The History of Guinea

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamed Saliou Camara
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Arable Land ◽  
Mineral Resources ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Nation States ◽  
History Of ◽  
Military Campaigns ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Civilian Leadership

Like most of post-colonial African nation-states, Guinea is the product of Europe’s colonial partition of the continent at the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885. France followed up on the Berlin arrangements with military campaigns against West African rulers and treaties with other European colonial powers (Britain and Portugal) vying for territories in the region and the Republic of Liberia. However, the ancient communities whose descendants inhabit the Republic of Guinea were part and parcel of some of the greatest kingdoms and empires that marked West Africa’s history between the 6th and 19th centuries (Ghana, Mali, Songhay, Batè, Wassolon, and Futa-Jallon). Islam, which was introduced into the region through trans-Saharan trade, scholarship, and wars involving Muslim North Africa and Islamized elites of the Bilad as-Sudan, gained prominence and ultimately became the dominant religion in Guinea. The Atlantic Slave Trade spearheaded by the Portuguese, and the succeeding legitimate trade opened West Africa to colonial conquest and occupation in the late 19th to early 20th centuries. Under French occupation, Guinea underwent major political, cultural, social, and economic mutations brought about by events and processes such as its integration into the French West Africa Federation and its multifaceted participation in the World Wars, as well as in France’s colonial wars in Indochina and Algeria. In the process, a nationalist anti-colonial consciousness evolved and crystallized, leading to the country’s advent to independence in 1958. As the sole French colony to reject Charles de Gaulle’s Franco-African Community, its modern history is in many ways unique. Since independence, Guinea has gone through a pro-Soviet single-party regime, military rule, and a shaky transition to the current civilian leadership, whose record of democratic governance has been checkered at best. Economic development has also been largely elusive, despite the abundance of arable land and mineral resources. This notable uniqueness notwithstanding, the history of Guinea does epitomize in some respects that of the African continent.

scholarly journals The Values of Versatility: Pharmacists, Plants, and Place in the French (Post)Colonial World

2016 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 432-462 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Monnais ◽  
Noémi Tousignant
Keyword(s):  
Medicinal Plant ◽  
Scientific Activity ◽  
Public Health Care ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Plant Medicine ◽  
History Of ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
Simple Equations ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractColonial pharmacists bio-prospected, acclimatized, chemically screened, and tinkered with plants and their parts, hoping to create products to supply colonial public health care, metropolitan industries, and imperial markets. This article's approach is to examine the trajectories of expertise of two French colonial pharmacists, Franck Guichard and Joseph Kerharo, to illuminate the history of modern medicinal plant research. Both men studied medicinal plants as part of their colonial duties, yet their interests in indigenous therapies exceeded and outlived colonial projects. We take this “overflow” as our point of departure to explore how science transformed medicinal plant values in French colonial and postcolonial contexts. Our focus is on the relationship between value and space—on the processes of conceptual and material (de-/re-)localization through which plant value is calculated, intensified, and distributed. We study and compare these processes in French Indochina and French West Africa where Guichard and Kerharo, respectively, engaged in them most intensively. We show that their engagements with matter, value, knowledge, and mobility defy easy categorizations of medicinal plant science as either extractive or neo-traditionalist. By eschewing simple equations of scientists' motivations with political projects and knowledge-production, we argue that approaching plant medicine through trajectories of expertise opens up grounds for finer analyses of how colonial power and projects, and their legacies, shaped scientific activity.

scholarly journals KEKRISTENAN DAN NASIONALISME DI INDONESIA

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-141
Author(s):  
Arthur Aritonang
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
New Order ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
History Of Christianity ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Old Order ◽  
History Of ◽  
Monetary Crisis ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Over Time

