; urbanization, sexuality, art, and politics.

Four paperbacks, are purchasable at the University Bookstore (three of them also at the Maryland Book Exchange.) Most are available cheaper through Amazon.com

Books

Are available at the University Book Center and Maryland Book Exchange, except Armah, which is only at UBC.

Maloba, Mau Mau and Kenya (req.)

Armah, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (highly rec.)

Balewa, Shaihu Umar (req.)

Udinho, Beasts of No Nation (req.)

Grading Percentages are approximate only.

Puzzlers: 20% (5% times 4)

Section participation, familiarity with readings: 25% (at the discretion of T.A.)

Mid-term exam: 20%.

Final exam: 30%

Attendance and improvement: 5% (at the discretion of Prof.)

There are 6 written “puzzlers” (P1 – P6) asking you to answer a question in about two or three pages. You must choose four (4) of them to hand in by the time they are due (no late submissions accepted). There are two exams, and most of the final (75%) is devoted to the latter half of the semester. The “reader” is under preparation in concert with the new McKeldin Library e-reserves system.

Schedule

The following schedule is your guide to the chronology of the course, all its readings, and the topics for Prof. Landau’s lectures. All readings should be done by Tuesday’s class period unless your discussion section meets earlier (e.g. Monday).

Week 1. Thurs. Jan. 26: The Unexpected

Lectures:

Thursday: Cheap porcelain, Circassian slaves, Cuban chanting

/ prep P1 / hand out Stanley

Week 2. Jan. 31–Feb. 2: Saving Africa

Readings (on-line):

H.M. Stanley, July of 1875 (Dispatches)

Lectures:

Tues: Anti-slavery and Slavery in Africa: the Jihads and Missionaries

Landau, “Language,” in Missionaries and the Empire, Oxford History of the British Empire, Companion Series, ed. N. Etherington (Oxford: OUP 2005) in reader

Thurs: The decadent exterior coast; the wild interior; Stanley, dime novels and the end of Humanitarianism / P1 due /prep P2 / hand out Treaty

Week 3. Feb. 7-9 Occupying, I.

Readings: “The Treaty of Berlin” (1885):

http://ocid.nacse.org/qml/research/tfdd/toTFDDdocs/4ENG.htm

Lecture:

Tues: Motives for “Scrambling,” or, India, somehow, and a pocket Shah / P2 due

Readings (due thursday):

Notes for Thursday's reading:

Thornton writes about the creation

of the tribe-idea in colonial administration

and particularly the academic study of

Africa, which was part of that administration.

Thornton, “Appropriate Domain for Anthropology, 1860 –1920"

Landau writes about the creation

of the tribal idea in visual images, in

particular, photography, and the effects

of imaging the human form on imperial

governance.

Landau, "Empires of the Visual: Photography and Administration," (2002)

Both readings are about the penetration

of technologies of control, and their involvement

with imperialism in Africa: with paper, print,

photography, and the institutions that make use

of those media.  Both readings provide a back-

drop to Thursday's lecture.  You do not have to

memorize every fact and detail.

Lecture:

Thurs: Technologies of trade, visualization, and penetration

Week 4. Feb. 14-16. Occupying, II.

reading:

Denis Constant-Martin, Coon Carnival, ch. 3, “Slavery and rainbow balls: the development of a Captonian culture,” 49-75, omitting 59, 70, 71, in readere-reserves

Lectures:

Tues: 1879-98: Zulu, Sudan, Rhodes, the Sack of Kumase, and New Zealand

Thurs: Assimilation (?) and Indirect Rule

/ hand out Adeyemi–Victoria doc. (1888) / prep P3

Week 5: Feb. 21-23. The Senegal & Niger River Systems and Europe

reading:

McKeldin reserves: Toyin Falola, “Yoruba Town Histories,” ch. 3 in Axel H.-Sievers, ed., A Place in the World (Leiden: Brill, 2002)

McKeldin reserves: Ann O’Heas, “The Enslavement of Yoruba,” ch. 4 in The Yoruba Diasporas and the Atlantic World, ed. Toyin Falola and Matt Childs (Bloomington: IUP, 2004)

McKeldin reserves: Robin Law, “Yoruba Liberated Slaves Who Returned to West Africa,” ch. 17 in Ibid.

Lectures:

Tues: Liberia, South Africa, the “highlands” (or, Settlers, of all sorts)

Thurs: Yoruba Write Their Histor(ies) / P3 due

Week 6: Feb. 28-Mar. 2 Money and Power

reading:

Colleen Kriger, ch. 3, “Smelting Iron,” in Pride of Men: Ironworking in 19th Century West Central Africa (Ports.: Heine., 1999), and Glossary xvii–xix

lectures:

Tues: Iron-working in Gabon and Congo

Thurs: Southern Africa in the 19th century / prep P4 /

Week 7: Mar. 7-9. East, I

readings:

Laura Fair, Pastimes & Politics (Athens: Oh. U.P., 2001), ch. 2, “Dressing up,” and ch 5, “Masculinity and Football”

lectures:

Tues: Cloves and Sugar /

Thurs: Film: Ali Mazrui, “The Africans,” one episode / remind exam

Week 8: Mar. 14-16: East, II

“Mama Meli’s [Mama Mary’s] Story,” ed. Marcia Wright, in reader

Tues: East Africa: Swahili, British and Omani / prep Red Rubber / P4 due

Thurs: Exam /

March 21-23. Spring Break. (Read ahead: Balewa, Shaihu Umar, Intro by Beverly Mack, and main story)

