Short Abstract

This panel uses a transimperial lens to rethink the history of colonialism and decolonization in Africa in the twentieth-century. Rather than treating colonies simply as extensions of individual imperial states, it highlights how African experiences were shaped by intercolonial relations.

Long Abstract

Recent scholarship in colonial history shows that empires did not operate in isolation: they learned from, influenced, and constrained one another while confronting comparable political, economic, and social challenges. This work has also underscored the analytical value of transimperial and interimperial approaches to African history, which seek to recover the multiplicity of actors, connections, circulations, and interactions that shaped colonial trajectories across different contexts and scales. Rather than treating colonies primarily as extensions of individual imperial states, the panel highlights the negotiations, conflicts, exchanges, and forms of cooperation that linked colonial powers to one another and, in turn, shaped African experiences of colonial rule. It looks into the ways in which African populations, especially those living near colonial borders, could manouvre colonial conflicts and use them to their own advantage. Bringing together a range of regional and thematic case studies, and focusing on the period from the end of the First World War to decolonization, it explores how ideas, expertise, institutions, policies, and personnel circulated across imperial boundaries, while also attending to the limits, asymmetries, and political tensions of such exchanges.

This Panel has 1 pending paper proposal.
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