Through their participation in an unequal Atlantic commerce, African merchants on the Gold Coast consciously transformed their dress in ways that expressed their cultural dynamism and economic success in an increasingly interconnected world. In discussing the web of cross-cultural commercial exchanges between Africa, Asia, and Europe, this article moves away from the tendency to regard Africans who adorned themselves in imported European clothing and textiles as ‘creole’ or ‘Europeanized’ elites. Labels like these not only assume the existence of an African cultural essence, but (inadvertently) deny the dynamism that has always characterized African cultures prior to the Atlantic economy. In the case of the Gold Coast, I examine how the Gã and Fante mercantile elite translated imported textiles and clothing into new cultural meanings, aesthetics and norms that emphasized family integrity, power as well as the ancestral, material and commercial value of inherited imported articles of adornment.

In 1921 and 1924 Muhammadu Dikko, the emir of Katsina, traveled to Britain on a sightseeing trip, becoming the first emir or chief from Northern Nigeria to visit the British imperial metropole. This article analyzes the colonial relationship that put Dikko in the colonizers’ orbit and favor and paved the way for him to embark on the trips, the colonial logistics and networks that facilitated the journeys, Dikko's experiences and adventures in Britain, and, most importantly, his perspectives on British society, institutions, goods, and forms of leisure. I argue that Dikko, though constrained by serving as a prop in a colonial performance of power, used travel to Britain as a platform to advance metropolitan modernity as an aspirational if distant model of socioeconomic advancement and to give his peers and subjects in Northern Nigeria a textual reference for navigating colonial culture in relation to their own natal Islamo-Hausa cultural norms.

Czechoslovak ‘people's democracy’ supplied a model for the development of a South African notion of a ‘national democratic’ revolution as well as providing key skills and resources. Czechoslovak support for this project in the 1960s and 1970s was both a source of confidence and fragility for South African Communists, boosting morale but confirming their subordinate status in their partnership with African nationalism. Drawing upon Czech archival materials as well as memoirs and interviews, this paper explores encounters and connections between South African Communists and the Czechs against the backdrop of the broader strategic concerns that shaped Soviet and Eastern European support for South African liberatory politics.

Although John W. Colenso thought that he was merely acting as amicus curiae — a friend of the court — in compiling evidence to explain Langalibalele's supposed rebellion in 1873, the Bishop of Natal ended up writing a damning anti-colonial tract. This paper will attempt to show how this report — written for the Queen and Colenso's House of Lord peers — is not just an achievement in legal refutation and forensic analysis but that it was a linguistic and cultural statement about the working and limits of Zulu law as Colenso understood it through his interactions with his Natal converts. Although it is obvious that Colenso's audience was not moved by his supplications on Langalibelele's behalf, it is less obvious why those who thought of Colenso as a maverick and heretic should have ignored his thorough repudiation of cultural chauvinism. The paper will suggest that Colenso's Remarks were ignored precisely because to take them seriously would have meant abandoning the authoritarian underpinnings of the late 19th century colonial project.

This article explores the different trajectories of advertising for schnapps gin and beer in Ghana and Nigeria during the period of decolonisation and independence up to 1975. It analyses published newspaper advertisements alongside correspondence, advertising briefs, and market research reports found in business archives. Advertising that promoted a ‘modern’ life-style worked for beer, but not for gin. This study shows how advertisements became the product of negotiations between foreign companies, local businesses, and consumers. It provides insights into the development of advertising in West Africa, the differing ways in which African consumers attached meanings to specific commodities, and possibilities for the use of advertisements as sources for African history.

Propaganda from Biafra and pro-Biafran rhetoric generated by its supporters drew heavily on ideas of modernity. This continued a pattern of associations rooted in colonial-era policies and ethnic stereotypes, and also represented a deliberate rhetorical strategy aimed at both internal and external audiences. During the second half of the Nigeria–Biafra War, the concept of race assumed an increasingly prominent role in both Biafran and pro-Biafran discourse, in part because of the diminished persuasiveness of Biafran claims about Nigeria's genocidal intentions. Arguments about race dovetailed with established claims about modernity in ways that persist today.

On the fiftieth anniversary of an ambiguous event – the referendum giving French Africans the choice of immediate independence or a new status within a ‘French Community’ – this article points to the alternative forms of political action which opened up at certain moments in African history and how, at other moments, some of those alternatives closed down. It assesses concepts, issues and arguments used in writing the history of Africa, now that the recent African past – spanning the last years of colonial rule and the years of independence – is becoming a focus of historical inquiry.

After an ill-fated religious revival, the Sufi teacher Yacouba Sylla and his followers became wealthy and politically influential in post-Second World War Côte d'Ivoire. They argued for an understanding of democratization and development that defined both ideas in terms of their community's own mystical experiences and world-historical significance, rather than in terms of modernity. As a way of making sense of their own past and defending their place in an increasingly tense political environment, these efforts achieved their most explicit articulation in a powerful story about Yacouba Sylla's refusal of a gift from Ivoirian President Félix Houphouët-Boigny.