Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks African Employees in the Making of Colonial Africa

Name: Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks African Employees in the Making of Colonial Africa
Price: 80.25 USD
Availability: InStock
ISBN: 9780299219505

ISBN-10: 029921950X

ISBN-13: 9780299219505

Edition: 2006

Authors: Benjamin N. Lawrance, Emily Lynn Osborn, Richard L. Roberts

List price: $45.00

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Description:

As a young man in South Africa, Nelson Mandela aspired to be an interpreter or clerk, noting in his autobiography that "a career as a civil servant was a glittering prize for an African." Africans in the lower echelons of colonial bureaucracy often held positions of little official authority, but in practice the occupants of these positions functioned as hidden lynchpins of colonial rule. As the primary intermediaries among European colonial officials, African chiefs, and subject populations, these men (and a few women) could manipulate the intersections of power, authority, and knowledge at the center of colonial society. By uncovering the role of African civil servants in the…

Book details

List price: $45.00
Copyright year: 2006
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date: 9/29/2006
Binding: Hardcover
Pages: 342
Size: 6.00" wide x 9.00" long x 0.90" tall
Weight: 1.232
Language: English

Benjamin N. Lawrance is the Hon. Barber B. Conable, Jr Endowed Chair in International Studies of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He has authored eight books, most recently Amistad's Orphans (2014) and Trafficking in Slavery's Wake (2012). Lawrance is a legal consultant and has served as an expert witness for more than two hundred and fifty West African asylum claims in fifteen countries. His research is situated at the dynamic interdisciplinary intersection of history, anthropology, and sociology and is focused on international mobilities, including migration, smuggling, trafficking, forced marriage, and refugee movements.

Emily Lynn Osborn is an assistant professor of history at the University of Chicago.



Acknowledgments


Introduction: African Intermediaries and the "Bargain" of Collaboration



The Formative Period of Colonial Rule, ca. 1800-1920


An Interpreter Will Arise: Resurrecting Jan Tzatzoe's Diplomatic and Evangelical Contributions as a Cultural Intermediary on South Africa's Eastern Cape Frontier, 1816-1818



Interpreting Colonial Power in French Guinea: The Boubou Penda-Ernest Noirot Affair of 1905



Interpretation and Interpolation: Shepstone as Native Interpreter



Petitioners, "Bush Lawyers," and Letter Writers: Court Access in British-Occupied Lome, 1914-1920



Negotiating Legal Authority in French West Africa: The Colonial Administration and African Assessors, 1903-1918



The Maturing Phase of Colonial Rule, ca. 1920-1960


"Collecting Customary Law": Educated Africans, Ethnographic Writings, and Colonial Justice in French West Africa



Interpreters Self-Interpreted: The Autobiographies of Two Colonial Clerks



African Court Elders in Nyanza Province, Kenya, ca. 1930-1960: From "Traditional" to "Modern"



Power and Influence of African Court Clerks and Translators in Colonial Kenya: The Case of Khwisero Native (African) Court, 1946-1956



The District Clerk and the "Man-Leopard Murders": Mediating Law and Authority in Colonial Nigeria



Cultural Commuters: African Employees in Late Colonial Tanzania



Afterword


African Participation in Colonial Rule: The Role of Clerks, Interpreters, and Other Intermediaries




Personnel Files and the Role of Qadis and Interpreters in the Colonial Administration of Saint-Louis, Senegal, 1857-1911



Bibliography


Contributors


Index