Table of contents

• Editorial: The Fourth Annual AMISTAD Lecture
  by Dr. Gloria Emeagwali
  
• Distinguished Professor Toyin Falola:
  ‘The AMISTAD’s Legacy: Reflections on the Spaces of Colonization’
  
• The Regional Editors of Africa Update
  

THE AMISTAD'S LEGACY: REFLECTIONS ON THE SPACES OF COLONIZATION
Fourth Annual Distinguised AMISTAD Lecture,
Central Connecticut State University
Professor Toyin Falola

I want to use as my starting point a great episode in the history of slave resistance, the 1839 mutiny now known as the Amistad, which gave its name to the distinguished Amistad Committee that invited me as a speaker. I wish to talk about how a moment transited into a permanent historical symbol and a template to understand race relations over time. The story is already well known, and there is no need to present its essential details all over. On board the Amistad slave ship on the high seas traveling toward the Northeast coast of America (from Havana to Guanaja), Joseph Cinque organized a bloody revolt against the Spanish crew. The hope of the temporarily liberated slaves was that the Amistad would be forced to sail back in the direction of Africa. The Africans had no detailed knowledge of ship steering and probably had to rely on one of the slave dealers, Montes, who bought them. Perhaps, Montes engaged in a deliberate trick: during the day he steered the ship toward the east, and at night toward the United States. Or perhaps, the liberated Africans were unable to know how to steer back to Africa. Subsequently, the ship was intercepted by the U.S. Navy who brought it to shore on Long Island, New York. The Amistad and the Africans were then taken to New London, Connecticut. A judicial hearing was announced in August 1839 while the Africans were put in a jail in New Haven. A trial ensued, with all kinds of drama, between nations and individuals in support of or against slavery. The legal issues were over the rights to the cargo—Spain or the United States?—and the status of the people—were they slaves or not? The Amistad episode energized the abolitionists who were able to enlist the services of a famous lawyer, John Quincy Adams, a former US president. A successful case of slave revolt galvanized the abolitionist movement, inserted itself into the American judicial system, and ended in freedom for the slaves.

In September 1839, the initial case, described as criminal, was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. In the following month, Professor Josiah Gibbs was able to locate an interpreter (James Covey) who was able to speak with the Africans, teach them English and introduce them to Christianity. Cinque and others turned the table, filing cases against Monte and his fellow slave dealer for false imprisonment and assault. The trial began in January 1840 and the District Court judge ruled that the Africans should be turned over to the President who should return them to Africa. An appeal followed in September 1840, but the Circuit Court upheld the decision of the lower court. The government took the case to the Supreme Court where John Quincy Adams and Roger Baldwin argued their cases. In March 1841, the Supreme Court ordered that the Africans should be freed immediately. Between March and November, the freed Africans learned more English and Christian education. In November 1841, they left for Africa as part of a missionary group. They arrived in Sierra Leone in January 1842 where they began evangelization work. Some left the mission. In 1879, Cinque died and was buried in a cemetery dedicated to American missionaries.

My purpose is not to revisit the narrative, but to comment on what the episode represents to Africans and people of African descent. The Amistad episode provides us with the opportunity to examine issues around slavery, race and power, domination and memory, conquest and nationalism. I will limit my discussion to three broad interrelated themes:
i) the manipulation of historical memory for politics, and resistance by slaves to question or reinvent that memory;
ii) the transition from the control of people to the conquest of land; and
iii) finally, the response by dominated people to reclaim their own past and struggle for inclusion.

The Amistad revolt, as well as the events before and after it reveal the difficulties faced by black people to make their own histories in ways favorable to them. The conquest of Africa and the consequent disapora created by Western forces was cultural, political, and economic. This conquest, in its multi-faceted forms, is the colonization of the spaces created by the African world. The interpretation of the conquest has equally entailed the colonization of a people’s memory.

The Colonization of Memory
In spite of the short narrative just presented, attempts have been made to erase the memory of the Amistad episode and related ones. For a long time, the standard narrative was that slaves accepted their conditions for four hundred years, and that many were even unhappy with the abolition and emancipation of the nineteenth century. Those who captured and used slaves were quick to write stories about slavery. In so doing, they sought to colonize the memory regarding slavery. There were three clever flanks, sometimes repackaged even today. The first is the fundamental attempt to justify slavery in religious, ideological and racial terms. Motives can be disguised, putting the economic circumstances under the carpet and so-called humanitarian ideas on the table. Second, there is the flawed thesis that in the long run conditions of slavery were better than conditions of underdevelopment. Indeed, not a few blacks have even expressed the self-hating opinion that they were better off having been shipped out of Africa. Third, and arguably the most persistent, a clever intellectual game to treat the slave trade as a blame game, presenting a balance sheet between those who demanded and those who supplied. In this balance sheet presentation, the Africans who stayed on their continent and were forced to respond to a demand-side economy were given an equal share of blame. Those who have fallen to this balance sheet argument have been cleverly led to another problem: an attempt to divide blacks into antagonistic blocs, so that tensions can emerge between African Americans and continental Africans.

What also emerged from the colonization of the African space after 1885 was the clever attempt to colonize the African minds. The image of Africans as docile, eager to take punishment, and confident in bondage since there was no better alternative for them has deep roots. The presentation of Africans as passive and collaborators into the slave trade is also widespread in dominant circles, even up till today, simply to transfer the blame from the activities of the hegemonic elite to the victims of economic and political brutalities.

Western education, for a long time, became the tool of colonization. Consciousness of race inferiority was accepted and internalized by many blacks. W. E. B. Du Bois spoke about double consciousness, defined as “this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of the world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.” In his well cited book, Carter Woodson spoke eloquently about what he called the “mis-education of the negro”:
…the negro’s mind has been brought under the control of his oppressor. The problem of holding the negro down, therefore, is easily solved. When you control a man’s thinking, you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his “proper place” and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary.

It took a while for new knowledge to replace decadent ones. Indeed, it was not until after the Second World War that the study of Africa received legitimacy in the majority of Western academic institutions.

The colonization of memory is based on the assumption that knowledge about events such as the Amistad, slavery, and imperialist domination can either be erased, where possible, or told from the point of view of the slave owners and conquerors. There is also the assumption that ignorance about the enslaved can be manufactured. The power of domination is turned into the power to construct memory. It is also the power to create silences when it was politically expedient to do so. The majority of Africans growing up in colonial Africa would never have been taught the history of slave resistance, talk less of hearing about the Amistad. Until the European power was about to end, there was no such academic project as the systematic study of Africa and its diaspora. African students were told that they had no history, and they did not make any significant contributions to world civilization.

The denial of a people’s past is not that a past did not exist—there are no such peoples without a past—but a statement about power and the uses to which it has been put. When millions of people were enslaved and when their continent was forcefully conquered, it was a strategy both of justification and domination to deny the people a past, a memory. The maintenance of power also meant the creation of a new history to erase the previous. The new history is of how domination has enabled the enslaved to benefit from their being in chains and how conquest has rewarded the colonized. Blacks were regarded as “the white man’s burden”: to prevent their extinction, they needed to be saved. To be saved, they needed to be civilized. To be civilized, they needed to be enslaved and conquered.

The colonization of memory is also based on the assumption that the colonizer was an effective teacher. The colonizer had become the ideal citizen, even in foreign lands. The colonized had been transformed into subjects, in their own spaces, and their land a big classroom. Did not a notable British geographer, James MacQueen, arrogantly proclaim, “If we really wish to do good in Africa, we must teach her savage sons that white men are their superiors”? He did. Policies followed that assumed the superiority of the slave masters and colonial officers, and the inferiority of blacks. Inferiors could not make claims to any credible knowledge. Their knowledge had to be colonized to teach them. The sources that sustained their epistemologies—orality, performances, arts, etc—were delegitimized. They were told that to talk about the past, one needed written sources, not songs, not verbal slave narratives, not even the residues of their environments that yield tremendous evidence. Egypt, Nubia and Ethiopia were grudgingly excluded, since they had written evidence of history, but the forces of change, the evidence of the past were connected to a meta-narrative that excluded Black people as achievers and inventors. Even Hamites—a mythical horde of migrants from outside the continent—were invented as the creators of civilizations. Hamites were presented as Caucasians who joined other light-skinned people to create African civilization.

The colonization of memory has been clever in assaulting worldviews and religions. Many Christian missionaries aligned their views with those of slavery and imperialism. Turning themselves into agents to spread civilization, they were aggressive in their condemnation of indigenous worldviews, in despising indigenous religions, mislabeled as paganism. They ranged much wider in their criticisms, carefully primitivizing indigenous creative endeavors in music, art, religions, languages, and cuisines. Attires were redefined as costumes, nations converted into “tribes,” and legitimate state-building wars into political anarchies. The violence of conquest was sanitized into legitimate wars of civilization; the violence of resistance was presented as the activities of barbarians and cannibals.

