Boundaries, Communities and State-Making in West Africa

Rezensionen / Stimmen

'This must-read West African showpiece, magnificently executed in the finest traditions of African historical scholarship, with notably intensive archival and library research and extensive fieldwork, should be replicated for other regions to bridge a yearning gap in African and global historiography.' Anthony I. Asiwaju, University of Lagos, Nigeria 'A model example of deeply-contextualized comparative research. It makes a compelling case that the analytical framework within which African states are viewed should be shifted from 'neo-patrimonialism' to 'social contract' - the latter being deftly deployed throughout this well-written and accessible study.' Gareth Austin, University of Cambridge 'This ambitious work argues that to understand states and state-making in contemporary Africa, one must focus on 'the margins' - that is, on the making of boundaries and borders. This radical redefinition of analytic perspective, developed in a text of grand historical and spatial sweep, has produced a book that will be a great interest to historians, political scientists, geographers and anthropologists.' Catherine Boone, London School of Economics and Political Science 'A tremendously creative study, masterfully bringing to the West African fore that which has hitherto been seen as marginal: the edges of the colonial and postcolonial state. With his fine frontier brush, Nugent paints us a different conceptual picture of how we ought to reimagine the centres and perimeters of African polities.' William F. S. Miles, Northeastern University, Boston