This paper explores some of the major themes in the economic and social history of sub-Saharan Africa in the colonial period. The ‘colonial moment’ in most parts of sub-Saharan Africa was comparatively brief, but is generally thought to have profoundly and to a large extent irreversibly transformed the continent.

The paper focuses on the articulation of social identities, in particular with regard to race, class, ethnicity, and gender in the process of social and economic change.

The course covers the following themes:

1. Social Change in Colonial Africa (Lecture)
2. Masters and Slaves
3. Farmers and Traders
4. Capital and Labour
5. Migrants and Settlers
6. Town and Country
7. Education and Religion
8. Development and Exploitation

Course Objectives

The main aim of this course is to encourage students to think about the relationship between changes occurring in the economic sphere – that is changes in the organisation of production, exchange and consumption - and those taking place in the social sphere – that is in the realm of society, culture, politics and every-day life. It will be asked how these changes came about, whether these were merely imposed ‘from above’ by the colonial state and/or the world economy or initiated by the colonial subjects themselves ‘from below’, and what these changes had meant for the societies concerned, their social structures and institutions, their social divisions and conflicts, their belief systems, and social values. The course is meant to be an historical inquiry into the making of contemporary Africa.

Course Requirements

Class sessions will be held weekly in Hilary Term, but there will be an initial orientation meeting at the end of Michaelmas Term. The students are expected to read widely for and participate actively in each class session. They are required to write 4 brief essays (max. 5000 words, with the option of writing one extended essay) on topics of their own choice. However, students are strongly advised to focus their essays on one or two regions in Africa.

Students will receive a more detailed reading list and suggestions for essay topics at the beginning of Hilary Term. Meanwhile, students are encouraged to look at:

• Cooper, Frederick. “African Labor History.” In J. Lucassen (ed.), Global Labour History (Bern, 2006), pp. 91-116.
• Feierman, S., ‘Social Change in Colonial Africa’, in P. Curtin et al. (eds.), African History. From Earliest Times to Independence (New York, 1995²), pp. 490-512.
• Iliffe, J., ‘Colonial Change’, in idem, Africans. The History of a Continent (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 212-42.
• McCaskie, T.C., ‘Cultural Encounters: Britain and Africa in the Nineteenth Century’, in A. Porter (ed.), Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. iii, (Oxford, 1998), pp. 644-89.
• Peel, J., ‘Social and Cultural Change’, in M. Crowder (ed.), Cambridge History of Africa, vol. xiii, (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 142-91.
• Wrigley, C. ‘Aspects of Economic History’, in A.D. Roberts (ed.), Cambridge History of Africa, vol. vii, (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 77-139.