Another ongoing feature, an off-shoot of working through my library. I’m going to try and post up interesting short quotations from works. Mostly “good quotes”, but if I come across awkward, reprehensible, or annoying quotes, I’ll slap those up as well. Sometimes I’ll leave it up to you all to decide which it is.
Paul Nugent, Smugglers, Secessionists and Loyal Citizens on the Ghana-Togo Frontier
“The notion that African boundaries were drawn in a haphazard manner and arbitrarily enforced is deeply embedded in perceptions of the colonial past and is often construed as the underlying cause for the troubled state of the continent today. It is distinctive in being shared by laymen and by informed commentators alike. It is, however, a commonplace that at once says too much and too little–too much because it underestimates the extent to which European boundary-makers were guided by indigenous precedents, and too little because it obscures the reality that the practical significance of colonial boundaries varied over time.”