Deep Roots: Rice Farmers in West Africa and the African Diaspora

An outpouring of historical research has greatly contributed to our understanding of the political, economic, demographic, and business aspects of interregional slave migration in the antebellum period. As yet, however, relatively few studies have examined the assimilation process of slave migrants who were sent to the Lower South. Particularly their adaption to new work patterns and cultivation techniques has eluded the attention of most scholars. What kinds of work did Upper South slave migrants perform upon arrival in the cotton South? How did they adapt to new work? Drawing from a variety of source material, including slave testimonies, this study will very briefly explore cotton cultivation from the perspective of enslaved newcomers from the Upper South. It will especially delve into the abrupt transition with which interstate migrants in the antebellum period were confronted, comparing and contrasting the demands of plantation agriculture in both regions and underscoring the learning curves involved in migrants' assimilation process.     

The Origin and Course of Fabian Colonialism in Africa

Abstract This article shows why and how the practices of Fabians in colonial Africa rested upon a socialist version of the doctrine of trusteeship. With its roots in nineteenth-century Comtean positivism, Fabian colonialism originated in an attempt to transcend the limits of Chamberlainite development as part of the radical-liberal reaction against the doctrine of development. The Labour Government's abortive colonial offensive of 1947 was unwittingly drawn out of Joseph Chamberlain's failed project to develop the 'imperial estates' of Africa through large-scale capitalist enterprise to meet British industrial need. In 1906, the Liberal Party's electoral programme for free trade defeated Chamberlain's imperial and industrial project. The Liberal victory was followed by the success of radicals and liberals in making land nationalisation and peasant production the cornerstone of colonial policy for Africa. This policy confirmed a colonial formula of the early Fabians, such as Sydney Olivier, and marked out the contours for an imperial socialism that were later straightened out by, for instance, Leonard Woolf. As an African surplus population emerged most obviously in the 1930s, the key word of 'development' entered official language and did so in much the same way that it had earlier done in Britain at the turn of the century. Development came to mean state intervention for developing agriculture, and not industry, in an attempt to deal with the problem of urban unemployment and poverty. The agrarian bias of development, notwithstanding the failure of the large schemes of 1947 and the experience of white settlement in Kenya, marks the continuity of Fabian policy to the post-colonial present.     

Another Colonialism: Africa in the History of European Integration

Today's European Union was founded in a 1950s marked by its member states' involvement in numerous colonial conflicts and with the colonial question firmly entrenched on the European and international agenda. This notwithstanding, there is hardly any scholarly investigations to date that have examined colonialism's bearing on the historical project and process of European integration. In tackling this puzzle, the present article proceeds in two steps. First, it corroborates the claim that European integration not only is related to the history of colonialism but to no little extent determined by it. Second, it introduces a set of factors that explain why the relation between the EU and colonialism has been systematically neglected. Here the article seeks to identify the operations of a colonial epistemology that has facilitated a misrecognition of what postwar European integration was about. As the article argues, this epistemology has enabled colonialism's historical relation to the European integration project to remain undetected and has thus also reproduced within the present EU precisely those colonial or neo-colonial preconceptions that the European partner states, in official discourse and policy, falsely claim that they have abandoned.     

Back to Africa: Second Chances for the Children of West African Immigrants

This paper examines the phenomenon of West African parents living in Europe and North America who send their older children back home: from places of high immigrant aspiration to those of hardship and privation. Drawing on a project on West African immigration to Europe and on previous field studies in Africa, we conclude that West African immigrants fearing the consequences of their children's indiscipline in the West, where racism and hostility can endanger the entire family, may send unruly children back to the home country. In doing so, we believe, they build on long‐standing African disciplinary efforts in hopes of toughening their children's resilience to the challenges in the new place and wait for the risk to dissipate.     

West and Central Africa

This article reviews scientific and other literature during the 1990s that links migration and mobility with the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including HIV/AIDS. The focus is on key population groups linked to the spread of HIV and STDs in West and Central Africa: migrant laborers, truck drivers, itinerant traders, commercial sex workers (CSWs), and refugees. Countries with high emigration and immigration tend to have high levels of HIV infection, with the exception of Senegal. The main destination of immigrants are Senegal, Nigeria, and Cote d'Ivoire in West Africa and Cameroon, Congo, Gabon, and Congo in Central Africa. The risk of infection and the spread of HIV is variable among migrants. There is little in the literature that substantiates hypotheses about the strong association between migration and HIV-positive status. Information is needed on the duration, frequency of return visits, living conditions, sexual activities with multiple partners, and information before departure, along the routes, at final destination, and at the time of returns. Action-based research in five West African countries (Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Mali, Niger, and Senegal) should produce results in late 1998. Comparable studies in Central Africa are unknown. Regional studies should be complemented by local studies. Prevention would benefit from studies on the relative size of these five population groups by geographic location.     

