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This paper discusses the Polish Maritime and Colonial League's ambitions to acquire colonies in Africa for Poland in the interwar period, using two cases of expeditions to Africa organised by the League: 1928 expedition to Angola and M/S Poznań's 1935 trade expedition to West Africa. These cases serve as examples of newcomers in the race for colonies who attempted to carve their share in Africa's resources by cooperation with Africans and European colonial powers, and the ways in which knowledge production and knowledge retrieval were used in the process. They reproduced European stereotypes about Africa and Africans, conceptualised Africa as terra nullius waiting to be cultivated by Europeans, and themselves as white Europeans destined to do this. Despite lack of lasting success of the League's projects, they reveal a network of colonial and inter-colonial encounters in Africa encompassing the existing empires and Africans, but also aspiring colonials. Thus, rather than a marginal phenomenon, they appear as one having a global context, entangled in the circulation of ideas and peoples, networks of competition and cooperation across and beyond colonial empires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that both Michael Banton and John Rex were ‘children of empire’, albeit in starkly different ways, and that these differences were at the core of their querulous exchanges over their long careers. The larger issue, however, concerns the impact of colonialism on sociology, especially in its formative years, and conversely, the role of sociology in providing erudite justification for colonialism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

One of the most unintended consequences of colonial rule in French West Africa was the Islamization of large parts of it. Islamic movements have often been interpreted in specifically political terms, as instances of 'collaboration' with or 'resistance' to colonial domination. They can better be understood in terms of the emergence of a qualitatively new 'Islamic sphere' conceptually separate from 'particular' affiliations such as ethnicity, kin group membership or slave origins, as well as from the colonial state. This paper considers two cases in detail: the Hamawiyya, a branch of the Tijani Sufi order whose leader was exiled by the French and which was brutally repressed in the 1940s; and the `Wahhabiyya', an anti-Sufi movement which emerged after World War II. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the dynamics of interracial sexual relationships in the Colony of Sierra Leone during the era of the new imperialism between 1870 and 1914. Although British anxieties about interracial sexual relationships and mixed-race progeny were evident before the era of the new imperialism, it was in the late nineteenth century that British imperial and colonial authorities created more rigid racial hierarchies that hardened the delineations between colonisers, intermediary proxy groups, and the colonised. However, it was not only Europeans who disapproved of interracial sex during the new imperialism, and the adoption of a Victorian sexual ethos and cultural nationalism among the Creole population contributed to their social disapproval of interracial sex. These attitudes had an impact on race relations that resulted in the clandestine nature of interracial sex in colonial Sierra Leone from the late nineteenth century and the shame attached to mixed-race ancestry in colonial society. This article examines the shifting attitudes of social disapproval towards interracial sexual relationships displayed by both Europeans and Creoles in colonial Sierra Leone and analyses the impact these attitudes had on the dynamics of interracial sexual relationships and on the mixed-race heritage of the Creole ethnic group during the era of the new imperialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an immediate connection between British histories of trade, empire and colonialism and the West African collections at the Manchester Museum. All objects have the potential to impart information about moments in their lives and a close reading of these collections show how objects actively shaped local and global networks of understanding within and between the locales of West Africa and Manchester. Through a series of collection-based case studies linking objects and archives, this article provides evidence of how narratives relating to complex histories of empire are not confined to one type of object or to collections donated at a particular time. Each object history is unique; put together these histories encapsulate a complex range of interactions. A 'culture of amnesia' has meant that the underlying politics concerning the contacts and exchanges necessary to enable the physical movement of an object from one cultural context to another has, until recently, been left unexamined. This article aims to show that, via a detailed consideration of objects in the collections at the Manchester Museum and the evidence associated with them, it is possible to explore this phenomenon. In doing so this article will add to the body of research aimed at revealing the potential and importance of using museum collections to recover neglected histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]