The Amistad reveals notions of memory. Slaves were acquired from a position of power in terms of the technology to cross the sea, the manufacture of guns and gunpowder to generate the violence that produced the slaves, and the plantations where the slaves worked to produce sugar, tobacco, cotton and other products. The perception of slaves by their owners was framed in the context of unequal power relations. Similarly, the resistors were trying to overcome their powerlessness. Slave masters, in relations with their slaves, were using negative and limited knowledge about the uprooted men and women. Slaves were being looked upon not only as people in bondage but as the representatives of primitive people. Racism and evolutionism combined to generate stereotypes about black people in general. In the evolutionary tree, created by the Western idea of civilization, the most superior culture was Western and white. Others might be able to progress toward the ideals of this superiority. The black race was considered to be at the lowest stage of evolution, basically children who needed time to become adults. Slaves were people with human anatomical features, but they were marked apart by race and evolution. Cultural evolutionism evolved partly out of slavery, and was reinforced by colonization and perpetuated by stereotypes. In this colonization of memory and experience, imagination ran wild, too wild. The most positive image of the African would be that of a “different person,” but never superior to anyone, only better behaved or exhibiting greater intelligence than other blacks. Rural lifestyles and the simplicity of slaves were seen as reminders of how the world used to be before progress came to the West. Universalism was invented from a premise of arrogance that one group knows and understands the truth, the only truth, which others must accept. Blacks had to be invited to learn the truth, to move away from isolationism toward universalism. This is a form of control in which the claim of one truth becomes a strategy of domination, actually of total domination in the physical as well as epistemological sense.

The presentation of the Amistad resistors and of slaves in general have framed the meanings of Africa to Americans. They are meanings that show not the limitation of knowledge but the deliberate creation of false images, fake memories. If Africa does not denote “tribes” and natives, it can mean the land of savages and cannibals. By extension, blacks are poor, ignorant, erotic and wild. A stereotypical canvass is painted: an exotic set of people living in primitive huts in the company of wild animals in the jungle. Language comes out of imagination, feeding ideas that are perpetually negative, and supplying images of barbarism to entertain television audiences. Racism and exploitation have always coupled, very well accepted in the United States and elsewhere in the Western world. For many years, the United States established a successful slavery and segregation system. Slavery and racism were practiced in a combination that ensured exploitation. In the years after the abolition of slavery, racist views persisted in one way or another. Today, we find them in private discussions, exotic presentations, and the display of cultural arrogance. The common themes of Africa remain about animals, the jungle, and the primitive people who live there just to show that Africans are deprived and depraved.

The era of the Amistad saw the clearly reinforced invention of Western images of Africa. The slave trade era redefined racial and political relations. From the eighteenth century onward, race and culture were united in the Western construction of Africa. A monogenist view of a world created by Adam and Eve gave way to a polygenist one in which God created separate races and gave power to one to control others.

The Amistad enables us to question the colonization of memory. The Amistad episode tells us about the fierceness of struggles for liberty and freedom. Moreover, we see hints and evidence of the value of heritage, the affirmation of culture, and the defense of humanity. Consider the importance of the slaves involved in the Amistad to formulate an identity of resistance in the middle passage. The struggles they produced led to a powerful representation beyond the symbolic—the representation of resistance as freedom and as politics, and of the culture of rebellion engrained in the experience of slavery itself.

Scholars have produced counter narratives to demonstrate the misleading nature of the colonization of memory. Today, we have a long list of works on resistance to slavery that document various episodes and tendencies. Such studies demonstrate the failure of the attempts to silence or kill the slave narratives of resistance. On the African side, limited documented evidence shows the examples of people who tried to prevent the slave trade, such as the activities of Queen Nzinga of the Matamba in Angola who, from 1630 to 1648, fought the Portuguese from taking African slaves. In Dahomey, King Agaja Trudo attempted to end slavery between 1724 and 1726. The pressure on the demand side made these attempts so feeble. Within Africa, the project of slave making was a project of violence made possible with imported guns and gunpowder. In the brutal Middle Passage, slaves had to be overwhelmed and shackled to prevent their jumping to the sea and killing themselves. The routine of individual experiences in the Middle Passage are not necessarily captured in the historical records. The Amistad was a revolt on a slave ship, one that we know the best because of its prominence in the American legal historical records on slavery. But there were others as well. In 1730, 96 African slaves from the Guinea Coast staged a mutiny on board the Little George. They successfully confined the crew to the ship’s cabinet, reversed the direction of the ship to the Sierra Leone River, abandoned the ship and jumped inland as free citizens. There was another case in 1740, in the same region, when a mutiny occurred on the Jolly Bachelor sailing on the Sierra Leone River. The Jolly Bachelor was attacked by free Africans who set the slaves free. Alexander Falconbridge, who had first-hand experience of the Middle Passage, recorded in his book that the spirit and aspirations that shaped the minds of the fighters in the Amistad was actually very common.

As very few of the Negroes can so far brook the loss of their liberty and the hardships they endure, they are ever on the watch to take advantage of the least negligence in their oppressors. Insurrections are frequently the consequence; which are seldom expressed without much bloodshed. Sometimes these are successful and the whole ship's company is cut off. They are likewise always ready to seize every opportunity for committing some acts of desperation to free themselves from their miserable state and notwithstanding the restraints which are laid, they often succeed.
Resistance in plantation economies was common. Those with the ability to read and write, and with the opportunity to put their ideas in print, composed slave narratives which have survived till today. Slavery was not simply about domination, as the narratives by slave owners tend to present it, but equally about resistance, as the activities of slaves do clearly show.

Slave owners attempted to control the memory of slavery. Many of their successors have equally attempted to appropriate the knowledge of slavery. In this appropriation, there is a deliberate attempt to minimize the evils of slavery by blaming Africans for selling their own citizens, by making the demand-side economy less significant than the bread basket. The continuity of poverty, in repackaged slavery conditions, is blamed on the poor—alas! if only they can work harder! We have to reclaim the knowledge of slavery and of poverty in order to put events and actions in their proper context.
The Colonization of Spaces

The events that surrounded the Amistad were about the control of people. Around the same time, the control of space, manifested as colonization and direct occupation, was about to commence. The Atlantic slave trade was moving to an end in the nineteenth century, but the forced movement of people from Africa was about to give way to a project of control of the entire continent and its people. Race was a key sponsor of colonization. Racist theories of the nineteenth century constructed black people as inferior, a race that could be destined for extinction. A number of studies conducted by pseudo scientists (e.g., John Burgess) provided a so-called conclusion on black inferiority. With its enormous ability to conquer others, Europe was confident about itself, its civilization, its superiority. They celebrated the Industrial revolution, the progress in science, the Enlightenment, and their ability to travel world wide. They used their own evidence to construct an arrogance of culture that saw others, notably Africans, as far below them. This was not the time to talk about the equality of races or of humanity, but of racial domination. A combination of politicians and businessmen saw the wealth that could come from Africa. Their vision was one of domination and maximum expropriation, not collaboration, and their ideas began to spread. The colonization of the black space was a global project, the domination of Africa by Western forces, technology and culture. The title of the famous poem by Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden,” captures it all. The contents reveal a grandiose desire of greed:
Take up the White Man’s burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Take the White Man’s burden—
Ye dare not stoop to less—
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your Gods and you.

Kipling gave us the clues. God and whiteness were constructed by Kipling as allies to control others. These others were subordinate and child-like. The subordination required the colonization of space indefinitely because the transformation of the “half-devil and half-child” was a never-ending job.
The creation of the European empire in Africa after 1885 was the colonization of African space. Africa became an extension of Europe. Colonial knowledge reflected this reality: the evidence of change, according to the colonizers, was produced by the colonization of space. The colonization of space, in combination with the trans-Atlantic slave trade, led to the invention of Africa as the “Dark Continent” during the nineteenth century. It was during that century, all to justify the violent conquest of Africa, that the continent became presented as a place of strange customs: cannibalism, ritual murder, and warfare. The propaganda in Europe, to support the military invasions of other lands, was that Europeans were dealing with people without civilizations: they presented to their own public stories of Africans still grappling to learn languages, arts and crafts. Nineteenth century science and philosophy were also propagating evidence of racial differences to explain human diversity. In 1859, Charles Darwin published his The Origin of Species which showed how different species evolved in relation to biology and environment, a conclusion which was racialized by various interpreters to mean that there was one race at the top of the hierarchy. Whites were on the top, followed by Asians, and then followed the inferior races—Africans, Native Americans, and Australian Aborigines.


