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Swarthmore College

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

Africa

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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Why Africa? Towards A Materialist Understanding Of Racism And The African Slave Trade, Giacomo F. Green Jul 2022

Why Africa? Towards A Materialist Understanding Of Racism And The African Slave Trade, Giacomo F. Green

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

Common historical interpretations of the Atlantic slave system often lose the position Africa within the political-economic haze of the era, either producing confused accounts or eliding the question of causality altogether. I argue that this tendency stems from the corrosive effects of the historian’s position as an observer from the present, and that to understand why Africa was the prime location for the source of human slaves, one needs to take a materialist approach to the problem of origins. Only through careful examination of empire, the plantation complex, and the genesis of the Atlantic working classes can one arrive at …


The Tanganyika Groundnut Scheme: A Site Of Change And Conservatism, Jane A. O'Connell Feb 2022

The Tanganyika Groundnut Scheme: A Site Of Change And Conservatism, Jane A. O'Connell

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

By focusing on the notorious Tanganyika Groundnut Scheme, this paper examines the evolution of British development policy in an East African colony throughout the pre-and post-war eras. I begin by detailing the historiography of writing on the Tanganyika Groundnut Scheme, connecting the shift in tone and focus of historians to broader trends in academia and perceptions of Africa, and then continue to provide an overview of pre-war colonial policy in Tanganyika. After laying out this framework, I highlight the profound impact of World War Two on British thought and the ways in which this translated to development policy, accounting for …