History Commons^™

Victims Of Victims: The Concept Of Victimhood In Two War Memoirs Of The Sierra Leonean Civil War, Lauren R. Letizia

Student Publications

This research analyzes the portrayal and view of war victimhood in the genre of war stories and remembrance using two firsthand accounts of the Sierra Leonean Civil War.

Courting American Capital: Public Relations And The Business Of Selling Ivorian Capitalism In The U.S., 1960-1980, Abou B. Bamba

History Faculty Publications

This chapter is an invitation to reimagine the roles assigned to players in the history of capitalism on the global stage. It challenges aspects of the historiography of capitalism in the twentieth century, which tend to center on historical actors and institutions of the Global North. Even when actors in the Global South are discussed, it is usually to portray them as passive victims of an intractable system. By focusing on the Ivory Coast and its economic diplomacy toward the United States, I seek to destabilize this general picture.

Best Of Intentions?: Rinderpest, Containment Practices, And Rebellion In Rhodesia In 1896, Brandon R. Katzung Hokanson

Student Publications

Rinderpest was a deadly bovine virus that plagued cattle herds across Europe and Asia for centuries. In the late 1880’s-early 1890’s, the virus found its way to the African continent where it wreaked immense havoc among the unimmune herds of African pastoralists and agriculturalists. By February 1896, the virus had crossed the Rhodesian border along the Zambezi River and began killing off cattle owned by ethnic groups like the Matabele and Shona, as well as those owned by white settlers. In an effort to contain the virus, the British South African Company consulted with colonial officials from the Cape Colony, …

‘Mightier Than Marx’: Hassoldt Davis And American Cold War Politics In Postwar Ivory Coast, Abou B. Bamba

History Faculty Publications

Using the travels of Hassoldt Davis in Ivory Coast to explore the global Cold War in French West Africa in the 1950s, this article argues that the main line of confrontation in the postwar era did not always pit Americans against Russians. In many instances, the struggle for the mind and soul of Africans was between the Americans and the French. The study highlights the role of everyday technology in the expansion of the American informal empire. By focusing on Davis and the significance of low-tech artifacts, the article suggests that in our scrutiny of Cold War science/technology, we need …

Understanding Violence Against Foreigners In Cape Town: Conceptions Of Autochthony And Xenophobia In Post-Apartheid South Africa, Mary L. Casey

Student Publications

Examining the correlation between the history of colonialism and structures of Apartheid in South Africa and the current xenophobic violence experienced by Black African immigrants settling in Cape Town. This thesis explores theories of autochthony and belonging in the context of Cape Town, Black South African relationships and ownership of land, access to resources and opportunities for employment, and the continued disenfranchisement of Black South Africans in the wake of Apartheid. These components of the issue of xenophobia in Cape Town are factored into an analysis of how and why violence persists against immigrants in the city.

Managing Ethnic Conflict In Darfur: An Analysis Of Third-Party Interventions, Marley R. Dizney Swanson

Student Publications

Persistent ethnic conflict in Darfur has been met by third-party interventions with varying degrees of success. This paper seeks to isolate different methods of intervention in order to understand what types are effective in reducing the number of people affected by violence caused by ethnic conflict. Each intervention is separated into three categories based on their nature: humanitarian, militaristic, and diplomatic. These actions are then juxtaposed with data from medical journals that describe the effects of violence, including death by violence, death by disease, and child mortality rates. The success of an intervention is measured by its ability to reduce …

Un Nouveau Miracle Économique Ivoirien?, Vincent Hiribarren, Abou B. Bamba

History Faculty Publications

Questions à Abou Bamba, associate professor d’Histoire et d’Etudes Africaines à Gettysburg College (Etats-Unis). Il est l’auteur de African Miracle, African Mirage: Transnational Politics and the Paradox of Modernization in Ivory Coast (Ohio University Press, 2016).

“In Light Of Real Alternatives”: Negotiations Of Fertility And Motherhood In Morocco And Oman, Victoria E. Mohr

Student Publications

Many states in the Arab world have undertaken wide-ranging family planning polices in the last two decades in an effort to curb high fertility rates. Oman and Morocco are two such countries, and their policies have had significantly different results. Morocco experienced a swift drop in fertility rates, whereas Oman’s fertility has declined much more slowly over several decades. Many point to the more conservative religious and cultural context of Oman for their high fertility rates, however economics and the state of biomedical health care often present a more compelling argument for the distinct differences between Omani and Moroccan family …

Musical Influence On Apartheid And The Civil Rights Movement, Katherine D. Power

Student Publications

Black South Africans and African Americans not only share similar identities, but also share similar historical struggles. Apartheid and the Civil Rights Movement were two movements on two separate continents in which black South Africans and African Americans resisted against deep injustice and defied oppression. This paper sets out to demonstrate the key role that music played, through factors of globalization, in influencing mass resistance and raising global awareness. As an elemental form of creative expression, music enables many of the vital tools needed to overcome hatred and violence. Jazz and Freedom songs were two of the most influential genres, …