Colonialism,genocide, and Tibet

A central element of the narrative circulated by the Tibet Movement has been that China has carried out genocide and practised colonialism in Tibet. These notions are, for the most part, uncritically accepted by politicians and the media, especially in the West. This essay challenges such characterizations as inept and as obstacles to resolving the Tibet Question. It looks at whether convincing empirical evidence of physical and cultural genocide in Tibet exists, in light of the most common understanding of such practices as rooted in efforts to destroy a people and its culture. The essay also considers what the contours of colonialism have been in light of its principal modern experience, that of European, US and Japanese colonization, and determines whether the Tibet case fits these characteristics. The essay concludes that a critique of China's policies and practices in Tibet would be best served by focusing on actual problems experienced by Tibetans.     

Emigration dynamics in West Africa

This report on the emigration dynamics at work in Western Africa opens by noting that this region comprises an important migration system with large legal and illegal movements of people within the region and to industrialized countries. Migration has been fueled by high growth rates coupled with lower growth rates of per capital income. Migration takes the form of continuing inflow into receiving countries, such as the Ivory Coast, sudden changes in migration status (in Ghana and Nigeria) reflecting sudden economic changes, a brain drain to developed countries, and an influx of refugees. The second section of the report presents a brief look at historical migratory patterns, including those of nomads which continue today. Data limitations are addressed in section 3, and the drawbacks of census data for migration information are noted. The next section describes the economic and demographic factors in the region which contribute to migration. These include the long lasting effects of colonization in general, the exploitation of minerals, patterns of agricultural development, poverty, and population growth. A closer examination of these forces at work is provided in case studies of Ghana, Nigeria, and the migration stream from Burkina Faso to the Ivory Coast. Section 5 looks at the economic causes and effects of the brain drain. Social and cultural factors are covered in section 6, with an emphasis placed on family and migration networks. Section 7 covers political factors influencing migration, such as the efforts of people to retain contact with other members of their ethnic group who may live on the opposite side of an arbitrarily drawn (by colonizers) international border, the designation of administrative capital cities, and the ease in crossing borders without documentation. The next section describes the 1975 formation of the Economic Community for West Africa (ECOWAS) and its protocols regarding free movement of citizens within the states which comprise the Community. The tolerance level of receiving countries is also linked to their economic situation. Section 9 discusses ethnic upheaval and the flow of refugees generated by Liberia, Chad, Sierra Leone, Togo, and Mauritania. The report ends with a projection of increased migration due to population growth, economic adversity, and political instability. Greater migration may also be generated if ECOWAS is successful in meeting its economic goals for the region.     

Spousal Communication,Power, and Contraceptive Use in Burkina Faso,West Africa

Abstract

In most developing countries, despite increased knowledge and approval of family planning, contraceptive use is still low. Lack of spousal communication was identified as an important explanatory factor in the low level contraceptive use by spouses. This study describes the pathways of influence between spousal communication, power, and contraceptive use in Burkina Faso, West Africaa high fertility country with low prevalence of contraceptive use. The Burkina Faso society is patriarchal in which husbands have control over sexual and fertility matters and they extend authority over their wives on these issues and, therefore, the power dimension of the spousal communication model needs clarification. The data source for this paper was the 2003 Burkina Faso Demographic and Health Survey. From the individual recode file, married respondents were selected for inclusion in the sample (n = 9,537) and for analysis. The independent variables were spousal communication and relative power. The dependent variables were contraceptive use and the effects of age, education, number of living children, wealth, and marriage types were adjusted for. Results show that education, wealth, place of residence, and religion are some of the correlates of inter-spousal communication about contraceptive use. Additionally, the data have revealed that spousal communication and marital power were important and significant predictors of contraceptive use, with relative marital power being the Stronger predictor of the two.     

Minority Voices: Abolitionism in West Africa

This paper examines the claims of Eric Williams and the more recent Legacies of British Slave Ownership projects regarding the influence of enslavement in the building of Britain and its empire through a multi-generational study of a leading British elite family, the Bentincks. Using the concept of imperial careering, it charts how four men from this family not typically identified as enslavers or abolitionists were entangled with enslavement in Britain's Western and Eastern empires. It concludes that the influence of enslavement was extensive and mainly exploitative, but involved losses as well as gains for these elite protagonists.