The colonization of Africa became so easy to justify in this circumstance. Conversion—the introduction of Western ideas to civilize Africans—became even a secondary point. Africans were said to be too far behind to be easily uplifted. Rather, what the “Dark Continent” needed was a trusteeship—as inferiors, characterized as the lowest form of humanity, they should be taken care of as babies. The colonizers did not see evidence of achievements, but of savagery and barbarism. Africans needed conquest, as a form of assistance. Scientific race theory now combined with imperialism to bring about the end of Africa’s sovereignty from which it is yet to recover.

The colonization of space, like the colonization of memory, was based on lies—not ignorance, as many prefer to say, but absolute deliberate untruth. To start with, there was no foundation for their historical claims about the continent in relation to the European concept of progress and civilization. Second, the conquerors described African nations as violent, but they conquered the place with violence. Their rule also unleashed violence that subsequently became part of a political culture. Africans were drawn into two World Wars whose objectives did not concern them. Third, in the conversion of Africans to Christianity, they used a rather strange concept of love—God appointed Europeans as prophets and saviors—which hid the cultural damage inflicted upon them. Christianity became a gift. Former slave holders and plantation owners were now condemning Africans for slavery. The trans-Atlantic slave trade lingered till the mid-nineteenth century, but the receivers of the slaves were now the ones to control the moral agenda.

The colonization of space opened up the avenues for the exploitation of people. Irrespective of the system of colonial governance, be it a policy of indirect rule, assimilation, association, paternalism and various other categories of colonial relation, the objective was clearly the same: exploitation. A colonial dictatorship emerged, with white officers on top, protected by the army and police. Africans paid taxes to finance the administration, while they produced crops and minerals that were shipped abroad. Established precolonial nations and their political structures were swept aside. Changes occurred in all aspects of African life, producing anomie, confusion, and fractured modernity, some of which has been captured in many literary and academic works. The combination of slavery and colonialism laid the foundation of Africa’s underdevelopment.

Counter- Colonization Projects
Nationalism produced numerous forms of anti-colonial resistance, including violent ones. Indeed, the fall of the European empire in Africa was made possible by the ability of Africans to make the enterprise unworkable. Similarly in the Americas, the emancipation of slaves led to various demands for inclusion in political and democratic spaces. The demands unleashed various struggles up until the twentieth century, most notably the civil rights movement. Various forms of nationalist projects have survived till today.

Black people began to construct alternative forms of knowledge to counter the experience of domination. Western-oriented universities emerged in different parts of Africa from the 1940s onward. A new generation of Africans acquired degrees and began to teach and hold positions of influence. In the United States, Black studies programs also emerged. As blacks contributed to scholarship, images of a lost past were recreated, narratives shifted from colonial condemnation to objective historical realities. New sources and methodologies produced new and rich histories. Non-written epistemologies emerged to describe the tragedies of the slave trade and the colonial encounters. When black people began to write, we see clearly the pain and anguish in the slave narratives. By the time we enter the twentieth century, academic writings developed as counter discourses. In Africa, nationalist historiographies developed to present Africa-centered histories. Cheikh Anta Diop became famous, supplying ideas that led to the creation of the Afrocentric movement in the United States, popularized by Molefi Asante of Temple University. Black Studies were created in the American academy against opposition, some even confronting violence in the 1960s. African nationalist historiography successfully provided rich evidence on the African past, pointing to established institutions and structures. The contributions of Africa to other cultures have equally been acknowledged, while debate continues as to what the Greeks owed to Africans.

Activist scholarship created new approaches, some non-western in their orientation and some adopting the methodologies of so-called mainstream departments. The agenda of Black Studies is anti-colonization. Combining intellectual with practical projects, Black Studies concentrates on the investigation of and the methods to end the oppression and exploitation of black people. Race and racialization should not just be seen as an epiphenomenal, as many social sciences discipline tend to emphasize. Conceived as a distinct discipline, Black Studies is not shy of action and rhetoric, and it’s clear about its investigation of the past, present and future of black people to make various political and anti-colonization statements and demands.

The knowledge of counter colonization dismisses the so-called neutrality of Cartesian, Western models of knowing. Black Studies contested the claim to historical objectivity by those in power, while it maintains that race, class and gender must be at the center of historical and cultural presentations. As Black Studies attains its maturation, its emphases attain greater clarity: at the center of its epistemology is the promotion of an African ethos. Various writings fall on the structure of black communities and the language of liberation to address the omission of the black experience in the academy.

While the premise of Black Studies has been accepted in various quarters, its creation is a process of struggles against the colonization of memory and the colonization of spaces. In Africa, African Studies was born in the era of decolonization in the 1940s and 1950s when scholarship was created by the political nationalism that saw the end of the European empire. In the United States, Black Studies struggled for inclusion in the universities as part of the Black Power and civil rights movement. From the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, it created its form and content. It presented itself as innovative, a challenge to racism, and a methodology to understand the people of African descent. Moreover, many argued that Black Studies would provide a space for black students on campuses to learn about their history and interact with people of their race and ethnicity.

The creation of Black studies was part of the general package of knowledge connected with political emancipation. Various anti-hegemonic discourses grew in the non-academic setting as well. As far back as the nineteenth century, Frederick Douglas and other abolitionists had called for the creation of new knowledge that would refuse to accept the racist view that blacks were inferior to whites. Douglas was blessed with able successors, notables such as Du Bois, Alexander Crumwell, Carter Woodson who founded the Journal of Negro History, and Arthur Schumberg, all of whom supported the idea of reclaiming black history. In the 1920s and 1930s, Negro History Week and the Harlem Renaissance paid attention to black art, literature and culture. Scholarship was broadly defined around the conception of blackness, an all-encompassing umbrella for Africans and people of African descent.

During the twentieth century, many activists argued that black history would generate racial pride among the youth and promote racial harmony. A number of black students on campuses in Africa and the United States said that they were not Europeans and saw no reason to study Shakespeare, Mozart and Beethoven and that they preferred Langston Hughes. History became a relevant discipline to construct and defend nationalism, to repudiate the negatives about Africa, and to point to the achievements of black people world-wide. An intellectual patrimony of disciplines began to reinforce the ideas of cultural patrimony. Blending oral with written sources and placing Africana at the center of discourse serves to prevent fragmented discourses on blackness, ones that would separate the history of slavery from European conquest or the history of the civil rights in the United States from that of decolonization in Africa.

The most sustained anti-colonization project has been the use of culture—as an ideology, as a source of affirmation, as an agency of resistance. The ideas of Negritude and the Harlem Renaissance cultural celebrations were emphatic in stressing the cultural difference of black people, and in calling for the use of culture for political purposes. More importantly, culture was promoted as a critical source of identity. The connections between culture and politics have been hugely successful. With words, eloquent, melodramatic and combative, many writers have reclaimed the lost glories of the past. Not only have they revealed stories of achievements, they also demolished the archives of Western domination. They redefined the notions and evidence of civilization, adopting the definitions that elevate people of African descent. They intellectually centralized Africa, projecting it as the center of the Black world. Furthermore, the uses to which culture has been put have created a mode of struggle against oppression. Aim� Cesair�, Leopold Senghor and others of the Negritude and Harlem school opened up a new library of African tradition and philosophy. They used culture to create unity among blacks, an ideology of cultural patrimony that sustained the politics of Pan-Africanism. Blackness was turned into beauty, the construction of racial pride. To be black was to be proud, drawing no references to affirmation from whiteness.

The use of culture as a tool of resistance is arguably now the most dominant. In the United States, it has become less common to deploy violent rhetoric, in particular since the success of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. The combative Black Power movement of the 1960s has given way to a radicalized culturalist agenda of the Afrocentric movement. In Africa, violence is still a strategy to combat unjust power. Black-on-black violence reveals stresses and tensions among the marginalized. Various governments deliberately opted for the use of culture for political purposes, some to shore up authoritarian regimes and some genuinely motivated by the need to stop the erosion of African cultures. Festivals of old are repackaged and represented to newer audiences, in large measure to entertain them. Technologies of presentation, notably television and Internet, have made it much easier to popularize culture and to spread its non-political manifestations. The various governments, with the support of the United Nations and UNESCO, formulated ways to preserve culture, making it illegal to take works of antiquity out of Africa. Cultural patrimony is also regarded as the bedrock of identity and the “self-understanding of a people.”

