H378

Department of History,
SOAS,
Thornhaugh Street,
Russell Square,
London
WC1H 0XG

United Kingdom

history@soas.ac.uk

Tel: +44(0)20 7898 4600 Fax: +44(0)20 7898 4639

H378 Muslim Societies in French Colonial Africa, c.1830-1960
(Dr. M. Miran)
15 480 0215

The course is concerned with the social, cultural, and religious history of the varied Islamic societies of North and West Africa in the turbulent era of French colonial rule. Although the structural features which have shaped the ideology and practice of French colonialism will be discussed, the main focus is on local, indigenous societies and on the many changes they underwent in the wake of the enforcement of the new political and economic order. The course will introduce the student to the paradigms of tradition and modernization, European and alternative modernities, acculturation and resistance to French hegemony, the power of negotiation of the colonized, and the construction of new identities. Careful investigation of local contexts will then allow the student to form a critical opinion of these paradigms. The period under consideration extends from the French conquest of Algiers in 1830 to the demise of France’s empire in Africa in the early 1960’s. The geographical setting is the French Maghrib and the Federation of French West Africa, with emphasis on Algeria, Morocco, Senegal and Soudan Français (modern Mali). The course thus deliberately attempts to reconnect the histories of African Muslim societies north and south of the Sahara, all too often dealt separately in the general historiography.

Brenner, L. Controlling knowledge: religion, power and schooling in a West African Muslim Society (Hurst & Co. 2001).
Clancy-Smith, J. Rebel and Saint. Muslim notables, Populist Protest, Colonial Encounters (Algeria and Tunisia, 1800-1904)(University of California Press 1994).
Levtzion N. and Pouwels R. (eds.). The History of Islam in Africa (Ohio University Press 2000)
Manning P., Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa, 1880-1985 (Cambridge 1988).