Nationalism in Colonial Africa

by Thomas Lionel Hodgkin

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0814701914
• ISBN13: 9780814701911
• Release Date: January 1957
• Publisher: New York University Press
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Still classic after all these years [4 1/2 stars]

It's too bad that this timeless work, still surprisingly fresh despite its 1956 publication, is out of print. In it Hodgkin, a pioneer of African Studies in the UK, identifies the primary forces shaping politics in late colonial Africa: peasants, urban workers, Christian and syncretic churches, and rising educated intellectuals among others. His optimism over the approach of freedom remains refreshing. It loses half a star in its rating because he failed to anticipate the negative effect of the military and security forces after independence, but then so did most other contemporary observers. Hodgkin, a peer of Basil Davidson, was less prolific but more scholarly than Davidson, and just as readable. For some very acute insights on the early decades of the post-independence era, don't miss the outstanding article by Michael Crowder, "Whose Dream Was It Anyway? Twenty Five Years of African Independence," AFRICAN AFFAIRS (1987), 7-24.