Dean of the College and Africana Studies Program Present
On the Limits of Colonial Sovereignty
Candidate for African History Tenure-Track Position
Nathan R. Carpenter, Ph.D.
University of California, Davis
Arbitrary rule---unrestrained and violent---was at the very heart of colonial sovereignty in French West Africa. So too, however, was the idea that the territorial limits of state power were well defined. What happened, then, when colonial sovereignty came up against a conception of state power as conditional, where claims of authority were testable and refutable. This talk will examine how communities responded to colonial partition in northern French Guinea. In so doing, it will also consider what an investigation into the origins and maintenance of colonial borders can tell us about the nature of state sovereignty in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Africa.
For more information, call 845-758-7219, or e-mail [email protected].
Location: RKC 103