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  3. Boundaries, Communities and State-Making in West Africa
  • Cited by 44
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
June 2019
Print publication year:
2019
Online ISBN:
9781139105828
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139105828
Subjects:
Area Studies, African Studies, History, Politics and International Relations, African Government, Politics and Policy, African History
Series:
African Studies (144)
Information

Book description

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.

Reviews

‘This must-read West African showpiece, magnificently executed in the finest traditions of African historical scholarship, with notably intensive archival and library research and extensive fieldwork, should be replicated for other regions to bridge a yearning gap in African and global historiography.’

Anthony I. Asiwaju - University of Lagos, Nigeria

‘A model example of deeply-contextualized comparative research. It makes a compelling case that the analytical framework within which African states are viewed should be shifted from 'neo-patrimonialism' to 'social contract' - the latter being deftly deployed throughout this well-written and accessible study.’

Gareth Austin - University of Cambridge

‘This ambitious work argues that to understand states and state-making in contemporary Africa, one must focus on 'the margins' - that is, on the making of boundaries and borders. This radical redefinition of analytic perspective, developed in a text of grand historical and spatial sweep, has produced a book that will be a great interest to historians, political scientists, geographers and anthropologists.’

Catherine Boone - London School of Economics and Political Science

‘A tremendously creative study, masterfully bringing to the West African fore that which has hitherto been seen as marginal: the edges of the colonial and postcolonial state. With his fine frontier brush, Nugent paints us a different conceptual picture of how we ought to reimagine the centres and perimeters of African polities.'

William F. S. Miles - Northeastern University, Boston

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