A History of Race in Muslim West Africa, 1600–1960 (African Studies, Series Number 115) - Hardcover

Hall, Bruce S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1107002877 ISBN 13: 9781107002876

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2011

Synopsis

The mobilization of local ideas about racial difference has been important in generating, and intensifying, civil wars that have occurred since the end of colonial rule in all of the countries that straddle the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. From Sudan to Mauritania, the racial categories deployed in contemporary conflicts often hearken back to an older history in which blackness could be equated with slavery and non-blackness with predatory and uncivilized banditry. This book traces the development of arguments about race over a period of more than 350 years in one important place along the southern edge of the Sahara Desert: the Niger Bend in northern Mali. Using Arabic documents held in Timbuktu, as well as local colonial sources in French and oral interviews, Bruce S. Hall reconstructs an African intellectual history of race that long predated colonial conquest, and which has continued to orient inter-African relations ever since.

About this title

Book Description

This book traces the development of arguments about race over a period of more than 350 years in the Niger Bend in northern Mali. On the basis of Arabic documents held in Timbuktu, as well as local colonial sources in French and oral interviews, Bruce S. Hall reconstructs an African intellectual history of race that long predated colonial conquest, and which has continued to orient community relations ever since.

About the Author

Bruce S. Hall is an assistant professor at Duke University. His work appears in the Journal of North African Studies, the International Journal of African Historical Studies and the Journal of African Studies. Professor Hall previously held positions as an assistant professor at the University at Buffalo (SUNY) and as an Andrew W. Mellon postdoctoral fellow at The Johns Hopkins University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1107002877
• ISBN 13: 9781107002876
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 360