Week 9: Mar. 28-30.

reading:

E. Morel, “Red Rubber,” in reader

Balewa, Shaihu Umar, all

lectures:

Tues: Congo “Scandal”

Thurs: Unfree Labor, N. Nigeria, Race, and Lord Lugard / prep Aba, Hung. / prep P5

Week 10: April 4-6. Two radically different economies (Sexuality)

reading:

Judith van Allen, “Sitting on a Man,” e-reserves (see link at top of page)

Marc Epprecht, ch. 2, “Cities,” Hungochani . . . e-reserves

lectures:

Tues: Trade-women’s war (Igbo) / P5 due

Thurs: Extractive industries / prep MM

Week 11: April 11-13. Ethnic and Nationalist Movements

Readings:

Maloba, Mau Mau and Kenya

Lectures:

Tues: The Mau Mau

Thurs: The Era of New States: 1955–66, 1975–80 / prep Zim., Armah

Week 12: April 18-20. African Revolutionaries

Readings:

Armah, The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born (extremely recommended)

Epprecht, ch. 8, “Politics,” e-reserve

Lectures:

Tues. Ghana and All Africa - ism

/ prep P6

Thurs. The South African Hinterland (Bots, Les, Swa, Zim, Moz) / prep Beasts

Week 13: April 25-27. Warfare

reading:

I. Uzodinma, Beasts of No Nation (a novel)

Lectures:

Tues: Refugees and other uphemisms in the horrible ‘90s

Thurs: The land of the Fur and Dinka (and Pakistani-Afghan Border . . .) ?

NB: The implication of the title of this lecture, which was not conveyed due to time constraints, was that the Pakistani - Afghanistan border is a perfect example of a periphery much like the Fur, Nubian people, or Equitorials in Sudan: the outskirts, the preyed-upon people, the open-season for raids areas, the warlords, the place of refuge for the excluded, but therefore also the places of tight-knit local communities with their own traditions and ethics.  Douglas Johnson (Roots of Sudan's Civil Wars) characterizes the issue of war and peace in Sudan as inexpressible in Sudanese terms: the community that lives in balance with its neighbors is the best one can hope for (cieng).

/P6 due

/prep Kristoff,on e-reserves (thanks, Jay).

Week 14: May 2-4. Global capital and Africa

reading both are on reserve at McKeldin:

N. Krisoff, “Dying in Dar Fur,” NYRoB, Feb. 2005,on E-Reserves (click above)

Achille Mbembe, “Commendment,” ch. 1, and “The Aesthetics of Vulgarity,” ch. 3, of On the Postcolony (Berkeley: Univ. of Cal. Press, 2001), may skip ch. 1 if y’ve read Armah, on E-Reserves

lecture:

N.B.: At this point in the semester we dropped back a week and spent some time on Southern Africa, and on the birth of post-colonial states in Africa through various forms of transfer of "state power."  To different extents these states governed (taxed, spent, adjudicated, punished) in a way reminiscent of functioning nation-states.  Few were truly independent of the great powers, nor of the commercial world.  Many leaders were men who had spent time in the West and held University degrees.  Their nationalism had emerged from the kind that was tied to the aspirations of an indigenous middle class, such as supported the programs of the early 20th century ANC.  The "Barolong" movement in the 1920s in the middle of rural South Africa was another sort altogether.  My discussions of this movment, that I am writing a book about (again, adding a week to our syllabus), were aimed at illustrating Mamdani's "civil war within the tribe" idea, and to bring it into conjunction with the historian John Lonsdale's discussion of Mau Mau (Kenya, 1950s)--namely, that both entailed a similar antagonism.  In both Kenya and South Africa (and, as I discussed in class, Zimbabwe), a similar process unfolded: one version of being Kikuyu or Barolong was vetted and assimilated into "native administration," and was tied to men's access to land: on the other side, a land-deprived movement rejecting this structure and its primitivizing implications, contested the very notion of what it meant to be Kikuyu or Barolong.

Tues: Platinum? Diamonds? Col-Tan (in your purse) and Mami Wata.

NB: The title of this lecture alluded to "wealth," of the kind gotten by exploiting African workers.  The risks associated with work and mining were dangerous, and were quite reasonably associated with selfishness, material possessions, beauty, and sacrifice of family.  These are some of the meanings of some of the "Mami Wata" cults, shrines, and paintings, in west, west-central and central Africa.

We've dealt with people siezing aspects of the foreign for their own purposes.  This is so in European representations of colonized peoples ("races"), and in Nigerian appropriations of a Ceylonese snake-charmer's picture as "Mami Wata."  But it is true in very different ways.  European categorizations were tied to regimes of power that subordinated those it catalogues.  Mami Wata devotees recognize the selfishness of the effort to survive in a world of commodities, and try to deal with that.

reading (due thurs, May 4:

Joel Matlou, “Man Against Himself” (short story) on E-Reserves

lecture: Thurs: 40 % HIV? Christian, and in debt: Survival and Fulfillment (last class) / Review

MAY 9: Last lecture (Coke and Col-tan? Africa in the world economy)

MAY 11: You bring in questions for review!!

EXAM: MAY 15th, Monday, at 8:00 a.m., our regular room!

Final Exam tba