Project MUSE®: Journal of West African History - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/705
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Journal of West African History.daily12026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 1 (2015) through current issueLatest Articles: Journal of West African HistoryTWOProject MUSE®Journal of West African History2327-18762327-1868Latest articles in Journal of West African History. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Speaking in Our Own Tongues: The West African Language Pilot Program
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984337
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In the tenth- anniversary editorial of the Journal of West African History, I announced the launch of our West African Language Pilot Program—an initiative as bold as it is necessary. For too long, scholarly discourse on West Africa has been filtered through languages and epistemologies that are external to the region. This program is our deliberate intervention in that history. It is a call to rewrite the geographies of knowledge production, to center the languages, cultures, and worldviews of the very communities whose histories and lived realities animate our scholarship. By creating space for West African languages within the pages of a leading peer- reviewed journal, we affirm that these languages are not mere
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/705/image/coversmallSpeaking in Our Own Tongues: The West African Language Pilot Program2026-02-26text/htmlen-USSpeaking in Our Own Tongues: The West African Language Pilot Program2026-02-262026TWOProject MUSE®59672026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-02-26Alternative Futures through West African Agency in the Past
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984338
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In a recent op-ed in The New York Times, Columbia journalism professor Howard W. French introduces his latest book, The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan- Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide, by arguing that it may now be time to bring Kwame Nkrumah’s vision of a “United States of Africa” to fruition.1 French asserts, “Driven by his belief in Pan-Africanism, Mr. Nkrumah worked tirelessly to overcome the Balkanizing impact of colonial rule across Africa. As the world’s powers turn away from the continent, it’s a vision that may hold the key to realizing Africa’s potential today.”2 French claims that imperial powers like the United States, France, Great Britain, Russia, and China have finally been
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/705/image/coversmallAlternative Futures through West African Agency in the Past2026-02-26text/htmlen-USAlternative Futures through West African Agency in the Past2026-02-262026TWOProject MUSE®177392026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-02-26“The Customs of the Place”: Interracial Sexual Relationships, Economics, and the Politics of Intimacy in the Colony of Sierra Leone, 1806–1888
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984339
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Every one who has seen a favourable specimen of a dignity ball must concede that it is . . . a striking sight. The dark hue of the dancers . . . the ostrich and maraboo plumes; satin and embroidery; the unwearied sprightliness and the flexible grace of the dancer [sic]; festoons of tropical plants upon the walls; wreaths of orange boughs in full flower; and the long palm-leaves interwoven amongst the compartments, all combine to create a spectacle worthy of being witnessed once in a lifetime.1My lot of land numbered one hundred and fifty eight in the plan of Freetown situate [sic] in Howe Street I give to Betsey Macaulay to hold in trust for her natural son by me named George Lewis for his sole use and benefit.2On
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/705/image/coversmall“The Customs of the Place”: Interracial Sexual Relationships, Economics, and the Politics of Intimacy in the Colony of Sierra Leone, 1806–18882026-02-26text/htmlen-US“The Customs of the Place”: Interracial Sexual Relationships, Economics, and the Politics of Intimacy in the Colony of Sierra Leone, 1806–18882026-02-262026TWOProject MUSE®3220842026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-02-26Missions and Indigenous Chiefs in Nineteenth-Century Yorubaland: Ijaye and the Diplomacy for Religious Conversion
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984340
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A popular but cynical quote, often attributed to Desmond Tutu, is that, “When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible, and we had the land. They said, ‘Let us pray,’ and we closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible, and they had the land.”1 The statement is meant to be a slur at the European colonization of Africa. Yet, though unintentionally, it is also a barb at the intelligence of Africans who engaged European missions in their religious adventures in precolonial Africa. It assumes these Africans were passive recipients of Christianity. The popularity of such a simplistic slur among the African middle class in the twenty-first century betrays a lack of knowledge of the complexity behind
