The Spatial Factor In African History: The Relationship Of The Social, Material, and Perceptual (African Social Studies Series, 8)

The authors of this inter-disciplinary collection examine the role of space in six areas of West, Central and East Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They demonstrate the active quality of space and analyze the ways in which people have contested and shaped space, including responses to crises. In addition, a lengthy essay re-interprets tropical African history, 1800-1930, using spatial theory. Contributors look at how people have constructed mental maps, used discourse to organize territories, and perceived social landscapes. The studies employ a tri-level approach, one that moves from specific places to regions to macro-regional or transnational systems and back again. Authors draw upon written and oral sources to reconstruct the past and employ innovative mapping techniques to illustrate spatial dynamics. CONTENTS......Page 5 Titles and Locations of Maps and other Figures......Page 11 Introduction: African History and Social Space in Africa (Allen M. Howard and Richard M. Shain)......Page 13 Nodes, Networks, Landscapes, and Regions: Reading the Social History of Tropical Africa 1700s–1920 (Allen M. Howard)......Page 33 "Region" as Historical Production: Narrative Maps from the Western Serengeti, Tanzania (Jan Bender Shetler)......Page 153 Mobility, Genealogical Memory, and Constructions of Social Space in Northern Gabon (John M. Cinnamon)......Page 189 The Disappearing District? Territorial Transformation in Southern Gabon 1850–1950 (Christopher Gray)......Page 233 The Salt That Binds: The Historical Geography of a Central Nigerian Regional Identity (Richard M. Shain)......Page 257 Habitation and Warfare Strategies in 19th Century Mande—a View from the Kafu (Jan Jansen)......Page 273 Re-Marking on the Past: Spatial Structures and Dynamics in the Sierra Leone-Guinea Plain, 1860–1920s (Allen M. Howard)......Page 303 Abstracts......Page 361 Contributors......Page 365 Index......Page 367 In this collection authors apply spatial analysis to case studies of social, economic, and political dynamics in West, Central, and East Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth century. Also included is a lengthy essay re-interpreting tropical Africa, 1800-1930, using spatial theory.