By and large the resort to culture has been successful in a number of ways. It provides the most effective politicizing tool to create Black political solidarity. Cultural patrimony provides the opportunity to network at the level of international organizations and to build a series of ties between and within continents. More importantly, it allows challenges to be mounted against mis-education, to reformulate damaged consciousness, and to assert mental autonomy as well as the independence of personality and the assertion of collective identities.


Conclusion: The Amistad’s Legacy
An event as far back as 1839 continues to give us the opportunity to examine issues around history, race relations, and memory. The trans-Atlantic slave trade is dead, the European empire in Africa has collapsed, and plantation slavery is no more. Yet, we still have the subordination of Africans and the people of African descent to Western global forces. What, then, is the relevance of the Amistad in today’s circumstances?

First, we see the tensions between resistance and power. The connection is not hard to explain. What Africa lost to the Americas and the West is not just labor, but primarily power: the power to use its own labor and land for its own economies; the power to shape its future and define itself; and the power to relate to the rest of the world on its own terms. How blacks have responded represents the politics of resistance. Those with power have struggled to silence the past, the memory of resistance. A celebration of the Amistad and related episodes of resistance is necessary to prevent the colonization of memory. If power wants to silence the past, it is our responsibility to keep the past alive, to bring back the ghosts to talk. This is our first major task, a rescue operation of the past. We have been successful in generating new knowledge and questioning many older assumptions. The so-called natives, as we can now tell, are not as dumb as the racialized images have presented them. They can see all the lies and present their own truths.

Second, in bringing back those ghosts, we have to continue to pay attention to the longer and larger legacy of the tradition of resistance and rebellion. We should not use our limited resources and fragmented intellectual power to celebrate the domination of our people by imperialists and empire builders whose main goal is the evil exploitation of our people. The enslavement that led to the Amistad and the colonization of memory and the imperial conquest that led to the colonization of spaces have been shown to be ephemeral. In resisting the colonization of spaces, we have to pay attention to great moments and courageous leaders, patriots and nationalists who fought in defense of their own people. The Amistad is part of the tradition that must have a permanent stamp on our consciousness.

Third, the Amistad is a preface to the narrative of rebellion and civil rights, all informed by nationalism that questioned the Western model of suppression. Black intellectuals have challenged the racist idea of black inferiority. They have even moved further, as Du Bois did a long time ago in The Souls of Black Folk, to reject the construction of the world into two: the civilized and the uncivilized. Blacks cannot be at the margins of history.

Fourth, when moments of justice and fair play arise, even if it involves a few, they deserve the mobilization of our full support. The Amistad trial shows the precedence in American law—gaining freedom through the courts. Law and the judiciary do favor the power elite, but they provide opportunities for the poor and marginalized to express their grievances.

Fifth, the judiciary and other institutions of power are not enough for liberation. We see the limitations in the case of the Amistad. What is necessary is the acquisition of power, the distribution of key power to handle the negativity of the racial context. We have seen what happened to slaves without political power. And we can see what happens to free people without political power. The Amistad has shown us the consequences of powerlessness. With sufficient power, there would have been no lynching, dispossession and economic exploitation.

Sixth, the Amistad shows us the beginning of reparation and the back-to-Africa movement. The resistors demonstrated the illegality of slavery, and they wanted to seek compensation for their sufferings and also return to Africa. The two issues they raised continue to resonate today, and they assist us in framing the issues around reparation. Similarly, the Amistad also connects us to the events and analysis around the Middle Passage which has been turned into a distinct sub-specialization in slavery studies. We see the struggles on the high seas in the Middle Passage. The Middle Passage has been a connector, bringing Africans to the Americas and Americans to Africa. Where new identities have been formed and shaped have become the subject of controversy, especially since the publication by Paul Gilroy of The Black Atlantic, which has been read has an attempt to erase Africa from the formation of African American identity. The desire by Cinque and his colleagues to return to Africa has been manifested by many others through permanent relocation to Sierra Leone and Liberia and till today by way of tourism by those of the African diaspora.

Seventh, we must insert the Amistad and all major forms of resistance into popular culture. There have been documentaries and films on the Amistad, thus keeping the memory alive. This insertion into popular culture and the classroom is critical to keeping the memory of resistance alive. Popular culture must not be allowed to be part of the spaces of colonization, but should instead occupy the spaces of resistance and nationalism. The academy must lend its full support to the creation of a just world where the ideology that created the Amistad will be crushed, and where the system that produced inequities will no longer exist.

Finally, Blacks must be able to shape economic and political processes in order to assert themselves. Their ability to work turned them into slaves. The usefulness of their land and their ability to produce converted them from citizens into colonial subjects. Their ability to work and travel make them exploitable members in a globalized economy. It is not that blacks don’t work, which they do; it is just the kind of work they do and who they work for that represent one source of trouble. While we should keep pointing to earlier, blatant racist discourses and formulations, we must also continue to specify the current neo-imperialist forms and representations against which we have to struggle. Discourses around aid, development, security, democracy and others present new challenges for resistance. We have to be alert to the dangers posed by seductive political propaganda that appeal to a sense of wanting to do good and imagining social justice while the actual intentions are disguised.
We have been successful in defining and using culture. However, the forces of global domination are getting stronger and they cannot be fully tamed by ideas drawn solely from culture. We have to create competitive technologies and economies. The Amistad shows the dimensions of cultures—in the longing to go back home, in the use of language, etc—but what produced the result was action and resistance, that is the ability to mobilize culture in the service of politics. The gap between the West and Africa, between whites and blacks is not a gap about cultural difference or a gap structured by cultural peculiarities but by access to resources, inequalities in global economies, and the political domination of one race by the other. The African slaves who were part of the Amistad and the millions of others along with them were not forcibly converted into slaves only because of their skin color but because there was an unequal economy in place. The colonization of Africa was not made possible because one group was White and the other Black, but because one had in abundance the Gatling and Maxim guns. Racism was justified on the grounds of political and economic interests, which is precisely how these interests were articulated to generate profit and maintain dominance. We have to close those crucial gaps in politics and economies. We have to construct power to remove Blacks from the very margins of politics itself. Self-assertion must transcend the patrimony of culture to embrace the patrimony of entrepreneurship, clearly guided by the patrimony of power.

THE WORKS OF PROFESSOR TOYIN FALOLA

BOOKS

2006 Traditional and Modern Health Systems in Nigeria (co-edited) (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2006) pp. xiii + 468.


2006 Endangered Bodies: Women, Children and Health in Africa (co-edited) (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2006) pp. xii + 291.


2005 Igbo Art and Culture and Other Essays by Simon Ottenberg (edited) (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2005,) pp. xiii + 482.

2005 Myth, History and Society: The Collected Works of Adiele Afigbo (edited) (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2005,) pp. viii + 634.


2005 The Politics of the Global Oil Industry: An Introduction (co-author) (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2005), pp. xiv+ 262


2005 Orisa: Yoruba Gods and Spiritual Identity in Africa and the Diaspora (co-edited) (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2005,) pp. viii+457.

2005 Igbo History and Society: The Essays of Adiele Afigbo (edited) (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2005,) pp. ix + 651.

2005 Christianity and Social Change in Africa: Essays in Honor of J. D. Y. Peel (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2005), pp. xix + 676.

2005 African Urban Spaces in Historical Perspective (co-edited) (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2005), pp. Xl+395.

2005 The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World (co-edited) (Indiana, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2004), pp. xii+455.


2005 Urbanization and African Cultures (co-edited) (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2005), pp. xv + 464.


2005, Nigerian History, Politics and Affairs: The Collected Essays of Adiele Afigbo (edited) (Trenton,
NJ: Africa World Press, 2005), pp. x + 722.


2005 Dark Webs: Perspectives on Colonialism in Africa (edited) (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2003), pp. ix + 486.


2005 Yoruba Creativity: Fiction, Language, Life and Songs (edited) (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press,
2005), pp. Vi+350.


2004, Economic and Political Reforms in Nigeria, 1945-65 (Kent: State University Press, Spring 2004), pp. Xiv+ 272.

2004 Africa in the Twentieth Century: The Adu Boahen Reader (edited) (Trenton, N.J: Africa World Press, 2004), pp. xiii + 667.

2004 Globalization and Urbanization in Africa (coedited) (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 2004),
pp. xii+294.

2004 Teen Life in Africa (edited) (Westport, CT.: Greenwood, 2004), pp. 333+xviii.

2004 Nigerian Cities (co-edited) (Trenton: N.J.: Africa World Press, 2004), pp. xii+ 396.

2003 The Power of African Cultures (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2003), pp. vii+354.

2003 Sources and Methods in African History: Spoken, Written, Unearthed (co-edited) (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2002), pp. xxi+ 409.

