Call for papers issue 24

Thematic Dossier:
“Colonising and decolonising: Europe-Africa relations in the 19th and 20th centuries”

Scientific coordination:
Isabel Castro Henriques
Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal

The call for articles for the Thematic Dossier “Colonising and decolonising: Europe-Africa relations in the 19th and 20th centuries” is open until December 31, 2024.

Synopsis:
Relations between Europe and the African continent, marked since the 15th century by the commercial dimension, centred on the slave commodity – the enslaved African being bought and exported preferably to the Americas –, changed progressively in the 19th century, acquiring a new relational organisation from the end of the 19th century. The effective occupation of African territories by Europeans and the establishment of a complex system of exploitation of African men, land and wealth marked the colonial relations that were organised, leading to the loss of African autonomy and European domination. The European colonial system lasted for decades, fuelled by myths and ideological justifications, and marked by violent practices of exploitation and control of populations. It came to an end in the 1960s in a large part of the continent, thanks to the resistance of Africans and the ideas of freedom that were blowing through the Western world, but remained in the Portuguese case until 1974, after 13 years of war and destruction, which violently marked African territories and peoples until their national independence.

Guidelines:
This Dossier aims to reflect on European colonialism in Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries, trying to explain, through current historical knowledge, the colonial fact – one, similar, transversal in its ideas and practices – structured in different territorial and national strands, and highlighting the deconstruction of myths, ideas and theories that have succeeded each other and metamorphosed to legitimise and justify colonial violence. It is also about giving a voice to Africans, so silenced by the colonial system, by listening to their interpretations of a reality from the near past that left significant marks on their daily lives. The end of colonialism, marked by conflicts of different kinds, the ambiguities of decolonisation and the independence of African countries, but also Africans' current interpretation of this recent historical reality, constitute the other dimension of the historiographical journey of this collective work.

1. The European Occupation of an Autonomous Africa: Exploration, Conquest, Domination (c. 1880-1930)
2. The Construction of a Mythology Legitimising Colonial Violence: Ideas and Facts (c. 1880-1930)
3. The Work of Civilisation: Religion, Instruction, Discrimination, and the Destruction of African Cultures (c. 1930-1960)
4. Colonial Exploitation: The Reorganisation of Territories, the Creation of the ‘Indigenous’ and the Violence of Labour, Taxation and Compulsory Cultures (c. 1930-1960)
5. The Voice of the Africans: Strategies, Resistances, Struggles (c. 1930-1974)
6. Late Portuguese Colonialism and the Legitimisation of Development. New Theories and Myths: Luso-Tropicalism. The ‘Make-up’ of the Colonial System and the Renewed Defence of the Empire (c. 1960-1974)
7. The Propaganda of Colonised Africa through the Image: Advertising, Cinema, Drawing, Press, Exhibitions and Literature
8. Decolonisation and Independence: concepts, perspectives, interpretations of the processes of organising the new African states in the 1960s. The late end of the Portuguese colonies: 1974-1975