The Routledge Companion to Postcolonial African Historiography

List of Contributors

Preface

Immanuel R. Harisch and Thula Simpson

Part I: Histories

1 The Evolution of Africanist Historiography

Thula Simpson and Immanuel R. Harisch

2 The Political Use of History from the Nineteenth-Century Gold Coast to Nkrumah’s Ghana

Matteo Grilli

3 History and the Politics of the Past in Côte d’Ivoire

Konstanze N’Guessan

4 The Teaching and Writing History at Makerere in Uganda, 1950s until 2020s

Pamela Khanakwa

5 The Dar es Salaam Schools of History, c. 1960s – 1980s

Immanuel R. Harisch

6 Trends in Historical Studies on Angola and Mozambique from Decolonisation to the Present

Justin Pearce

7 Umkhonto we Sizwe and its Historians

Thulasizwe Simpson

8 Terence Ranger, Patriotic History, and the Dangers of a “big man” in a Young Nation’s History

Diana Jeater

9 Urban Worlds in Motion: A Survey of African Urban Historiography

Carl-Philipp Bodenstein

Part II: Perspectives

10 How I Became an Africanist Historian

Neil Parsons

11 “History is and remains the Soul of Society”

Drissa Kone

12 A Discipline under Threat: The Status of History in Zambia

Clarence Chongo

13 What makes an Africanist Historian?

Simplice Ayangma Bonoho

14 The Making of a Historian

Bryson G. Nkhoma

Index

Biography

Thula Simpson is presently affiliated to the Department of Historical and Heritage Studies at the University of Pretoria and is an editor of the Journal of African History. His research specializations include the history of the African National Congress’s armed struggle, modern South African history, and African historians and historiography. His publications on these topics include Umkhonto we Sizwe: The ANC’s Armed Struggle (2016), History of South Africa: From 1902 to the Present (2021), and the edited ANC and the Liberation Struggle in South Africa: Essential Writings (2017), and History Beyond Apartheid: New Approaches in South African Historiography. His contributions to this book are based on research supported by the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Immanuel R. Harisch is currently a Post-Doctoral researcher in a project on Zambian-Yugoslav relations at the University of Vienna, Austria. His thesis on African trade unions during the Cold War has been awarded the Walter Markov Price for Global History and the Young Scholars’ Award 2024 of the German African Studies Association. He has studied, worked and researched in Tanzania and Zambia and has published edited volumes and articles on African socialisms, East-South relations and historical knowledge production. Since 2021 he has been the managing editor of the fully open access journal Stichproben. Vienna Journal of African Studies.

'The turn of the century brought steep challenges to historians interested in Africa's past. Such challenges have forced some backward steps, but also some maturation and growth. The present volume provides readers with examples and the much needed context to understand the many changes that have resulted in what today is a diverse, rich, embattled and yet thriving field.' – Esperenza Brizuela-Garcia, Montclair State University