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Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks : African Employees in the Making of Colonial Africa / edited by Benjamin N. Lawrance, Emily Lynn Osborn, and Richard L. Roberts.
- Format:
- Book
- Series:
- Africa and the diaspora.
- Africa and the Diaspora : History, Politics, Culture
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Translators--Africa--History.
- Translators.
- Colonial administrators--Africa--History.
- Colonial administrators.
- Europe--Colonies--Africa--History--20th century.
- Europe.
- Europe--Colonies--Africa--History--19th century.
- Europe--Colonies--Africa--Administration.
- Africa--History--1884-1960.
- Africa.
- Africa--History--19th century.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (342 p.)
- Place of Publication:
- Madison, Wisconsin : The University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.
- Language Note:
- English
- Summary:
- As a young man in South Africa, Nelson Mandela aspired to be an interpreter or clerk, noting in his autobiography that "a career as a civil servant was a glittering prize for an African." Africans in the lower echelons of colonial bureaucracy often held positions of little official authority, but in practice the occupants of these positions functioned as hidden lynchpins of colonial rule. As the primary intermediaries among European colonial officials, African chiefs, and subject populations, these men (and a few women) could manipulate the intersections of power, authority, and knowledge at the center of colonial society. By uncovering the role of African civil servants in the construction, function, and legal apparatus of colonial states, the essays in this volume highlight a new perspective. They offer important insights on hegemony, collaboration and resistance, structures and changes in colonial rule, the role of language and education, the production of knowledge and expertise in colonial settings, and the impact of colonization in dividing African societies by gender, race, status, and class.
- Contents:
- An interpreter will arise : resurrecting Jan Tzatzoe's diplomatic and evangelical contributions as cultural intermediary on South Africa's eastern Cape frontier, 1816-1818 / Roger S. Levine
- Interpreting colonial power in French Guinea : The Boubou Penda-Ernest Noirot affair of 1905 / Emily Lynn Osborn
- Interpretation and interpolation : Shepstone as native interpreter / Thomas McClendon
- Petitioners, "bush lawyers," and letter writers : court access in British-occupied Lome, 1914-1920 / Benjamin N. Lawrance
- Negotiating legal authority in French West Africa : the colonial administration and African assessors, 1903-1918 / Ruth Ginio
- "Collecting customary law" : educated Africans, ethnographic writings, and colonial justice in French West Africa / Jean-Herve Jezequel
- Interpreters self-interpreted : the autobiographies of two colonial clerks / Ralph A. Austen
- African court elders in Nyanza Province, Kenya, ca. 1930-1960 : from "traditional" to "modern" / Brett L. Shadle
- Power and influence of African court clerks and translators in colonial Kenya : the case of Khwisero Native (African) Court, 1946-1956 / Maurice Nyamanga Amutabi
- The district clerk and the "man-leopard murders" : mediating law and authority in colonial Nigeria / David Pratten
- Cultural commuters : African employees in late colonial Tanzania / Andreas Eckert
- African participation in colonial rule : the role of clerks, interpreters, and other intermediaries.
- Notes:
- Description based upon print version of record.
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 297-317) and index.
- Description based on print version record.
- ISBN:
- 9780299219536
- 0299219534
- OCLC:
- 917153171
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