An Unconventional Challenge To Apartheid: The Ivorian Dialogue Diplomacy With South Africa, 1960-1978, Abou B. Bamba

History Faculty Publications

This article focuses on the dialogue diplomacy that Ivorian President Félix Houphouët-Boigny initiated in the late 1960s to engage apartheid South Africa. Although contemporary observers and subsequent scholars (have) derided the scheme as an act of acquiescence and even betrayal, I argue that Ivory Coast's dialogue diplomacy was neither accommodationist nor dependent on the prodding of neocolonial powers such as France. A Pan-Africanist extension of the home-grown neotraditional practice of Dialogue ivoirienne, the diplomatic initiative never got the backing of other African states. A close analysis of the Ivory Coast's maneuvers in the context of an increasing radicalization of …

At The Edge Of The Modern?: Diplomacy, Public Relations, And Media Practices During Houphouët-Boigny's 1962 Visit To The United States, Abou B. Bamba

History Faculty Publications

Toward the end of the first decade after the decolonization of most African countries, there emerged a scholarly polemic about the weight of bureaucratic politics in the making of foreign policy in the Third World. A mirror of the reigning modernization paradigm that informed most postwar area studies and social sciences, the discussion unintentionally indexed the narcissism of a hegemonic discourse on political development and statecraft. Graham Allison and Morton Halperin—the original proponents of the bureaucratic model—implied in their largely U.S.-centric model that such a paradigm was not applicable to non-industrialized countries since the newly decolonized countries, for the most …

Triangulating A Modernization Experiment: The United States, France And The Making Of The Kossou Project In Central Ivory Coast, Abou B. Bamba

History Faculty Publications

Toward the end of the 1960s, authorities in the Ivory Coast decided to build the Kossou Dam, a hydro-electric dam on the Bandama River near the geographic center of the Francophone country. Initially conceived as a technopolitical measure to meet the growing energy demand of the most economically successful country of France's former colonies, the damming experiment soon emerged as a multipurpose regional development project aimed at correcting the regional disparities that tarnished the Ivory Coast's phenomenal economic growth.

This article focuses on the Kossou modernization experience and the sociopolitical transformations that it caused. I argue that the nationalist enthusiasm …

Mémoires Épistémiques Et Pouvoir D’Experts Dans Une Postcolonie Africaine: Le Cas De L’Usage Des Savoirs Africanistes Par L’Orstom En Côte D’Ivoire, Abou B. Bamba

History Faculty Publications

Partant du constat que l’Office de la Recherche Scientifique et Technique Outre-Mer (ORSTOM) s’est impose par son travail de recherche appliquee comme le concepteur primordial de la planification du developpement en Cote d’Ivoire a la fin des annees soixante, cet article montre que la mobilisation du souvenir des discours institues en science (ou memoires epistemiques) par les chercheurs de l’ORSTOM y a joue pour beaucoup. En se reappropriant les savoirs africanistes laisses par leurs predecesseurs que leur acces privilegie a la “bibliotheque coloniale” a rendu possible, les orstomiens en poste dans la postcolonie ivoirienne ont reussi a supplanter non seulement …

From "No Country" To "Our Country!" Living Out Manumission And The Boundaries Of Rights And Citizenship, 1773-1855, Scott Hancock

Africana Studies Faculty Publications

During the Revolutionary War and the first decades of the early U.S. Republic, as free people of color sought to define their place in the new nation, they expressed little connection to an American nationality. But antebellum black leaders later articulated a powerful vision of Africans and Americans. As slaves and free blacks had done during the Revolutionary era, they based this African American identity in part upon a biblical view of human rights and a natural rights philosophy, but they also buttressed black identity formation by making a rights discourse the fulcrum of their argument for full inclusion in …

Qu'est-Ce Que La Postcolonie? Contribution À Un Débat Francophone Trop Afrocentré, Abou B. Bamba

History Faculty Publications

Cet essai n’a rien d’une élaboration philosophique. Même si la question du titre fait songer à un Kant du « Was ist Aufklärung ? », un Sartre de Qu’est-ce la littérature ? ou encore à un Foucault de « Qu’est-ce que les lumières? ». Il a moins la prétention d’être un exercice théorique. Encore que les discussions sur la postcolonialité ne le sont guère que très rarement. Plutôt, ce texte est la contribution d’un américaniste, observateur de surcroît des sociétés et espaces publics francoafricains de l’après Deuxième Guerre mondiale ; contribution à un débat initié— il y a quelques temps …