Review
...fascinating study...suitable for upper division undergraduates, graduate students, researchers, and faculty. CHOICE Besides offering a solid overview of the political and cultural history of southern Gabon, an area almost entirely ignored by academic scholars, Gray's study offers rich insights for historians and researchers examining the impact of early colonial rule and the formation of ethnic categories in Africa in the last two centuries....A compelling study. INTL. JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORICAL STUDIES No. 2-3 (2002) Gray's book is an important intervention in the growing scholarly literature on colonialism. Its lasting contribution is to invite scholars to think more carefully about space as a key terrain on which the colonial power worked. J OF COLONIALISM AND COLONIAL HISTORY

Book Description
In the second half of the nineteenth century, two very different practices of territoriality confronted each other in Southern Gabon. Clan and lineage relationships were most important in the local practice, while the French practice was informed by a territorial definition of society that had emerged with the rise of the modern nation-state and industrial capitalism. This modern territoriality used an array of bureaucratic instruments - such as maps and censuses - previously unknown in equatorial Africa. Such instruments denied the existence of locally created territories and were fundamental to the exercise of colonial power. Thus modern territoriality imposed categories and institutions foreign to the peoples to whom they were applied. As colonial power became more effective from the 1920s on, those institutions started to be appropriated by Gabonese cultural elites who negotiated their meanings in reference to their own traditions. The result was a strongly ambiguous condition that left its imprint on the new colonial territories and subsequently the postcolonial Gabonese state. Christopher Gray was Assistant Professor of History, Florida International University

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In the second half of the nineteenth century, two very different practices of territoriality confronted each other in Southern Gabon. Clan and lineage relationships were most important in the local practice, while the French practice was informed by a territorial definition of society that had emerged with the rise of the modern nation-state and industrial capitalism. This modern territoriality used an array of bureaucratic instruments - such as maps and censuses - previously unknown in equatorial Africa. Such instruments denied the existence of locally created territories and were fundamental to the exercise of colonial power. Thus modern territoriality imposed categories and institutions foreign to the peoples to whom they were applied. As colonial power became more effective from the 1920s on, those institutions started to be appropriated by Gabonese cultural elites who negotiated their meanings in reference to their own traditions. The result was a strongly ambiguous condition that left its imprint on the new colonial territories and subsequently the postcolonial Gabonese state. Christopher Gray was Assistant Professor of History, Florida International University

SYNOPSIS

Besides the compelling narrative typical of colonial history and its tragic legacy, this volume is notable for its insightful examination of the nature of territoriality (based on the theories of Robert David Sack) and how fundamental differences in naming and mapping space represent the difference between colonizer and colonized in all its nuances. The history of pre- colonial Gabon, including the impact of the slave trade, are discussed before turning to the world of 19th-century colonialism, post-colonial industry and society, and the impact of colonial practices in the make-up of governmental and other organizations. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

FROM THE CRITICS

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