Mali’s participation in the West Africa’s integration processes

The first ever integration bloc in Africa was formed back in the colonial era in 1910, when a number of British colonies were integrated. Modern integration processes in the African countries in the south of the Sahara began much later, from the early 1960s, when most of the former colonies gained independence, and it was during this period that the construction of a number of economic blocks began. The article reveals integration processes in West Africa and sub-Saharan African countries features. Integration as such is viewed as a complex procedure, with the success way which depends on many factors. On the experience of the Republic of Mali, the authors demonstrated how an irrational socio-economic policy can lead to deformation of integration processes, which inevitably threatens with deep financial and socio-political crises.

The Legitimacy of Traditional Leaders in Democracies

This study analyses the issue of legitimacy that unfolds to understand the authority claims of traditional leaders underpinned by customary law in contrast to modern law and legislations in the democracies of two erstwhile British colonies: South Africa and the Tangkhul Nagas of India and Myanmar. The study enquires: if the warrant of modern and traditional law, the fulcrum of traditional leaders’ legitimacy, is questioned in the democratic dispensation, what is the underlying basis of legitimacy that makes traditional leaders resilient? It employs historical, cultural and linguistic analysis to understand how traditional leaders mediate legitimacy. It concludes that cultural cognitive categories like metaphors and aphorisms are instrumental in leveraging the legitimacy claims of traditional leaders across countries.

Long-Run and Short-Run Effects of Trade Openness on Life Quality in Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper contributes to the understanding of the other neglected effects of trade openness by analysing how it affects life quality in sub-Saharan African countries over the period 2000–2016. We used two trade openness indicators, namely: Squalli and Wilson index and the rate of trade. The empirical evidence is based on a pooled mean group approach. With two panels differentiated by their colonial origin, the following findings are established: the trade openness variable measured by Squalli and Wilson index has no effect on life quality in the both groups of countries in the short-run. However, it has a positive and significant effect on life quality in the both group of countries in the long-run. The use of the rate of trade confirms the results in the both groups of countries in the long-run. The contribution of trade openness to life quality is 3.27 and 5.19 times higher in the Former British Colonies than that recorded in the Former French Colonies of SSA respectively to the use of Squalli and Wilson index and the rate of trade. Overall, we find strong evidence supporting the view that trade openness promotes life quality in SSA countries in the long run.

The Portable Coup: The Jurisprudence of ‘Revolution’ in Uganda and Nigeria

In the years after independence, former British colonies in eastern and southern Africa struggled to fill the ranks of their judiciaries with African judges. Beginning in the mid-1960s, states including Uganda, Tanzania, and Botswana solved this problem by retaining judges from the Caribbean and West Africa, especially Nigeria. In this same period, a wave of coups brought many independent states under the rule of their militaries (or authoritarian civilian regimes). Foreign judges who had been appointed in the name of pan-African cooperation were tasked with interpreting the laws that soldiers imposed, and assessing the legitimacy of regimes born of coups. The decisions they rendered usually accommodated authoritarianism, but they could also be turned against it. To understand how colonial law and postcolonial solidarities shaped Africa's military dictatorships, this article focuses on one judge, Sir Egbert Udo Udoma of Nigeria, who served as Uganda's first African chief justice and was an influential member of the Nigerian Supreme Court. Udoma and other judges like him traversed the continent in the name of African cooperation, making a new body of jurisprudence as they did so. Their rulings were portable, and they came to underpin military rule in many states, both in Africa and in the wider Commonwealth.

Women’s Emancipation from Slavery in Africa in the 19th and 20th Centuries

Women were the majority of enslaved people in Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries. Slavery was transformed and expanded in the context of so-called “legitimate commerce” that followed the abolition of oceanic slave trading. Abolition proclamations followed, in British colonies in the 1830s, and elsewhere from the 1870s through much of the 20th century, but abolition did not equate to freedom. Gender was at the heart of emancipation everywhere. Colonial merchants and officials colluded with local male elites to ensure the least disruption possible to the status quo. For these male allies, emancipation was a contradiction in terms for women, because masculine authority and control over women was assumed. In many regions, it was difficult for Europeans to distinguish between marriage, pawnship, and slavery. Women engaged strategically with colonial institutions like the courts over such distinctions to assert some form of control over their own lives, labor, and bodies. Where slavery and marriage were categorically distinct, again women might engage with Western gender stereotypes of marriage to extricate themselves from the authority of former slaveholders, or they might withdraw their labor by fleeing from the farms. Whereas for Europeans women were ideally defined as subservient wives within nuclear families, for many women themselves motherhood and access to their children were key to struggles toward emancipation. Women’s decisions about their emancipation were influenced by many factors, including whether or not they were mothers, if they were born into slavery or enslaved as children or adults, their experiences of coercion and cruelty including sexual violence, their status within the slaveholding, and their relationships of dependency and support. Topography and location mattered; urban contexts offered different kinds of post-slavery opportunity for many, and access to land and other economic opportunities and limitations were critical. The abolition of slavery by European colonial officials did not emancipate women, but it did provide the context in which some women might negotiate or claim their own rights to freedom as they defined it—which in some cases meant walking away from systems of involuntary servitude. Some women engaged colonial officers and institutions directly to demand a change in status, whereas others decided to stay in relationships that, in many cases, were subtly redefined.