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/705/image/coversmallMissions and Indigenous Chiefs in Nineteenth-Century Yorubaland: Ijaye and the Diplomacy for Religious Conversion2026-02-26text/htmlen-USMissions and Indigenous Chiefs in Nineteenth-Century Yorubaland: Ijaye and the Diplomacy for Religious Conversion2026-02-262026TWOProject MUSE®1131422026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-02-26Transcending Colonial Impositions: Continuity, Social Transformation, and the Centrality of Women in Gelede Festival
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984341
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The dynamics of gender, power, and social change in precolonial and colonial Yorubaland have been a subject of deep controversy. These debates arise from the profound paradigm shifts and trajectories introduced by colonial invasion. Scholars have extensively examined the impact of missionaries and colonial presence on the Yoruba people, concluding that this foreign influence had both positive and negative consequences.1 On the negative side, the colonial presence disrupted existing traditional religio-political structures. It also reshaped the institution of marriage, women’s status, and gender dynamics, sparking ongoing debates about the extent of these changes across Yorubaland. On the other hand, the positive
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/705/image/coversmallTranscending Colonial Impositions: Continuity, Social Transformation, and the Centrality of Women in Gelede Festival2026-02-26text/htmlen-USTranscending Colonial Impositions: Continuity, Social Transformation, and the Centrality of Women in Gelede Festival2026-02-262026TWOProject MUSE®982392026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-02-26Private and Public Selves: Emotions in the Life and Political Career of Kwame Nkrumah
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984342
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The emerging field of the history of emotions has opened the door to how historians can assess the role of emotions in the processes of political and social change and how emotions themselves have changed over time and space. Our understanding of emotion has gone from being just an interior feeling to emotion being placed in an active mediating position between self and society, capable of shaping events and not just a response to events. I agree with Katie Barclay that “personal emotions can have social and political effects.”1 Thomas Dixon opines that in “the history of emotions, the history of ideas meets the history of the body.”2 Extant studies of Kwame Nkrumah have focused on his public life, his politics
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/705/image/coversmallPrivate and Public Selves: Emotions in the Life and Political Career of Kwame Nkrumah2026-02-26text/htmlen-USPrivate and Public Selves: Emotions in the Life and Political Career of Kwame Nkrumah2026-02-262026TWOProject MUSE®1341672026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-02-26Speaking with Richard Rathbone
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984343
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Dr. Richard Rathbone, FRHistS, was a pioneering historian of Africa whose work had a profound impact on many, whether of his own generation or those that have succeeded it, his formal students and many who have learned from him informally. In 2021, three historians of Ghana— Jennifer Hart, Tony Yeboah, and Trevor Getz— conducted an interview with him via Zoom. Richard connected from his home in Wales, to which he had retired. We present the transcript of that conversation below, along with a biography from his friend, co-author, and colleague John Parker. The transcript was lightly edited by Richard prior to his passing on November 11, 2024, and small corrections have been made. This interview was, in many ways
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/705/image/coversmallSpeaking with Richard Rathbone2026-02-26text/htmlen-USSpeaking with Richard Rathbone2026-02-262026TWOProject MUSE®697402026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-02-26Past Imperfect: Time and African Decolonization, 1945–1960 by Pierre-Philippe Fraiture (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984344
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The historical “temporal turn,” following the “cultural turn” of the 1980s and 1990s, has built on the influential work of European theorists such as Reinhard Koselleck.1 Pierre-Philippe Fraiture’s newest book, Past Imperfect: Time and African Decolonization,1945–1960, stands in this line, attempting to understand human experiences of time in West Africa of the late colonial era following the Second World War. Fraiture explicitly sought “not to establish equivalences; it is to highlight overlaps but also tensions and points of friction between figures who marked the development of African studies in the post-war era” (23). Fraiture succeeds in demonstrating the rapid and significant changes in the theoretical
