Africa in the Colonial Ages of Empire

Tatah Mentan

Description

Words like �colonialism� and �empire� were once frowned upon in the U.S. and other Western mainstream media as worn-out left-wing rhetoric that didn�t fit reality. Not anymore! Tatah Mentan observes that a growing chorus of right-wing ideologues, with close ties to the Western administrations� war-making hawks in NATO, are encouraging Washington and the rest of Europe to take pride in the expansion of their power over people and nations around the globe. Africa in the Colonial Ages of Empire is written from the perspective that the scholarly lives of academics researching on Africa are changing, constantly in flux and increasingly bound to the demands of Western colonial imperialism. This existential situation has forced the continent to morph into a tool in the hands of Colonial Empire. According to Tatah Mentan, the effects of this existential situation of Africa compel serious academic scrutiny. At the same time, inquiry into the African predicament has been changing and evolving within and against the rhythms of this �new normal� of Colonial Empire-Old or New. The author insists that the long and bloody history of imperial conquest that began with the dawn of capitalism needs critical scholarly examination. As Marx wrote in Capital: �The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signaled the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief moment of primitive accumulation.� Africa in the Colonial Ages of Empire is therefore a MUST-READ for faculty, students as well as policy makers alike in the changing dynamics of their profession, be it theoretically, methodologically, or structurally and materially.

Sujets

• African Studies

Informations

• Publié par: Langaa RPCIG
• Date de parution: 17 décembre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 3
• EAN13: 9789956764228
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 12 Mo

Extrait

AFRICA IN THE COLONIAL AGES OF EMPIRE
Tatah Mentan
Slavery, Capitalism, Racism, Colonialism, Decolonization,
Independence as Recolonization, and Beyond
AFRICA IN THE
Words like “colonialism” and “empire” were once frowned upon in
the U.S. and other Western mainstream media as worn-out left-wing COLONIAL AGES rhetoric that didn’t fit reality. Not anymore! Tatah Mentan observes
that a growing chorus of right-wing ideologues, with close ties to the
Western administrations’ war-making hawks in NATO, are encouraging OF EMPIRE
Washington and the rest of Europe to take pride in the expansion of Slavery, Capitalism, Racism, Colonialism, Decolonization,
their power over people and nations around the globe.
Independence as Recolonization, and Beyond
Africa in the Colonial Ages of Empire is written from the perspective that the
scholarly lives of academics researching on Africa are changing, constantly
in flux and increasingly bound to the demands of Western colonial
imperialism. This existential situation has forced the continent to morph
into a tool in the hands of Colonial Empire. According to Tatah Mentan,
the effects of this existential situation of Africa compel serious academic
scrutiny. At the same time, inquiry into the African predicament has been
changing and evolving within and against the rhythms of this “new normal”
of Colonial Empire-Old or New. The author insists that the long and bloody
history of imperial conquest that began with the dawn of capitalism needs
critical scholarly examination. As Marx wrote in Capital: “The discovery of
gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment
in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest
and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the
commercial hunting of black-skins, signaled the rosy dawn of the era of
capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief moment of
primitive accumulation.” Africa in the Colonial Ages of Empire is therefore
a MUST-READ for faculty, students as well as policy makers alike in the
changing dynamics of their profession, be it theoretically, methodologically,
or structurally and materially.
TATAH MENTAN is an erudite Theodore Lentz Peace and Security Studies
Fellow and Professor of Political Science with enormous contributions to
knowledge in the global political economy of international relations.
Langaa Research & Publishing
Common Initiative Group
P.O. Box 902 Mankon
Bamenda Tatah Mentan
North West Region
Cameroon

AFRICA IN THE
COLONIAL AGES OF
EMPIRE
Slavery, Capitalism, Racism,
Colonialism, Decolonization,
Independence as Recolonization,
and Beyond.




