Achim von Oppen - Biographies Between Spheres of Empire: Life History Approaches to Colonial Africa

Biographies Between Spheres of Empire

Biographical research can illuminate imperial and colonial history. This is particularly true of Africa, where empires competed with one another and colonial society was characterised by rigid divisions. In this book, five biographical studies explore how, in the course of their lives, interpreters, landowners, students and traders navigated the boundaries between the various spaces of the colonial world. With a focus on African life worlds, the authors show the disruptions and constraints as well as the new options and forms of mobility that resulted from colonial rule.

This book was originally published as a special issue of The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth Studies.

Achim von Oppen is Professor of African History at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. He has published widely on the history of social and economic change, space-making and translocality, religious change and development, mainly in rural settings in Zambia and Tanzania.

Silke Strickrodt is a Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of African Studies and Anthropology, University of Birmingham, UK. Her research focuses on the history of pre-colonial and early colonial West Africa, particularly on Afro-European encounters in the context of trade, Christian mission and scientific exploration.

Biographies Between Spheres of Empire

Life History Approaches to Colonial Africa

Edited by

Achim von Oppen and Silke Strickrodt

First published 2018
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Chapter 5 2018 Ruth Watson

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ISBN13: 978-1-138-57416-8

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Contents

The chapters in this book were originally published in The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History , volume 44, issue 5 (October 2016). When citing this material, please use the original page numbering for each article, as follows:

Achim von Oppen and Silke Strickrodt

The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History , volume 44, issue 5 (October 2016) pp. 717729

Robin Law

The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History , volume 44, issue 5 (October 2016) pp. 730751

David Meetom: Interpreting, Power and the Risks of Intermediation in the Initial
Phase of German Colonial Rule in Cameroon

Ulrike Schaper

The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History , volume 44, issue 5 (October 2016) pp. 752776

Transcending Gender Roles, Crossing Racial and Political Boundaries: Agnes Hills
Fight for her Inheritance in German Southwest Africa

Ulrike Lindner

The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History , volume 44, issue 5 (October 2016) pp. 777797

Andrew D. Roberts

The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History , volume 44, issue 5 (October 2016) pp. 798814

No One Knows What He is Until He is Told: Audience and Personhood in a Colonial
African Diary

Ruth Watson

The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History , volume 44, issue 5 (October 2016) pp. 815832

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Robin Law is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Stirling, UK. His chief research interests are in the history of pre-colonial West Africa and the Atlantic slave trade.

Ulrike Lindner is Professor of Modern History at the Historical Institute, University of Cologne, Germany. Her research areas include European colonialism in Africa, history of social policy in late colonial Africa and knowledge exchange between colonial empires.

Achim von Oppen is Professor of African History at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. He has published widely on the history of social and economic change, space-making and translocality, religious change and development, mainly in rural settings in Zambia and Tanzania.

Andrew D. Roberts is Emeritus Professor of History at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK.

Ulrike Schaper is Professor at the Center for Global History at the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut, Freie Universitt Berlin, Germany.

Silke Strickrodt is a Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of African Studies and Anthropology, University of Birmingham, UK. Her research focuses on the history of pre-colonial and early colonial West Africa, particularly on Afro-European encounters in the context of trade, Christian mission and scientific exploration.

Ruth Watson is a Lecturer in African History at the University of Cambridge, UK. Her work explores the social and cultural history of colonial West Africa, particularly nineteenth- and twentieth-century Nigeria.

Achim von Oppen and Silke Strickrodt

ABSTRACT

Biographical research offers a promising approach to the study of empire, imperialism and colonialism. The careers and life stories of individuals and generations show particularly clearly the disruptions and constraints, but also the new possibilities and mobilities, that were created by colonial rule. This special issue focuses on practices and experiences of boundary crossing in imperial and colonial history. It explores how ordinary individuals and groups navigated between the different imperial spaces and spheres into which they were categorised according to the ideologies and regulations of the well-ordered colonial world. Africa offers particularly interesting cases for studying these issues because, first, it was a field of particularly rigid colonial distinctions and, second, different colonial empires overlapped and competed there with particular intensity. This introduction outlines briefly the relevance of biographical research for new approaches in imperial, colonial and African history, and highlights the major themes of the five articles comprising this special issue. It is argued that these new biographical approaches tell us much not only about life in Africa on the eve of and under colonial rule, but also more generally about both the power and the permeability of imperial domination and of colonial categories.