There has been a lot of talk about empire and colonialism following the death of Queen Elizabeth II last week. Whilst many global leaders and commentators from the global north have been reverent, praising her for her sense of duty and the stabilising effect she has had on the United Kingdom, the sentiment is not shared in many former colonies where there has been a backlash against the whitewashing of history with the atrocities committed before and during her reign being swept under the carpet.
Here are ten books you should read to understand how empire and colonialism shaped Africa yesterday, today and tomorrow and its legacy on African people on the continent and beyond
First published in 1972, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa describes how European regimes exploited Africa for their own enrichment while simultaneously creating insurmountable obstacles to economic, political, and social progress on the continent. In contrast to other scholars, who focus on the economic aspects of African development, Rodney considers economics alongside politics and various aspects of culture, such as religion and education. His broad approach offers insights into the relationship between European development and African underdevelopment.
2. Petals of Blood by Ngugi wa Thiong’o
Set in the aftermath of Kenyan independence, Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s novel Petals of Blood follows schoolteachers Munira and Karega, and barmaid Wanja and her boss, Abdulla, as they cope with the rapid modernization of their rural village, Ilmorog. The novel examines the effects of the Mau Mau rebellion and the legacy of colonialism while criticizing the Kenyan government for reproducing the inequalities of the colonial regime.
3. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Things Fall Apart is the debut novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, first published in 1958. It depicts pre-colonial life in Nigeria and the invasion by Europeans during the late 19th century. The novel follows the life of Okonkwo, an Igbo man and local wrestling champion in the fictional Nigerian clan of Umuofia. Okonkwo is a great wrestler and warrior and his fame spreads throughout West Africa like a bush-fire in the harmattan. But when he accidentally kills a clansman, he is exiled from his village and things begin to fall apart. He returns from exile to find missionaries and colonial governors have arrived in the village. With his world thrown radically off-balance he can only hurtle towards tragedy.
Things Fall Apart is the first in Achebe’s landmark trilogy of works chronicling the fate of one African community, continued in Arrow of God and No Longer at Ease.
4. The Scramble for Africa by Thomas Pakenham
In 1880 the continent of Africa was largely unexplored by Europeans. Less than thirty years later, only Liberia and Ethiopia remained unconquered by them. The rest had been carved up by five European powers in the name of Commerce, Christianity, ‘Civilization’ and Conquest. The Scramble for Africa is a full-scale chronicle of that extraordinary episode in history.
5. Black Skin White Masks by Franz Fanon
Black Skin, White Masks offers a potent philosophical, literary and political analysis of the deep and enduring effects of racism and colonialism on the experiences, lives, minds and relationships of black people.
Fanon critiques the effects of racism on the psyche in this landmark study of the black experience in a white world. Drawing on his own life and his work as a psychoanalyst to explore how colonialism’s subjects internalise its prejudices, eventually emulating the ‘white masks’ of their oppressors, it established Fanon as a revolutionary anti-colonialist thinker.
6. God’s Bits of Wood by Ousmane Sembène,
Based on actual events surrounding the Senegalese railway workers strike of 1947, God’s Bits of Wood depicts the impact of the poverty and racism endured by the railway workers and their families in the French colony. Oppressed by the colonial railway administrators, the railway workers take action and seek to obtain family allowances and pension benefits, and better working conditions. The novel explores the impact of colonialism and the ways that the Senegalese and Malians responded to their oppression, and the repercussions are viewed from the perspective of various male and female characters.
7. Our Sister Killjoy by Ama Ata Aidoo
Out of Africa with her degree and her all-seeing eyes comes Sissie. She comes to Europe, to a land of towering mountains and low grey skies and tries to make sense of it all. What is she doing here? Why aren’t the natives friendly? And what will she do when she goes back home? The novel revolves around themes of race, culture and colonialism, in particular colonisation of the mind. Aidoo touches on the effects of post-colonialism and how the traditions and thoughts of the coloniser are instilled into the minds of the colonised and the need to have a connection to one’s past.
8. Out of Darkness, Shining Light by Petina Gappah
Petina Gappah’s powerful novel is a captivating story of the loyal men and women who carried explorer and missionary Dr. Livingstone’s body, his papers and maps, fifteen hundred miles across the continent of Africa, so his remains could be returned home to England and his work preserved there. Narrated by Halima, the doctor’s sharp-tongued cook, and Jacob Wainwright, a rigidly pious freed slave, this is a story that encompasses all of the hypocrisy of slavery and colonization—the hypocrisy at the core of the human heart—while celebrating resilience, loyalty, and love.
9. Song of Lawino by Okot p’Bitek
Okot p’bitek’s Song of Lawino is an extended poem narrated by Lawino, a traditional non-educated Acoli woman about her relationship with her educated husband who has abandoned the village society of his birth and fully embraced – both the good and the bad – of a modern Western way of life. It explores the clash of cultures and disruption to old ways brought about by the adoption of European way of life. More than 50 years since it was published, the issues explored still afflict many African societies.
10. Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih
The young narrator of Season of Migration to the North returns to his village along the Nile in the Sudan after years of study in Europe. It is the 1960s, and he is eager to make a contribution to the postcolonial life of his country. It is a tale of an unsettled and violent clash of cultures between Europe and Africa, tradition and innovation, holiness and defilement, and man and woman, from which no one will escape unaltered or unharmed.