2003 Africa, Vol. 5, Africa: Contemporary Africa (edited) (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2003), pp. xxxiii + 962.

2003 Pawnship, Slavery, and Colonialism in Africa (co-edited) (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press,
2003), pp. vi+480.

2003 Ghana in Africa and the World: Essays in Honor of Adu Boahen (edited) (Trenton, N.J.: Africa
World Press, 2003), pp.iv+ 800

2002 Nigeria in the Twentieth Century (edited) (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2002), pp. xx+
947.

2002 Key Events in African History: A Reference Guide (Westport, Ct.: Greenwood, 2002), pp. xxiii +347. [Runner’s Up, 2004 Conover-Porter Award, African Studies Association]

2002 Black Business and Economic Power (Rochester, NY: Rochester University Press, 2002 (co-edited), pp. xii+ 628.

2002 Africanizing Knowledge: African Studies Across the Disciplines (co-edited), (New Brunswick and London: Transaction, 2002), pp. ix+447.

2002 The Challenges of History and Leadership in Africa: The Essays of Bethwell Allan Ogot (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 2002) (co-edited), pp. lxvi +684.

2002 Africa, Vol. 4, The End of Colonial Rule: Nationalism and Decolonization (edited) (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2002), pp. xix + 541.

2002 Culture and Customs of Ghana (co-author) (Westport, CT.: Greenwood, 2002), pp. xx+224

2002 Palavers of African Literature: Essays in Honor of Bernth Lindfors Vol. (co-edited) (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2002), pp. xv+399.

2002 African Writers and Their Readers: Essays in Honor of Bernth Lindfors, Vol. II (co-edited) (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2002), pp. xvi+542.

2002 Colonial Africa, 1885-1939 (Carolina Academic Press) (edited), Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2002, pp. xxiii+448.

2002 African Politics in Postimperial Times: The Essays of Richard L. Sklar (edited) (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 2002), pp. Lxxxvi+755.

2001 Yoruba Warlords of the Nineteenth Century (co-author) (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 2001), pp. xviii+301.

2001 The Culture and Customs of Nigeria (Westport, CT.: Greenwood,
2001), pp.+

2001 Nationalism and African Intellectuals (University of Rochester Press, 2001), pp. xx+372.

2000 Africa, vol. 1: Peoples and States (edited) (Durham: Carolina Academic
Press, 2000), pp. xvi+ 451.

2000 Africa, vol. 2: Cultures and Societies (edited) (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2000), pp. xx + 332

2000 Yoruba Gurus: Indigenous Production of Knowledge in Africa (Trenton: Africa World Press) 2000

2000 Tradition and Change in Africa: The Essays of J. F. Ade Ajayi (edited)
(Trenton: Africa World Press)

2000 Culture, Politics and Money among the Yoruba (Transactions/University of Rutgers) (co-author) 1999 xv + 378 pp.

1999 The History of Nigeria (Westport: Greenwood, 1999) xviii + 269 pp.

1998 Studies in the Nineteenth-Century Economic History of Nigeria (co-edited) (Madison-
Wisconsin: African Studies Program,1998; released in early 1999).

1998 Violence in Nigeria: The Crisis of Religious Politics and Secular Ideologies. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1998, + 388 pp.

1996 Religious Militancy and Self-Assertion: Islam and Politics in Nigeria. (co-author) London: Avebury, 1996, xii+298 pp.

1996 Development Planning and Decolonization in Nigeria. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996, xxiv+215 pp.

1995 Religious Impact on the Nation State: The Nigerian Predicament. (co-author) London: Avebury, 1995, ix + 352 pp.

1994 The Military Factor in Nigeria (co-author) New York: E. Mellen, iii + 238 pp.

1994 Pawnship in Africa. Debt Bondage in Historical Perspective. (co-editor) Colorado: Westview, 1994, viii + 341 pp.

1994 Child Health in Nigeria: the Impact of a Depressed Economy (co-editor), London: Avebury.

1993 Pioneer, Patriot and Patriarch: Samuel Johnson and the Yoruba People. (editor) Wisconsin-Madison: African Studies Program, 1993, 197 pp.

1993 African Historiography (editor) London: Longman. ix+244 pp.

1992 Rural Development Problems in Nigeria (co editor) (London: Avebury) xix + 183 pp.

1992 Warfare and Diplomacy In Pre-colonial Nigeria (co-edited) (Wisconsin-Madison: African Studies Program, University of Wisconsin-Madison) 221 pp.

1992 History of Nigeria: Nigeria in the twentieth century Vol. 3 (Longman).

1992 The Political Economy of Health in Africa. Center for International Studies, Ohio University (co editor) (Ohio University, Athens: Monographs in International Studies, Africa Series, No. 60) pp.xii + 254.

1991 Yoruba Historiography (Wisconsin-Madison: African Studies Program, Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison) 214 pp.

1991 History of Nigeria, Vol. 11, Nigeria in the Nineteenth Century (co-author; textbook) Lagos: Longman, v+226 pp.

1991 Religion and Society in Nigeria: Historical and Comparative Perspectives. (co editor) Spectrum. (Ibadan and Channel Islands: Spectrum & Safari) xv + 310 pp.

1990 Modern Nigeria (editor) Lagos: Modelor.

1989 History of Nigeria, Vol 1, Nigeria Before 1800 (co author; text-book) Lagos: Longman.

1989 Politics and Economy in Ibadan, 1893-1945. Lagos, Modelor.

1988 Obafemi Awolowo: The End of an Era? (co-editor) Ile-Ife: University of Ife Press.

1988 Nigeria and the International Capitalist System (co editor) Colorado University in collaboration with Lynne Rienner.

1987 Britain and Nigeria: Exploitation or Development? (editor) London: Zed Press

1987 A History of West Africa (text-book) Lagos: Paico.

1986 Transport Systems in Nigeria (co editor) Syracuse: Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Foreign and Comparative Studies Program, African Series XLII.

1986 Nigeria: Peoples, States And Culture (co editor) Lagos: John West. 1986.

1985 The Rise and Fall of Nigeria's Second Republic,1979- 1984 (co author) London: Zed Press.

1984 The Military in Nineteenth Century Yoruba Politics (co author) Ile-Ife: University of Ife Press.

1984 The Political Economy of A Pre-colonial African State: Ibadan,1830 - 1900. Ile - Ife: University of Ife Press.

1983 Summary of West African History (text-book; co-author) Ile -Ife: University of Ife Press.

1983 Islam and Christianity in West Africa (text-book; co-author) Ile-Ife: University of Ife Press.

ESSAYS (published as pamphlets)

Education and Trans-Atlantic Connections: The U.S. Side (Ondo, Adeyemi College of Education, 2006).

Globalization and World Politics (Abeokuta, Federal College of Education 2006).

Nationalizing Africa, Culturalizing the West, and Reformulating the Humanities in Africa (Ile-Ife: Obafemi Awolowo University, 2006).

Africa in World Politics (Akungba-Akoko: Adekunle Ajasin University, 2006).

CHAPTERS IN BOOKS


2006 “Introduction,” in Traditional and Modern Health Systems in Nigeria (co-edited) (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2006)

2006 Endangered Bodies: Women, Children and Health in Africa (co-edited) (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2006) pp. xii + 291.


2006 “Writing and Teaching National History in Africa”, in Chantal Chanson-Jabeur et Odile Goerg, eds., Mama Africa: Hommage a Coquery-Vidrovitch (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2006), pp. 37-56.


2005 “Footprints of the Ancestors,” of in Wm. Roger Louis, ed., Burnt Orange Britannia, (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005), pp. 608-623

2005 Igbo Art and Culture and Other Essays by Simon Ottenberg (edited) (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2005,) pp. 1-12.

2005 “Introduction,” (co-author) in Myth, History and Society: The Collected Works of Adiele Afigbo (edited) (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2005,) pp. 1-19.

2005 “Introduction,” in Orisa: Yoruba Gods and Spiritual Identity in Africa and the Diaspora (co-edited) (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2005,) pp. 1-19.

2005 “Introduction”, in Igbo History and Society: The Essays of Adiele Afigbo (edited) (Trenton,
NJ: Africa World Press, 2005).

2005 “Introduction,” in Christianity and Social Change in Africa: Essays in Honor of J. D. Y. Peel (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2005), pp. 1-25

2005 “Nigeria: The Past in the Present,” in Max Paul Friedman and Padraic Kenney, eds., Partisan Histories: The Past in Contemporary Global Politics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 145-164.

2005 “Mission and Colonial Documents,” in John Edward Philips, ed., Writing African History (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2005), pp. 266-283.

