Book contents
- Boundaries, Communities and State-Making in West Africa
- African Studies Series
- Boundaries, Communities and State-Making in West Africa
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- 1 Centring the Margins
- Part I From Frontiers to Boundaries
- Part II States and Taxes, Land and Mobility
- 4 Constructing the Compound, Keeping the Gate
- 5 Being Seen Like a State
- 6 Border Regulation and State-Making at the Margins
- 7 Land, Belief and Belonging in the Borderlands
- Part III Decolonization and Boundary Closure, c.1939–1969
- Part IV States, Social Contracts and Respacing from Below, c.1970–2010
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- African Studies Series
5 - Being Seen Like a State
Frontier Logics, Colonial Administration and Traditional Authority in the Borderlands
from Part II - States and Taxes, Land and Mobility
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 June 2019
- Boundaries, Communities and State-Making in West Africa
- African Studies Series
- Boundaries, Communities and State-Making in West Africa
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- 1 Centring the Margins
- Part I From Frontiers to Boundaries
- Part II States and Taxes, Land and Mobility
- 4 Constructing the Compound, Keeping the Gate
- 5 Being Seen Like a State
- 6 Border Regulation and State-Making at the Margins
- 7 Land, Belief and Belonging in the Borderlands
- Part III Decolonization and Boundary Closure, c.1939–1969
- Part IV States, Social Contracts and Respacing from Below, c.1970–2010
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- African Studies Series
Summary
In the Chapter 4, I pointed out that the colonial authorities needed to be mindful of the policies that were effected on the opposite side of a given border. Populations proved themselves highly adept at exploiting the points of divergence. In a seminal article on migration as revolt, A.I. Asiwaju drew attention to the multiple ways in which West Africans turned mobility to their advantage by escaping across colonial borders.1 In this chapter and the next, I confirm the applicability of this insight to the Senegambia and the trans-Volta. But I also want to go beyond documenting forms of resistance. Practical governance arose out of the quotidian interplay between state actors and those who populated, moved through and traded within the borderlands.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Boundaries, Communities and State-Making in West AfricaThe Centrality of the Margins, pp. 190 - 228Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019