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Building on the familiar observation that rulers in Africa have usually found it hard to raise large revenues from domestic sources, Bayart argues that, during colonial rule and since, African elites became clients of colonial or overseas States. Tell us if something is incorrect. It seemed an attractive proposition as supplier of raw materials and sales market. Nattrass, N. Anthony Kirk-Greene and Daniel Bach, eds. Collusion and competition in colonial economies: Banking in British West Africa,
See all 2 brand new listings. Buy It Now. Add to cart. Be the first to write a review About this product. Focusing on the French-speaking countries of west and central Africa, the book brings out the way in which the precolonial African heritage shaped new societies, in interaction with French and Belgian colonial rules, and with global economic and cultural forces. Three eras of change are described: the transition to colonial rule from to , the transition to independent states from to , and the reconfiguration of post-colonial society after The first edition of this book has been widely used in courses in African studies and African history.
Additional Product Features Dewey Edition. List of illustrations; Acknowledgements; Note on the second edition; 1.
Prologue; 2. Economy and society, ; 3. Government and politics, ; 4. Other former French territories outside of West and Central Africa are not included in this book.
Francophone sub-Saharan Africa, defined in these terms, has existed for just over a century; it was brought into existence with the European conquest of Africa which reached its height in the s. The population of the 17 countries was estimated at over million, or one-fifth of the entire African population. The area of francophone sub-Saharan Africa is 17 times that of France and Belgium combined, and its population is today almost twice that of France and Belgium combined. Zaire is the largest of the francophone African countries — it is the second largest African nation in area, and third largest in population.
Rwanda is the smallest and most densely populated country in francophone sub-Saharan Africa. It is equal in area to Belgium, and had a population two-thirds that of Belgium. France is slightly larger in area than Cameroon, while the population of Zaire, Cameroon and Ivory Coast taken together were nearly equal to that of France. French, English, and Arabic are the main languages of government in Africa today. Map 2, which shows African countries according to their main language of government, provides a simplified portrait of the colonial history of the continent.
This book concentrates on one area of the continent for a century in time. It includes all of the former Belgian colonies and most of the former French colonies in Africa. This is because their histories, while important, are quite different from those of the 17 nations on which we shall focus.
What is unique and characteristic about francophone sub-Saharan Africa? Partly it is the common ancestral heritage of West and Central Africa — the centuries of development and interaction in the valleys of the Senegal, the Niger, the Shari, the Ogowe and the Zaire. Partly it is the French and Belgian imprint on this immense region — the French language and the accompanying traditions of law, administration, and education.
It is true that these territories were French-speaking only at the elite and administrative levels during much of the past century, because the colonial regimes kept education and political participation at a minimum. But in the era of decolonization, since World War II, the French language has come to be spoken very widely. At the elite level, African poets, political figures, and philosophers carried out this fusion. At the popular level, an equally important cultural fusion was carried out by village school teachers, musicians, merchants, and preachers.
The songs of the Zairian musicians Franco and Rochereau or Luambo Makiadi and Tabu Ley, as they are now known provide examples of the strength of this popular culture.
In contrast with anglophone Africa, the francophone countries use the metric system and drive on the right; they also have more centralized administrations. In contrast with Arab Africa, francophone sub-Saharan African countries emphasize their recent history rather than the glories of their medieval histories. In contrast with lusophone Africa, the francophone countries gained independence without having to go to war for it, and are left with a tradition giving relative emphasis to moderation and compromise.
In contrast with the nations of eastern Africa, where Amharic, Somali, and Swahili define specifically African linguistic communities, the francophone nations emphasize their participation in a world linguistic community. The experience of francophone sub-Saharan Africa in the century from to , while unique in these and other respects, also has important parallels with the experience of English-, Portuguese-, and Arabic-speaking Africa.
As a result, while the story to be told in these pages is primarily about the specific experience of francophone sub-Saharan Africa, it illustrates many of the issues and the trends which have been important throughout Africa. In some cases, as with the Great Depression of the s or the influenza pandemic in , the history of francophone Africa can scarcely be separated from that of the rest of Africa. In other cases, as with language policy or political rights, the history of francophone Africa is unique and distinct.