“Kekristenan dan Nasionalisme di Indonesia” membahas mengenai sejarah kekristenan di Indonesia yang diasumsikan sebagai agama yang pro terhadap penjajah dari Barat namun asumsi itu tidak benar sebagai bukti ada banyak tokoh Kristen yang ikut memperjuangkan kemerdekaan Indonesia dengan didasarkan semangat nasionalisme. Kemudian pasca-kolonial Belanda kekristenan ingin menampilkan wajah baru yang sungguh-sungguh keindonesiaan dengan lahirnya organisasi DGI/PGI. Namun seiring waktu ketika berakhirnya era orde baru dan memasuki era reformasi, kekristenan dan masyarakat lainnya di Indonesia menghadapi arus gelombang yang mengatas-namakan agama yang pergerakannya cukup masif dibandingkan di era orde lama diantaranya: kelompok Islam fundamentalis yang ingin menjadikan NKRI bersyariat Islam, adanya gerakan politik transnasional HTI yang ingin menghidupkan kembali kejayaan Islam pada abad ke-6 dan faham Wahabisme yang sarat dengan kekerasan. Persoalan lainnya ialah adanya kemiskinan yang terstruktur akibat dari krisis moneter yang melanda di Indonesia tahun 1997. Melalui masalah ini, setiap agama-agama di Indonesia harus melakukan konvergensi atas dasar keprihatinan yang sama. Abstract: Christianity and Nationalism in Indonesia” discuss the history of Christianity in Indonesia, which is assumed to be a religion that is pro to Western colonialism. Still, this assumption is incorrect as evidence that many Christian figures fought for Indonesian independence based on the spirit of nationalism. Then post-colonial of Dutch, Christianity wanted to be presented a truly Indonesian face with the birth of the DGI / PGI organization. But over time when the end of the new order and entering the era of reform, Christianity and the other societies in Indonesia faced challenges in the name of religion whose movements were quite massive compared to the old order including fundamentalist Islamic groups who wanted to make the Republic of Syariat Muslim Indonesia, a transnational HTI political movement that wanted to revive the glory of Islam in the 6th century and the ideology of Wahhabism which is loaded with violence. Another problem is the existence of structured poverty due to the monetary crisis that hit Indonesia in 1997. Through this problem, every religion in Indonesia must converge on the basis of the same concerns.

State of Violence

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yan Slobodkin
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Cote D'ivoire ◽  
Ivory Coast ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
Administrative Practice ◽  
Colonial Policy ◽  
History Of

AbstractThis article highlights a moment in the history of French West Africa when violence was both ubiquitous and forbidden. During the interwar period, French reformers pushed for the elimination of the routine use of violence by colonial administrators. The intervention of activist journalists and human rights groups put pressure on colonial policy makers to finally bring administrative practice in line with imperial rhetoric. Local administrators, however, felt that such meddling interfered with their ability to govern effectively. A case of torture and murder by French functionaries in the Ivory Coast village of Oguiédoumé shows how struggles over antiviolence reform played out from the ground up.Cet article souligne un moment dans l'histoire de l'Afrique-Occidentale Française où la violence a été à la fois omniprésente et interdite. Pendant l'entre-deux-guerres, des réformistes français ont lutté pour éliminer la violence quotidienne commise par les administrateurs coloniaux. L'intervention des journalistes militants et des organisations des droits de l'homme a poussé l'Etat colonial à réaliser les promesses de la mission civilisatrice. Par contre, les administrateurs locaux sentaient que ce discours contre la violence limitait leur capacité de gouverner avec efficacité. Une affaire de torture et de meurtre commis en 1933 par des fonctionnaires français dans le village d'Oguiédoumé en Côte-d'Ivoire montre comment la lutte contre la violence a influencé la situation coloniale sur place.

scholarly journals Matacong Island: A Short History of a Small Island on the West Coast of Africa

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (6.) ◽  
pp. 8-43
Author(s):  
Takehiko Ochiai
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Small Island ◽  
Water Color ◽  
Republic Of Guinea ◽  
Sierra Leonean ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The University ◽  
The 19Th Century