"From confederation to federation: transformation of the USA state structure between 1777 – 1789 "

The study examines the ideological foundations and prerequisites for the independence of the British colonies in North America. We examine the construction of the state system, first passing through the confederate model of state organization, which is the closest to the traditions of the colonial period. However, it failed due to some "defects" of the Articles of Confederation of 1777, the main one being the lack of financial security to pursue union politics. In 1787, the Constitutional Convention drafted a constitution for the United States, with centralism and unitarism prevailing in the discussions, abandoning some of the principles that prompted the Americans to begin the struggle for independence. The Constitution of 1787 and the Declaration of Rights, adopted two years later, put into practice the ideas of the European Enlightenment, supplemented by English parliamentary theory and practice. This creates a solid foundation for the development of the United States and the prosperity of the young "nation."

Indian Agent Involvement in the Establishment of Permanent Settlement for the South Indian Labouring Community, 1923–1941

This article investigates a long-neglected aspect of Indian Malaysian history, namely the Indian Agents of the Government of India to British Malaya. The Indian Agents were representatives of the Indian Government who were appointed under the Indian Immigration Act of 1922 to investigate and report on the state of affairs of Indian communities in the British colonies. The official duties of the Indian Agents in British Malaya were formalised under Section 73 (III) of the Labour Code 1923. Between 1923 and 1941, six Indian Agents were appointed in British Malaya. Throughout their tenure, they focused on and reported extensively on the socioeconomic conditions of the Indian working-class community, particularly south Indian labourers. One problem that came to their attention was the underdevelopment of the community’s permanent settlement in the country. The Federated Malay States (FMS) government did not appear to be concerned about the situation. Similarly, private estate managers reacted indifferently to the issue. Both saw permanent settlement as simply an economic measure to keep the community as a labour force, rather than a way to alleviate their socioeconomic hardships. This article shows how the Indian Agents were able to uncover a range of issues that were impeding the establishment of permanent settlements for south Indian labourers in the FMS. Some of them demonstrated exceptional levels of direct involvement. The article’s primary goal is to assess the degree to which the Indian Agents influenced the overall development of permanent Indian labour settlement.

Compromise and Defence: Great Britain and the Burma Road Crisis

China and Britain both found themselves in extremely precarious situations by the early summer of 1940, when Japan demanded that Britain close the Burma Road, a vital overland supply route for Chinese forces fighting against Japanese aggression. The British had just seen all of their continental European allies fall like dominoes to Hitler’s forces over the span of a few weeks, while China was fighting a losing defensive war against Japan with minimal outside support. China desperately needed to maintain its overland supply line to the British Empire, the Burma Road, but Britain feared that the very existence of this conduit of war materiel would provoke a Japanese attack on vulnerable British colonies in the Far East. American policy on Japanese aggression was ambiguous at this point and neither Britain nor China could realistically expect help from Washington in the short term. As a result, Britain signed a one-sided confidential memorandum to close the Burma Road to buy time and shore up its East Asian position to the extent that it was able. This deal, a lesser-studied counterpart to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement policy in Europe, compromised the Chinese war effort against Japan, paved the way for the Japanese conquest of Southeast Asia, and ultimately failed to prevent Britain’s defeat in East Asia. Recognizing that this temporary concession would not moderate Japanese behavior, Britain reopened the Burma Road three months later. This paper examines the vital role of the Burma Road in the Chinese war effort in 1940 and why Japan demanded that London close it, then explores the factors that led to Britain’s unavoidable capitulation on the issue and subsequent reversal three months later, along with the consequences for the Allied war effort in the Far East.