Grad School Partial Notes on Paul Nugent’s "Africa Since Independence"

   BONUS LINK:  My entire (so far) grad school notes collection can be found here. 

   Partial Notes on Paul Nugent’s Africa Since Independence

Introduction: The Basis of Comparison:

- Excludes North Africa and many of the islands

- This account in dominated by politics and associated conflict

- Important to place material in a historical context; the closer one is to the event, the more dissonant and crowded voices there are.  This causes some important voices and storylines to get drowned out. 

-  Historical consensus emerges slowly and only from rigorous debate

- Speaks on the dangers of ‘Presentism’ where current events are too closely (or forcefully) associated with past events

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_(literary_and_historical_analysis)

-  Bayart asserts a longer view is needed, case in point being:

            Mobutu needs to be looked at in terms of a much longer history of extraversion,    over hundreds of years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobutu_Sese_Seko

- Seeks to look at colonial period as a connector between pre and post-colonial period

- Grey literature rose during the 80’s: This term refers to papers, reports, technical notes or other documents produced and published by governmental agencies, academic institutions and other groups that are not distributed or indexed by commercial publishers. Many of these documents are difficult to locate and obtain.

http://web.vims.edu/GreyLit/?svr=www

Here's a paper I wrote that uses Nugent's book:  British and French Legacies in West Africa.

The rest of my notes are embedded below.