The Bounds of Berlin’s Africa: Space-Making and Multiple Territorialities in East and Central Africa

Abstract

This issue takes up example of African borderlands studies to reconstruct the production and imagination of space, and of territoriality in particular, from the eve of the colonial period until its aftermath. Different conceptions of space, territoriality and boundaries have played an important role in the colonial history of Africa. As space is everywhere and space is (hu)man-made, a focus on space allows us to come to an interactive understanding of African colonial history without a priori privileging, excluding or exoticizing any group of actors. The focus is on areas close to territorial borders in ‘Berlin’s Africa’, that is the parts of East and Central Africa directly concerned by the Berlin Congo conference of 1884/5. This focus allows us to critically reassess the both overestimated and underestimated impact of this conference, and of colonialism more generally, on territorialization and space-making in Africa. Contributions to this issue include  both analyses of interactive spatial practices and interpretations of spatial narratives, and taken together they overcome the teleology of the eventual borders and the rigidity of a colonial timeframe from 1885 until decolonization.

Biographical Note

Geert Castryck (SFB 1199, Leipzig University)

Geert Castryck is a historian specializing in African and global history. He did research on African urban history, remembrance education, and colonial legacies. He earned his PhD in history from Ghent University in 2006 for his dissertation about the colonial Muslim communities of Bujumbura (Burundi). He came to Leipzig University in 2010 to write a global history of the East Central African town of Kigoma-Ujiji. At the Collaborative Research Centre, he analyses the redefinition of political, economic, and religious spaces in East and Central Africa as well as in Europe during and after the Scramble for Africa.