Description

A look at the encounter between the French and the peoples of Southern Gabon in terms of their differing conceptions of boundaries. In the second half of the nineteenth century, two very different practices of territoriality confronted each other in Southern Gabon. Clan and lineage relationships were most important in the local practice, while the French practice was informed by a territorial definition of society that had emerged with the rise of the modern nation-state and industrial capitalism. This modern territoriality used an array of bureaucratic instruments -- such as maps andcensuses -- previously unknown in equatorial Africa. Such instruments denied the existence of locally created territories and were fundamental to the exercise of colonial power. Thus modern territoriality imposed categories and institutions foreign to the peoples to whom they were applied. As colonial power became more effective from the 1920s on, those institutions started to be appropriated by Gabonese cultural elites who negotiated their meanings in reference to their own traditions. The result was a strongly ambiguous condition that left its imprint on the new colonial territories and subsequently the postcolonial Gabonese state. Christopher Gray was Assistant Professor of History, Florida International University.

Colonial Rule and Crisis in Equatorial Africa: Southern Gabon, c. 1850-1940

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Hardback by Christopher J. Gray

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A look at the encounter between the French and the peoples of Southern Gabon in terms of their differing conceptions... Read more

    Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
    Publication Date: 25/07/2002
    ISBN13: 9781580460484, 978-1580460484
    ISBN10: 1580460488

    Number of Pages: 304

    Non Fiction

    Description

    A look at the encounter between the French and the peoples of Southern Gabon in terms of their differing conceptions of boundaries. In the second half of the nineteenth century, two very different practices of territoriality confronted each other in Southern Gabon. Clan and lineage relationships were most important in the local practice, while the French practice was informed by a territorial definition of society that had emerged with the rise of the modern nation-state and industrial capitalism. This modern territoriality used an array of bureaucratic instruments -- such as maps andcensuses -- previously unknown in equatorial Africa. Such instruments denied the existence of locally created territories and were fundamental to the exercise of colonial power. Thus modern territoriality imposed categories and institutions foreign to the peoples to whom they were applied. As colonial power became more effective from the 1920s on, those institutions started to be appropriated by Gabonese cultural elites who negotiated their meanings in reference to their own traditions. The result was a strongly ambiguous condition that left its imprint on the new colonial territories and subsequently the postcolonial Gabonese state. Christopher Gray was Assistant Professor of History, Florida International University.

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