Tatah Mentan



















Langaa Research & Publishing CIG
Mankon, Bamenda Publisher:
Langaa RPCIG
Langaa Research & Publishing Common Initiative Group
P.O. Box 902 Mankon
Bamenda
North West Region
Cameroon
[e-mail]
www.langaa-rpcig.net



Distributed in and outside N. America by African Books Collective
[e-mail]
www.africanbookscollective.com





ISBN-10: 9956-764-09-4
ISBN-13: 978-9956-764-09-9

© Tatah Mentan 2018






All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be
stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission
from the publisher
Dedication


The colonial encirclement of the world is an integral
component of European history from the Early Modern
Period to the phase of decolonization and beyond.
Individual national and expansion histories referred to
each other in varying degrees at different times but often
also reinforced each other. Transfer processes within
European Empires and in the colonies show that not only
genuine colonial powers such as Spain and England, but
also “latecomers” such as Germany participated in the
historical process of colonial expansion with which
Europe decisively shaped world history. In turn, this
process also clearly shaped Europe itself. This book is
therefore dedicated to African victims of this encircling
process whereby the dominant politico-economic interests
of Colonial Empire expropriate for their own enrichment
the land, labor, raw materials, and markets of the African
continent and its people for many centuries. Table of Contents


Part I: Prolegomena to the Colonial Ages
of Empire-Old and New…………………………………… 1

Chapter One: Introduction and Summary………..…………… 3

Chapter Two: On Colonial Empire:
Theoretical Situatedness……………………………………… 33


Part II: Africa in the Old Colonial Age of Empire………… 81

Chapter Three: The Cotton Empire of
Slavery, Racism and Resistance………………..……………… 83

Chapter Four: Africa in the Old Empire
Of Territorial Colonization…………………………………… 119

Chapter Five: Africa: Legacies of Old
Colonial Age of Empire……………………………………… 177


Part III: Africa in the New Colonial
Age of Empire…………………..…………………………… 229

Chapter Six: Africa between Independence
and Neocolonial Age of Empire…………….………………… 231

Chapter Seven: Africa in the Neoliberal
Colonial Age of Empire……………….……………………… 291

Chapter Eight: Africa in the Colonial
Age of Globalization Empire…………. 353


v Part IV: Back to the Future and Exiting
the Colonial Ages of Empire……………...………………… 411

Chapter Nine: Reprise, Summary, and Conclusion…….……… 413

Chapter Ten: Which Way Africa-Towards
Africa-Exit from Colonial Empire? …………...……………… 443


vi Acknowledgements


Researching and writing this book was much harder than it
appeared to me at first. I had unfathomable help along the way.
First, I want to extend a warm and deeply appreciative thank you to
Professor Rose Brewer for inspiring me to dig deep into Africa’s
historical trajectory in American and world history. She gave me an
inspiring opportunity to give a talk to her students in April 2001 on
the African Predicament. The challenging questions her students
raised for our discussion during the talk compelled me to seek to
understand what happened that Africa and Africans became objects
of scorn, enslavement, spoliation, colonization, and exploitative
enclosures in world capitalist imperial history.
Being in this land, I realized that virtually no part of the modern
United States as well as the capitalist world system—the economy,
education, constitutional law, religious institutions, sports, literature,
economics, even protest movements—can be understood without
first understanding the slavery and dispossession that laid its
foundation. To that end, I opted to dig deeply into Europe’s
colonization of Africa and the New World, when, from Columbus’s
arrival until the Civil War, some tens of million Africans and some
5 million Native Americans were forced to build and cultivate a
society extolling “liberty and justice for all.” The seventeenth
century was an era when the roots of slavery, white supremacy, and
capitalism became inextricably tangled into a complex history
involving war and revolts in Europe, England’s conquest of the
Scots and Irish, the development of formidable new weaponry able
to ensure Europe’s colonial dominance, the rebel merchants of
North America who created “these United States,” and the hordes
of Europeans whose newfound opportunities in this “free” land
amounted to “combat pay” for their efforts as “white” settlers.
Centering this book on Africa in the Colonial ages of Empire, I
attempt to provide a deeply researched, harrowing account of the
apocalyptic loss and misery of Africa and its people that likely has
no parallel in human history. Such an effort could not succ