Boundaries, communities, and state-making in West Africa : the centrality of the margins / Paul Nugent.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Nugent, Paul, 1962- author.

Series:

African studies series ; 144.

African studies series ; 144

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Boundaries.

Borderlands.

Africa, West--Politics and government.

Africa, West.

West Africa.

Politics and government.

Africa, West--History.

History.

Borderlands--Africa, West.

Africa, West--Boundaries.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xx, 610 pages : illustrations (black and white), maps (black and white) ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Summary:

Border regions are often considered to be the neglected margins. In this book, Paul Nugent argues that through a comparison of the Senegambia and the trans-Volta (Ghana/Togo), we can see that the geographical margins have shaped notional centres at least as much as the reverse. Through a study of three centuries of history, this book demonstrates that states were forged through an extended process of converting a topography of settled states and slaving frontiers into colonial borders. It argues that post-colonial states and larger social contracts have been configured very differently as a consequence. It underscores the impact on regional dynamics and the phenomenon of peripheral urbanism. Nugent also addresses the manner in which a variegated sense of community has been forged amongst Mandinka, Jola, Ewe and Agotime populations who have both shaped and been shaped by the border. This is an exercise in reciprocal comparison and shuttles between scales, from the local and the particular to the national and the regional--Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Centering the margins: states, borderlands and communities

Configurations of power in comparative perspective: commerce, people and belief to c.1880

Port cities, frontiers and boundaries: spatial lineages of the colonial state

Constructing the compound, keeping the gate: a fiscal anatomy of colonial state-making, c.1900-1940

Being seen like a state: frontier logics, colonial administration and traditional authority in the borderlands

Border regulation and state-making at the margins: taxation, migration and contraband during the interwar years

Land, belief and belonging in the borderlands

Bringing the space back in: decolonization, development and territoriality c.1939-1960

The vanishing horizon of Senegambian unity: statist visions and border dynamics

Forging the nation, contesting the border: identity politics and border dynamics in the trans-Volta

Barnacle states and boundary lines: states, trade and urbanism in the Senegambia

The remaking of Ghana and Togo at their common border: Alhaji Kalabule meets Nana Benz

Boundaries, communities and 're-membering': festivals and the negotiation of difference

Conclusion. Boundaries and state-making: comparisons through time and space.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

ebook version :

ISBN:

9781107020689

1107020689

9781107622500

1107622506

OCLC:

1082297051