2005 “”The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World: Methodology and Research” (co-author) in Falola and Matt Childs, eds., The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World (Indiana, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2004), pp. 1-14.

2005 “Refugees of the Past, Migrants of the Future” in E. Ike Udogu, ed., Nigeria in the Twenty-first Century, (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2005), pp. 207-228.

2005 “Urban Cultures: Relevance and Context” in Urbanization and African Cultures (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2005), pp. 3-16.

2005 “Afigbo’s Nigeria,” Nigerian History, Politics and Affairs: The Collected Essays of Adiele Afigbo (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2005), pp. 1-14.

2005 “Introduction” in Yoruba Creativity: Fiction, Language, Life and Songs (co-author) (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2005), 1-7.

2005 “’Great Wings Beating Still’: Africa and the Colonial Legacy” in Dark Webs: Perspectives on Colonialism in Africa (edited) (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2003), pp. 3-22.


2004 “Ethnicity and Nigeria Politics,: The Past in the Yoruba Present” in Bruce Berman, Dickson Eyoh and Will Kylicka, eds., Ethnicity and Democracy in Africa (Oxford and Athens: James Currey and Ohio University Press, 2004), 148-165.

2004 “Introduction,” (co-author) Africa in the Twentieth Century: The Adu Boahen Reader (edited) (Trenton, N.J: Africa World Press, 2004).


2004 “An overview,” in Globalization and Urbanization in Africa (coedited) (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 2004), 1-6.

2004, “Introduction”, Martin R. Delany, The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, And Destiny of The Colored People of The United States and Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party (New York: Humanity Books, 2004), 7-25.

2004, “Iron Smelting and Jewelry Making,” (joint essay) in Nike S. Lawal, Mathew N. O. Sadiku and P. Ade Dopamu, eds., Understanding Yoruba Life and Culture (Trenton, NJ.: Africa World Press, 2004), 361-376.

2004 “Introduction” in Teen Life in Africa (edited) (Westport, CT.: Greenwood, 2004), 1-9.

2003 Introduction,” Sources and Methods in African History: Spoken, Written, Unearthed (co-author) cited above.

2003 “Adu Boahen: An Introduction” 2003 Ghana in Africa and the World: Essays in Honor of Adu Boahen (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 2003), pp. 3-18.

2003 “Introduction,” Africa, Vol. 5, Africa: Contemporary Africa, cited above.

2002 “Nationalism and African Historiography,” in Q. Edward Wang and Georg G. Iggers, eds., Turning Points in Historiography: A Cross-Cultural Analysis (Rochester: University of Rochester Press), pp. 209-236.

2002 “Yoruba Writers and the Construction of Heroes” in Falola and Barbara Harlow, eds., African Writers and Their Readers: Essays in Honor of Bernth Lindfors, Vol. II (co-edited) (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2002), pp. 27-54.

2002 “Introduction,” in Toyin Falola, ed., Colonial Africa, 1885-1939 (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2002).

2002 “Yoruba Town Histories,” in Axel Harneit-Sievers, ed., A Place in the World: New Local Historiographies from Africa and South-Asia (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 65-86.

2001 “Elite Networking: Traditional Chiefs in Modern Nigeria,” in Laurence Marfaing and Brigitte Reinwald, eds., African Networks, Exchange and Spatial Dynamics (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2001), pp. 269-280.

2000 Section overviews, in Falola, ed., Africa, vol. 1: Peoples and
States (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2000),

2000 “Introduction” in Falola, ed., Africa, vol. 2: Cultures and Societies (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2000), pp. xx + 332

2000 “Intergroup Relations,” in Falola, Africa, Vol. 2, pp. 19-34.

2000 “Islam” (co-author) in Falola, ed., Africa, Vol. 2, pp. 107-128.

2000 “Agriculture, Trade and Industries,” in Falola, ed., Africa, Vol. 2, pp. 161-176.

1999 “West Africa,” Robin W. Winks, ed., Historiography [The Oxford History of the British Empire] (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), chapter 31.

1999 “West Africa” in Judith M. Brown and Wm. Roger Louis, eds., The Twentieth Century [The Oxford History of the British Empire] {co-author} (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), chapter 22.

1999 “British Imperialism: Roger Louis and the West African Case,” in Robert D. King and Robin Kilson, eds., The Statecraft of British Imperialism: Essays in Honour of Wm. Roger Louis (London: Frank Cass, 1999), pp.124-142.

1998 “Patriarchy, Patronage, and Power: Corruption in Nigeria,” (co-author) in John Mukum Mbaku, ed., Corruption and the Crisis of Institutional Reforms in Africa (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1998), pp. 167-192.

1998 “Corruption in the Nigerian Public Service, 1945-1960,” in John Mukum Mbaku, ed., Corruption and the Crisis of Institutional Reforms in Africa (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1998), pp.137-166.


1997, "Christian Radicalism and Nigerian Politics" in Paul A. Beckett and Crawford Young, eds., Dilemmas of Democracy in Nigeria. (University of Rochester Press, Rochester, NY 1997), pp.265-282.

1997 Contributions on Africa in William Travis Hanes III, ed., World History: Continuity and Change (Austin: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1997).

1997 “Sustainable Development and Peace in Africa,” in A. R. Maglhas, ed., Sustainable Development: Implications for World Peace (Austin: L. B. J. School of Public Affairs, 1997), pp. 103-8.

1996 "Interpreting Oral Traditions as historical Source and the Use of Models: an assessment of Jan Vansina" in E. Alagoa, ed., Oral History in Africa and the Diaspora (Lagos: CBACC), chapter 12 (co- author).

1996 “African Studies in a Changing World Order,” in M. Anda, ed., Africa in the New World Order (Little Rock: DCI, 1996), pp. 7-22.

1996 “Wunschenswert, aber von geringem Nutzen,”(co-author) der uberblick, 2, pp. 46-48.

1996 "The Imperial Experience: Africa," in P. J. Marshall, ed., British Empire (Cambridge: C.U.P., 1996), chapter 14.

1996 "Africa in Perspective" in Stephen Ellis, ed., Africa Now: People, Policies and Institutions. (London: James Currey and Heinemann), 1996, pp. 3-19.

1996 “Mining and Extractive Industries in the Nineteenth Century,” (co-author) in G. O. Ogunremi and E. K. Faluyi, eds., An Economic History of West Africa Since 1750 (Ibadan: Rex Charles in association with Connel Publications, 1996), pp.49-60.

1996 “Trade and Markets in Pre-colonial Economy,” Ogunremi and Faluyi, eds., An Economic History of West Africa Since 1750, pp. 61-71.

1996 “Trade with Europeans in the Nineteenth Century,” G. O. Ogunremi and E. K. Faluyi, eds., An Economic History of West Africa Since 1750, pp 98-111.

1996 “Economic Cooperation: The ECOWAS Example,” (co-author) in G. O. Ogunremi and E. K. Faluyi, eds., An Economic History of West Africa Since 1750, pp. 246-256.

1996 “Post-independence Economic Changes and Development in West Africa,” (co-author) in G. O. Ogunremi and E. K. Faluyi, eds., An Economic History of West Africa Since 1750, pp. 257-271.

1995 "Early African History" (With John Lamphear) in Martin, P., ed., Africa (Indiana: Indiana University Press).

1995 “Gender, Business, and Space Control: Yoruba Market Women and Power,” in Bessie House-Midamba and Felix K. Ekechi, eds., African Market and Economic Power: The Role of Women in African Economic Development (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1995), pp. 23-40.

1995 “Money and Informal Credit Institutions in Colonial Western Nigeria” in Jane I. Guyer, ed., Money Matters. Instability, Values and Social Payments in the Modern History of West African Communities (Portsmouth: Heinemann & London: James Currey), pp. 162-187.

1994, “Macht, Status und Einflub von Yoruba-Chiefs in historischer
Perspektive” in Periplus 1994. (Dieckstrabem Munster, 1994), pp. 51-67.

1994 "Pawnship in Colonial Southwestern Nigeria" in Pawnship in Africa, pp. 245-266.

1994 "Pawnship in Historical Perspective" (co-author) in Pawnship in Africa, pp. 1-26.

1994 "Slavery and Pawnship in the Yoruba Economy of the Nineteenth Century," in Paul Lovejoy and Nicholas Roger, eds., Unfree Labour in the Development of the Atlantic World. Essex: (London: Frank Cass), 1994, pp. 221-245.

1994 "Child Health in Social and Historical Perspective," in Child Health, op.cit. (co-author), chapter one.

1994 "Introduction" in Child Health, op.cit.