The colonial experience and decolonization brought changing identities for Africans at both individual and collective levels. This is reflected particularly in 4 Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa — changing names of countries and colonies in francophone Africa. Thus, the nation known today as Mali was known as French Sudan from to , as Upper-Senegal-Niger from to , and by other names in earlier periods. The nation known today as Zaire was given its boundaries as the Congo Independent State in This territory was known as French Congo beginning in and as Middle Congo from to , when it became the Republic of Congo.
In the text we shall refer to these countries by their modern names as frequently as possible, but it will often be necessary to use their earlier names. Four maps in this chapter should help to clarify the changing names of African political units: map 1 , map 3 , map 4 , and map 5 The book traces three types of influences over the course of a century. First, it presents African society, its history and its changes.
Secondly, it describes colonial rule in Africa, and the French and Belgian nations which were behind the colonial administrations. Thirdly, it discusses African consequences of the industrial transformation of the modern world. This industrial revolution goes beyond the influence of any European or African nation, and has led to the internationalization of the economy, of politics and of culture.
The objective of this history is, first, to present the main facts of the historical development of francophone sub-Saharan Africa.
A second objective, perhaps equally important, is to convey the outlook and the identity of the peoples of francophone Africa. In the pages below, the reader with the assistance of a little imagination may re-enact the historical experience of the peoples of francophone Africa. Through participating indirectly in that experience, one may seek to understand and articulate the viewpoints, hopes, and fears of those who actually lived it and who live it today.
The northern savanna or the sudan is the largest and most populous of these belts. The southern savanna covers the southern half of Congo and Zaire and extends into neighboring Angola and Zambia. In addition, the highlands of Rwanda, Burundi, and the Kivu region of Zaire are a small but densely populated region of open grassland and regular rains. In the lands of francophone Africa supported roughly 30 million people, almost all of them in rural settlements. About 15 million lived in the northern savanna, some 6 million lived in forest zones, about 4 million lived in the southern savanna, and about 3 million lived in the highlands.
These great landscapes, and the many variations within them, reflected and in turn conditioned the rainfall, the temperature, the Prologue 5 vegetation, the animal life, and above all the forms of human habitation of each. Since much of the story to follow will be told in terms of these landscapes, we shall begin with a more detailed description of each, as they appeared a century ago. The northern savanna, a great expanse of grassland with trees dotting the river valleys and the wetter lands, is bounded to the north by the Sahara Desert and to the south by dense forest hugging the coast.
The savanna stretches 3, kilometers from the coast of Senegal to Lake Chad in the center of the continent and another 3, kilometers to the Red Sea. Some years it could be farmed, other years it was grazed, and some years it had to be abandoned.
We shall be concerned with the Western and Central Sudan. Only a small portion of this vast area is drained by the westward-flowing Senegal and Gambia rivers. Most of it is drained by the mighty Niger, which rises in the mountains of Futa Jallon in Guinea, flows northeast to the desert edge at Timbuktu, and then curves in a great bend to flow southeast. From its bend the Niger flows across the savanna toward the coast where, after passing under the forest, it finally discharges its waters through a maze of creeks into the Bights of Benin and Biafra.
Further east, in the very center of the continent, the Shari River rises just beyond the northern fringe of the forest and flows gently northward into the landlocked basin of Lake Chad. The lake, salty and shallow after millions of years of receiving the Shari, still supports a large fish population. Each year, summer rains brought the savanna to life. Intense labors of the farmers, working with hoes, resulted in preparation of fields and planting of millet and sorghum, the main grain crops.
Within two months of sprouting, millet stalks reached heights of two meters. These and other crops covered the landscape with a carpet of green. But after the millet harvest in September and the end of the rains in October, the savanna turned back to the brown, grey, and gold which dominated its colors for most of the year.
In one sense the farmers of Senegal and the savanna stretching to the east were repeating an annual cycle that had been carried on for the thousands of years since millet had been domesticated. But the rains were not always regular, and in too many years they did not come at all. Farmers planned accordingly, and built the granaries whose conical forms became a dominant feature of savanna architecture. Malawi L. Tanganyika Ujiji L. Forest State boundaries R. The western portion of the equatorial forest is drained by the Ogowe River.
The great majority of the equatorial forest is drained by the Zaire River and its tributaries: the Ubangi in the north and the Lualaba and the Lomami in the east.