African Histories in Literature

This seminar aims to read African histories as represented in literature by African and Caribbean writers. Between 1878 and 1898, a significant number of European countries colonised major parts of Africa.  Between the early 1500s and the 1860s, European slave traders forced some 12.5 million men, women, and children aboard transatlantic slave ships on Africa’s shores to transport them to European colonies in America, the Caribbean, and Latin America. The transatlantic slave trade, also called the Middle Passage, was finally forbidden in 1807 in Britain (although slavery continued in British colonies until 1838) and 1865 in the United States. In the early phase of the 19^th century when Europe was going through its Industrial Revolution, more and more European nations set up colonies in Africa to acquire more power and wealth, which resulted in the Scramble of Africa. After the Berlin Conference in 1884, almost all of Africa was divided among European nations, which they ruled until after the Second World War. As the forces of nationalism grew stronger all over Africa, several states became independent in the 1950s and 1960s.

Although the Windrush generation, consisting of the Caribbean migrants moving to Britain in 1945 and 1960 to bridge the labour gap as a result of two great wars, led to a large Black population in Britain, many Africans from Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, among others, moved to different Western countries to escape civil wars, political persecution, poverty, or gender discrimination in their own countries, as more and more African governments became increasingly autocratic. For example, just as the Biafran War (1967-1970), also called the Nigerian Civil War in Nigeria compelled many Nigerians to migrate to the West, the increasingly authoritarian government of the then leader Kwame Nkrumah, who led Ghana to its independence in 1957, also forced people to seek asylum or better living opportunities abroad. Hence, the African history of colonisation is as diverse as its history of decolonisation, which is manifested in a great amount of African anglophone literature. Indeed, the different dimensions of African histories seem to have engaged many contemporary writers, especially African diasporic writers, who fictionalise history to make sense of Africa from the perspective of our globalised world, urging African diasporic writers to write about the past from a new angle. The main objective of the course is to explore the history of slavery and suppression, the brutal process of the colonisation of Africa, the marginalization of Blacks in Britain, as documented in the frames of selected fiction. Upon completion of the course, it is expected that students can show their understanding of African history in literature in class presentation and in the exam or term-paper.