This article aims to examine how Matacong Island, a small island just off the coast of the Republic of Guinea, West Africa, was claimed its possession by local chiefs, how it was leased to and was used by European and Sierra Leonean merchants, and how it was colonized by Britain and France in the 19th century. In 1825 the paramount chief of Moriah chiefdom agreed to lease the island to two Sierra Leonean merchants, and in 1826 it was ceded to Britain by a treaty with chiefs of the Sumbuyah and Moriah chiefdoms. Since the island was considered as a territory exempted from duty, British and Sierra Leonean merchants used it as an important trading station throughout the 19th century. Major exports of Matacong Island included palm kernels, palm oil, hides, ivory, pepper and groundnuts, originally brought by local traders from the neighboring rivers, and major imports were tobacco, beads, guns, gunpowder, rum, cotton manufactures, iron bars and hardware of various kinds. In 1853 alone, some 80 vessels, under British, American, and French flags, anchored at Matacong Island. By the convention of 1882, Britain recognized the island as belonging to France. Although the convention was never ratified, it was treated by both countries as accepted terms of agreement. The article considers various dynamics of usage, property, and territorial possession as relates to the island during the 19th century, and reveals how complex they were, widely making use of the documents of The Matacong Island (West Africa) Papers at the University of Birmingham Library in Britain. The collection purchased by the library in 1969 is composed of 265 historical documents relating to Matacong Island, such as letters, agreements, newspaper-cuttings, maps and water-color picture

Francophone Africa at fifty

2013 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Francophone Africa ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
Sub Saharan

2010 marked the 50th anniversary of the ‘Year of Africa’. All France’s colonies in sub-Saharan Africa gained their independence in that year. This book brings together leading scholars from across the globe to review ‘Francophone Africa at Fifty’. It examines continuities from the colonial to the post-colonial period and analyses the diverse and multi-faceted legacy of French colonial rule in sub-Saharan Africa. It also reviews the decolonization of French West Africa in comparative perspective and observes how independence is remembered and commemorated fifty years on.

Vocabularies of Spatiality in French Colonial Urbanism: Some Covert Rationales of Street Names in Colonial Dakar, West Africa and Saigon, Indochina

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (8) ◽  
pp. 1109-1127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ambe J. Njoh ◽  
Esther P. Chie
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Political Power ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
French Military ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
Colonial Urbanism

The study analyses toponymic practices in two colonial spaces on two continents. The colonial spaces, Dakar and Saigon, were capitals of the Federation of French West Africa and French Indochina, respectively. Toponymy is used as a tool to articulate socio-cultural and political power in both spaces; also, streets were christened after French military, politico-administrative and religious personalities. Two differences are noted. First, streets in colonial Saigon were named after French military heroes and clergymen, while streets in Dakar were named after French political luminaries. Second, post-colonial Saigon witnessed efforts to re-appropriate the city’s identity, but not so in Dakar.

The Air Factor in West Africa's Colonial Defence 1920–1945: A Neglected Theme

Itinerario ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-24
Author(s):  
Yomi Akinyeye
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Capital Intensity ◽  
Military History ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
Naval Warfare ◽  
The World ◽  
Long Time ◽  
History Of

The colonial military history of British and French West Africa has received copious attention from historians and soldiers. The role of the region in the two world wars has also been discussed in one way or the other. However, in the discussion of West Africa's colonial military history and the role of the colonies in the two world wars, hardly any reference is made to the air factor. While discussions of colonial military history concentrate on infantry and naval exploits, those on the role of the colonies in the world wars concentrate on their importance as sources of raw materials and manpower for British and French war efforts in other theatres of the wars. The wrong impressions thus given are that the air factor was alien to West Africa's colonial defence and that the region was largely outside the strategic manoeuvres of the two world wars. This is understandable in that the Maxim gun and the gunboat had largely been responsible for the conquest and policing of West Africa. Moreover, while infantry and naval warfare had been the mode of combat in all societies from time immemorial the air as a factor of warfare is largely a phenomenon of the twentieth century. Lastly, strategists in British West Africa ignored the air factor for a very long time because of its capital intensity.

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