1993 "Ade Ajayi on Samuel Johnson: Filling the Gaps," in Falola, ed.,
African Historiography, chapter 7.

1993 "Introduction," in Falola, ed., Pioneer, Patriot and Patriarch.

1992 "Ijebu-Ibadan Trade Relations In An Era of Warfare," in Falola and Law, eds., Warfare and Diplomacy, Chapter 3.

1992 "The Lebanese in West Africa" in J. F. Ade Ajayi J. D. Y. Peel, eds., Empires and Peoples in African History: Essays in Memory of Michael Crowder (London: Longman), pp. 121-141.

1992 "Introduction," to Health in Africa in Falola and Ityavyar, eds., Political Economy of Health.

1991 “Introduction,” in Yoruba Historiography , pp. 1-4.

1991 “The Yoruba Wars of the Nineteenth Century,” in Yoruba Historiography, pp. 123-134.

1991 "Politicians and the economy," in S. Gbadegesin, ed., The Politicization of Society During Nigeria's Second Republic,1979-1983 (New York: Edwin Mellen), pp. 13-50 (co- author).

1991 "Religion and Economy," (co-author) in Olupona and Falola, eds., Religion and Society in Nigeria.

1990 "The Impact of the Nineteenth-century Sokoto Jihad on Yorubaland," in A. M. Kani & K. A. Gandi, eds., State and Society in the Sokoto Caliphate (Sokoto: Usmanu Danfodio University) pp. 126-141.

1990 "Not Just A Currency: The Cowrie in Nigerian Culture" in David Henige and T. C. McCaskie, eds., West African Economic and Social History: Studies in Memory of Marion Johnson (Wisconsin-Madison: African Studies), (co- author), pp. 29-36.

1989 "The Evolution and Changes in Nigerian Federalism," in R. Olaniyan, ed., Federalism in a Changing World (Lagos: Ministry of Special Duties and the Obafemi Awolowo University Press), pp. 50-77.

1989 "Leadership in Nigeria: Reflections of a Follower," in Falola, ed., Modern Nigeria, pp. 159-173.

1989 "Olusanya on Modern Nigeria: A synthesis" in Falola, ed., Modern Nigeria, op. cit. , pp.1-16.

1989 "The Cities" in Y. B. Usman, ed., Nigeria Since Independence: The Society (Ibadan: Heinemann), pp. 213-249.

1988 "Shagari: Oil and Foreign Policy in the Second Republic" in Falola, ed., Nigeria..System , pp. 103-120 (co-author).

1988 "The economy, the civil war, and Nigeria's foreign policy" in Falola, Nigeria...System , (co-author), pp.35-56

1988 "Domestic Economy and Foreign Policy," in Nigeria and the International Capitalist System,. op.cit., pp. 1-14 (editors' introduction)

1988 "Trade as a Factor of Inter-State relations in Africa" in A. Asiwaju et. al., eds., African Unity: the Cultural Foundation (Lagos: CBACC), pp. 89-100.

1988 "The Context: The Political Economy of Colonial Nigeria" in Falola et al , eds., Obafemi Awolowo, pp. 19-63 (co-author).

1988 "Earliest Yoruba Authors" in Yemi Ogunbiyi, ed., Perspectives on Nigerian Literature:1700 to the Present (Lagos: Guardian Books), 22-32.

1987 "The Illusion of Economic Development," in Falola, ed., Nigeria and Britain , (co-author), pp. 200-222.

1987 "Production for the Metropolis: the Extractive Industries" in Falola, Nigeria and Britain, (co-author), pp. 91-13.

1987 "Production for the Metropolis: Agriculture and Forest Products" in Falola, ed., Nigeria and Britain , pp. 80-90.

1987 "Introduction: Colonialism and Exploitation," in Falola, ed., Nigeria and Britain, op.cit. (co-author), pp. 1-31.

1987 "Development through integration: the politics and problems of ECOWAS," in O. Akinrinade and J. K. Barling, eds., Economic Development in Africa: International Efforts, Issues and Prospects (co-author), (London: Pinter), pp. 52-76.

1986 "Conclusion," by editors in Falola, Transport .

1986 "Traditional, Non-mechanical Transport Systems" (co-author) in Falola, Transport, pp.17-30.

1986 "Introduction" by editors, in Falola and Olanrewaju, eds., Transport Systems, op.cit

1986 "Economy" in Nigeria , pp.326-339 (co-author).

1986 "Inter-group Relations" in Nigeria pp.177-193 (co-author).

1986 "The Kanem-Borno Empire," in Falola, ed., Nigeria, op.cit.. pp. 57- 75.

1986 "The Sources of Nigerian History" in Falola, ed. Nigeria: Peoples, States and Culture , op.cit., pp. 3-22.

1986 "Berlin and Afro-European Relations," in S. Ahmadu, ed., Africa and Europe (London: Croom Helm), chap. 2 (co-author).

1986 "Prelude to the Partition of Africa," in S. Ahmadu, ed., Africa and Europe: From Partition to Interdependence And Dependence? (London: Croom Helm), chapter one (co-author).

1985 "Nigeria's Indigenous Science and Technology Over Time: an Exploratory Essay into its Components, Transformation and Abortion," in Folklore and National Development, Ile-Ife, pp. 181-200.

1985 "The Political System of Ibadan in the Nineteenth century," in J. F. Ade Ajayi and B.Ikara, eds., Evolution of Political Culture in Nigeria (Ibadan: University Press Ltd. (formerly Oxford University Press), pp. 104-117.

1985 "The role of traditional rulers in society: a case study of Yoruba Oba and Chiefs," in O.Aborisade, ed., Local Government and the Traditional Rulers in Nigeria (Ile-Ife: University of Ife Press), (co-author), pp. 3-19.

1985 "Pre-colonial Nigeria: Socio-political Development North of the Niger-Benue," in R. Olaniyan, ed., Nigerian History and Culture (London: Longman), (co-author), pp. 56-96

1985 "Nigeria's Indigenous Economy," in R. Olaniyan, ed., Nigerian History and Culture (London: Longman), pp. 97-112.

1983 "The Socio-economic realities and Political situation in Nigeria," in M. A. Oduyoye, ed.,The State of Christian Theology in Nigeria (Ibadan: Daystar).

1982 "Social and Economic Development in Contemporary Africa,” in R. Olaniyan, ed., African History and Culture (London: Longman), pp.111-126.

ARTICLES IN JOURNALS

2006 “A Trajet�ria de um intellectual Africano,” Tempo: Revista do Departamento de Historia da UFF, 177-186.

2007 “Global Explanations Versus Local Interpretations: The Historiography of the Influenza Pandemic of 1918-19 in Africa,” (co-author) History in Africa, 33, 2006, pp. 205-230.


2006 “The works of A. E. Afigbo on Nigeria: An Historiographical Essay,” (co-author) History in Africa, 33, 2006, pp. 155-178.


2005 “Writing and Teaching National History in Africa in an Era of Global History,” Africa Spectrum, 40, 3, 2005, pp. 499-519.

2005 “Africa’s Media Empire: Drum’s Expansion To Nigeria,” (co-author), History in Africa, 32, 2005, pp. 133-164.

2003 “Oil in Nigeria: A Bibliographical Reconnaissance,” (co-author) History in Africa, 30, 2003, pp. 133-156.

1999 “Religious Entrepreneurship and the Informal Economic Sector: Orisa Worship as “Service Provider” in Nigeria and the United States,” (co-author), Paideuma, 45, 1999, pp. 115-135.

1999 “British Imperialism: Roger Louis and the West African Case,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 27, 2, May 1999, pp. 124-142. Also in Robert D. King and Robin Kilson, eds., The Statecraft of British Imperialism: Essays in Honour of Wm. Roger Louis (London: Frank Cass, 1999), pp.124-142.

1998 “The End of Slavery among the Yoruba,” Slavery and Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies, 19, 2, 1998, pp. 232-249. [Reprinted in S. Miers and M.A. Klein, eds., Slavery and Colonial Rule in Africa, London: Cass, 1998]

1997 ‘“Manufacturing Trouble”: Currency Forgery in Colonial Southwestern Nigeria,’ Journal of African Economic History, 25, 1997, pp. 121-147.

1997 “Yoruba Writers and the Construction of Heroes,” History in Africa, 24, 1997, pp. 157-175.

1997 “Nigeria in the Global Context of Refugees: Historical and Comparative Perspectives,” Journal of Asian and African Studies, XXXII, Nos. 1-2, June 1997, pp. 5-21. Essay also appears in P. E. Lovejoy and Pat A. T. Williams, eds., Displacement and the Politics of Violence in Nigeria. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997, pp. 5-21.

