BHUM 17A43 - Power, violence and societies in colonial Sub-Saharan Africa, XIXth and XXth centuries

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Browse through virtually any Western media outlet reporting on Africa, and you’ll quickly encounter familiar tropes of ancestral violence and so-called “ethnic conflict.” This course invites you to move beyond these reductive narratives and critically examine the complex intersections of power, violence, and society in Africa.

Our primary focus will be the colonial period—a time marked by extreme brutality and the consolidation of enduring representations of the continent and its people. However, we will also engage with both the precolonial and postcolonial contexts to provide broader historical depth.

We will explore various forms of violence, from the disruption and destruction of social structures to measurable colonial repression. While the course offers detailed insight into colonial ideologies and practices, it prioritizes African perspectives and agency. Emphasis will be placed on how Africans responded to, navigated, and challenged colonial domination, centering their voices and experiences throughout.

Organized thematically - and more or less chronologically - the sessions will be systematically divided into two parts.

• The first part will be a lecture, complemented by the discussion of an article read before class (1hour).
• The second part will be dedicated to working on primary sources: we will explore rich corpus of documents that will highlight the diversity of sources and methods available to historians for writing the history of Africa, with the aim of constructing the synopsis of a commentary (presentation of the source, problematization, proposed plan).