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/705/image/coversmallPast Imperfect: Time and African Decolonization, 1945–1960 by Pierre-Philippe Fraiture (review)2026-02-26text/htmlen-USPast Imperfect: Time and African Decolonization, 1945–1960 by Pierre-Philippe Fraiture (review)2026-02-262026TWOProject MUSE®121952026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-02-26Sovereignty Without Power: Liberia in the Age of Empires, 1822–1980 by Leigh Gardner (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984345
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Sovereignty Without Power by Professor Leigh Gardner seeks to answer the question “Why has Liberia’s 177 years of independence not brought economic development?” In a thorough, well-researched, and groundbreaking book, Gardner provides the answer in a new economic history of Liberia.One of the greatest strengths of this work is the data set that has been created by Gardner so that other scholars can continue to do work to understand Liberia’s economic past. Gardner writes, “Reconstructing the story of Liberia’s economic history . . . requires piecing together a tale from the scraps of information that have survived over the centuries” (3). One of the reasons these “scraps of information” have had to be pieced
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/705/image/coversmallSovereignty Without Power: Liberia in the Age of Empires, 1822–1980 by Leigh Gardner (review)2026-02-26text/htmlen-USSovereignty Without Power: Liberia in the Age of Empires, 1822–1980 by Leigh Gardner (review)2026-02-262026TWOProject MUSE®116862026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-02-26Understanding Colonial Nigeria: British Rule and Its Impact by Toyin Falola (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984346
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Toyin Falola’s Understanding Colonial Nigeria: British Rule and Its Impact offers a sweeping analysis of the coming, course, and consequences of British rule in Nigeria. As primarily a work of synthesis, the volume leverages decades of scholarship to reach a firm conclusion about how British efforts to extract profit and power shaped West African history. In short, colonialism created a modern state encompassing hundreds of ethnicities in a region without historical preconditions for such a polity. It did so at the expense of cultural displacement, economic underdevelopment, political disunity, and social tumult. As a result, Falola argues that Nigeria’s current struggles are inextricable from imperialism and that
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/705/image/coversmallUnderstanding Colonial Nigeria: British Rule and Its Impact by Toyin Falola (review)2026-02-26text/htmlen-USUnderstanding Colonial Nigeria: British Rule and Its Impact by Toyin Falola (review)2026-02-262026TWOProject MUSE®93492026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-02-26Imagine Lagos: Mapping History, Place, and Politics in a Nineteenth-Century African City by Ademide Adelusi-Adeluyi (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984347
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Walking encourages a particular kind of exploration that is both expansive and incomplete, a casual adventure that can also double as a research methodology. Or what the historian, Ademide Adelusi-Adeluyi, terms a “walking cartography” (4).Imagine Lagos is built on this methodological turn, which involves a combination of walking the city streets, mapmaking, and engaging with other typical historical sources like administrative letters, government reports, newspaper reportage, legal documents, and oral narratives. A collage of textual and visual sources, Imagine Lagos places itself in sustained conversation with urban historians— who might appreciate its use of mapmaking to interrogate indigenous conceptions of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/705/image/coversmallImagine Lagos: Mapping History, Place, and Politics in a Nineteenth-Century African City by Ademide Adelusi-Adeluyi (review)2026-02-26text/htmlen-USImagine Lagos: Mapping History, Place, and Politics in a Nineteenth-Century African City by Ademide Adelusi-Adeluyi (review)2026-02-262026TWOProject MUSE®89912026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-02-26Waterhouses: Landscapes, Housing, and the Making of Modern Lagos by Mark Duerksen (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984348
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Against a backdrop of multiple landscapes, awash with several water bodies, Waterhouses: Landscapes, Housing, and the Making of Modern Lagos exhibits a commensurate fluidity in its chronicling of the history of Lagos, the erstwhile capital of Africa’s most populous nation, Nigeria. Mark Duerksen boldly asserts that his unconventional view of history “can help map out new branches and new ways of looking at a city that needs new histories as full and forceful as itself” (xi). Albeit the author is mindful about the pitfalls of this atypical approach, seen in statements such as “landscapes speed up our optical processing of a place, its people, and its histories but can be easily manipulated through (sub) conscious
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/705/image/coversmallWaterhouses: Landscapes, Housing, and the Making of Modern Lagos by Mark Duerksen (review)2026-02-26text/htmlen-USWaterhouses: Landscapes, Housing, and the Making of Modern Lagos by Mark Duerksen (review)2026-02-262026TWOProject MUSE®88432026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-02-26