1996 “Chiefs, Boundaries, and Sacred Woodlands: Early Nationalism and the Defeat of Colonial Conservationism in the Gold Coast and Nigeria, 1870-1916,” (co-author), African Economic History, 24, 1996, pp. 1-23.

1996 “Swahili Women since the 19th century: Theoretical and Empirical Considerations on Gender and Identity Construction,” (co-author),Africa Today, Vol. 43, Number 3, July-Sept. 1996, pp. 251-268.

1996 "Brigandage and Piracy in 19th century Yorubaland," Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria. Nos. 1 & 2, Vol. XIII, Dec. 1985-June 1986, pp. 83-106 (essay was printed in 1996).

1995 "T. O. Avoshe on the History of Epe and its Environs," History in Africa, 22, 1995, pp. 165-195.

1995 "Theft in Colonial Southwestern Nigeria," Africa Rivista trimstrale di Studie e documentazione dell'Instituto Italo-Africano, Anno L-N.1, Marzo 1995, pp. 1-24.

1994 “Slavery and Pawnship in the Yoruba Economy of the Nineteenth Century,” Slavery and Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies, 15, 2, 1994, pp. 221-245.

1994 "The Scholarship of Jacob Egharevba of Benin," (with Uyo Usanlele) History in Africa, 21, 1994, pp. 308-318.

1993 "'My Friend the Shylock': Money-Lenders and their Clients in South-Western Nigeria," Journal of African History, 34,3, 1993, pp. 403-424.

1993 "'Alternative History': The World of Yoruba Chroniclers," Passages, 4,1, 1993.

1993 "The Documentation of Ilorin By Samuel Ojo Bada" (with H. O. Danmole), History in Africa, 20, pp. 1-13.

1992 "Salt is gold: the management of salt scarcity in Nigeria during the Second World War," Canadian Journal of African Studies, 26, 3, 1992, pp. 412-436.

1992 "The Ibadan Elite and the Search for Political Order, 1893- 1939," Africa: Rivista trimestrale di studi e documentazione dell'Instituto Italo-Africano, XLVII, 3, September, 1992.

1992 "An Ounce Is Enough: The Gold Industry and the Politics of Control in Colonial Southwestern Nigeria," African Economic History, 20, 1992, pp. 27-50.

1992 "The Instability of the Naira and Social Payments among the Yoruba," Journal of African and Asian History (co-author), XXVII,3-4, pp. 216-228.

1992 "Thirty Years of African Research and Publication," Geneve-Afrique, XXX, 2, 1992, pp.193-7.

1992 "The Minor Works of T. Ola Avoseh," History in Africa, 19, pp. 237-62.

1992 "Pre-colonial African Economy," Tarikh, Vol. 10, pp. 7-20.

1991 "The Construction and Destruction of the Ijaye Economy," Afrika und Ubersee, 74, 2, 1991, pp. 21-37.

1991 "Yoruba Caravan System in the 19th century," The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 24,1,1991, pp. 111-132.

1991 "Kemi Morgan and the Second Reconstruction of Ibadan History," History in Africa , 18,1991, pp. 93-112.

1989/90 (article appeared in 1992) "Pre-Colonial Origins of The National Question In Nigeria: Yoruba origins of the National Question in Nigeria," Africa: Revista do Centro de Estudos Africanos, 12-13, 1, pp. 3-24.

1990 "Lebanese traders in southwestern Nigeria," African Affairs, Vol. 89, October 1990, pp. 523-553.

1989 "Iwe Itan Oyo: A Traditional Yoruba History and its Author," Journal of African History, 30, pp. 301-329 (co-author).

1989 "Cassava Starch For Export in Nigeria During the Second World
War," Journal of African Economic History,18:1989, pp. 73-98.

1989 "The Yoruba Toll System," Journal of African History,30:1, pp. 41-63.

1988 "The ideas and political thought of Frantz Fanon," Nigerian Forum:Journal of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, 8:9 & 10, pp. 221-231. (co-author).

1988 "A Research Agenda on the Yoruba in the nineteenth century,"
History in Africa:Journal of Methods 15, pp. 211-227.

1988 "The spread of Islam and Christianity and its Impact on Religious Pluralism in Africa," Dialogue And Alliance, pp. 1-18.

1987 "Power Relations and Social Interactions among Ibadan Slaves,1850-1900," African Economic History, 16, pp. 95-114.

1987 "The Ijaye in Diaspora,1862-1895:Problems of Integration and Re-settlement," Journal of African and Asian Studies, XXII:1&2, pp. 67-79.

1987 "Refugees in Yorubaland in the Nineteenth century," Asian and African Studies, 21:2, pp. 165-185 (co-author).

1987 "The Economic Foundation of Pre-colonial Ife Society With Particular Reference to the Nineteenth century," Yoruba:Journal of the Yoruba Studies Association of Nigeria, New Series, 1, pp. 1-24.

1986 "Missionaries and Domestic Slavery in Yorubaland in the nineteenth century," The Journal of Religious History, 14: 2, pp. 181-192.

1986 "Power and Wealth in Kurunmi's Ijaye,1831-1862," African Studies, 10, pp. 75-85 (co-author).

1985 "Technology Transfer To The Third World: Obscurantism, Myth and Social Implications," The Journal of General Studies, 5 & 6, 181-192 (co-author).

1985 "Nigerian-Japan Trade relations," Ikenga: Journal of African Studies,7:1 & 2, pp. 3-45 (co-author).

1985 "The Content of History Education in Nigerian Universities and Colleges of Education," Trans-African Journal of History 14, pp. 112-123 (co-author).

1985 "Ibadan-Ilorin Relations in the Nineteenth century: A study in imperial struggles in Yorubaland," Trans-African Journal of History, 14, pp. 21-36 (co-author).

1985 "Migrant Settlers in Ife Society,1830-1960," The Calabar Historical Journal, 3:1, pp. 18-35.

1985 "The Ibadan Conference of 1855: Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution in mid-nineteenth century Yorubaland," Geneve-Afrique, 2, pp. 30-56.

1985 "Church, Politics and Society in Ibadan in the Nineteenth century," The Journal of Religious History, 1, pp. 295-305.

1985 "From Hospitality to Hostility: Ibadan and Strangers,1830-1904," The Journal of African History, 26, pp. 51-68.

1984 "Prostitution in Ibadan,1895-1950," The Journal of Business and Social Studies, New Series, 6: 2, pp. 40-54.

1984 "Hegemony, Neo-colonialism and Political Instability in Contemporary Nigeria," The African Review: A Journal of African Politics,Development and International Affairs, 11:2, pp. 41-62 (co-author).

1983 "Post-war Political Changes in Ibadan, 1893-1913," ODU, 24, pp. 61-77.

1983 "Ilesa Palace Officials in Pre-colonial Times," Essays In History, 1, pp. 2-11.

1983 "Amilcar Cabral on African Economic Development," Lusophone Areas Studies Journal, No. 2, pp. 64-72.

1982 "A Critique of the Rev. Samuel Johnson's Contribution to the Study of Yoruba history," The African Historian, Vol. ix, 1982.

1982 "The Recycling of Oil Rents and Nigeria's Peripheral Role in the World Capitalist System," Ife Social Sciences Review, 5:1 & 2, pp. 24-45; (co-author).

1982 "On the Place of Social and Economic Studies in Pre-colonial Nigerian history," Journal of General Studies, 2, pp. 67-73.

1982 "Colonialism and Exploitation," Lusophone Areas Studies Journal , 1:1, pp. 41-62.

1982 "Religion, Rituals and Yoruba Pre-colonial Domestic Economy," Journal of Religions, 2, pp. 27-38.

1982 "The foreign policy of Ibadan in the nineteenth century," ODU, 22, Jan.-July, pp. 91-108.

1981 "Power Drift in the Political System of Southwestern Nigeria in the Nineteenth century," ODU:A Journal of West African Studies, 21, Jan.-July, pp. 109-127.

1981 "The Dynamics of Anglo-Ibadan Relations in the in the Nineteenth Century," ODU , No. 21, January-July, pp. 128-148.

1981 "The teaching of Islamic History in Nigerian Schools," Islam and the Modern Age: Quarterly Journal, XII:14. Article reprinted in Ife Educator, Vol. xii, No.1, 1981.

1981 "Yoruba Historiography," Ikenga: Journal of the Institute of African Studies, University of Nigeria, 5:1, pp. 83-90.

1981 "Trends in Nigerian Historiography," Trans-African Journal of History, 1: 2, pp. 97-112.
 

Return to Table of Contents