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Legitimacy and the State in Twentieth-Century Africa pp 62–111Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

The Invention of Tradition Revisited: The Case of Colonial Africa

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Part of the book series: St Antony’s/Macmillan Series ((STANTS))

Abstract

As Werner Sollors has remarked, the word ‘invention’ has ‘become a rather popular category in intellectual discourse’. No longer ‘reserved for accounts of technological advances such as the telegraph’, invention has been applied to ‘such diverse phenomena as the invention of culture; of literary history; of childhood as well as the loss of childhood; of motherhood; of kinship; of the self; of America; of the Negro; of the Indian; of the Jew’. Some usages of ‘invention’ have laid so much stress on ‘the importance of language in the social construction of reality’ as ‘to let “reality” disappear behind an inventive language that dissembles it’.1

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Notes

  1. J. A. Atanda, The New Oyo Empire: Indirect Rule and Change in Southeastern Nigeria 1894–1934 (London: Longman, 1973), pp. 222, 225. See Appendix 1.

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  2. C. E. F. Beer and G. Williams, ‘The politics of the Ibadan peasantry’, in G. Williams (ed.), Nigeria: Economy and Society (London: Rex Collings, 1976), p. 140

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  3. A. G. Hopkins, ‘Economic aspects of political movements in Nigeria and the Gold Coast, 1918–39’, Journal of African History 7, 1, 1966.

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  4. C. Wilson, The History of Unilever: A Study in Economic Growth and Social Change, Vol. 1 (London: Cassell, 1954). On the subsequent development of the oligopoly, see J. Mars, ‘Extra-territorial enterprises’ in Mining, Commerce and Finance in Nigeria, ed. M. Perham (London: Faber, 1948); P. T. Bauer, West African Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954) and G. Deutsch, ‘Educating the middlemen: a political and economic history of statutory cocoa marketing in Nigeria, 1936–1947’, Ph.D. thesis, University of London.

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  5. I. B. Akinyele, The Outlines of Ibadan History (Lagos: Alebiosu Press, 1946), pp. 10–11 (tr. of Iwe Itan Ibadan (Ibadan: Egbe Agba O’Tan, 1916; and Exeter: James Townsend, 1946); S. O. Johnson, The History of the Yorubas from the Earliest Times to the Beginnings of the British Protectorate (London: Christian Missionary Society, 1921; 6th edition 1966); B. Awe, ‘The Rise of Ibadan as a Yoruba Power’, D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1964, pp. 244–92.

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  6. C. H. Elgee, The Evolution of Ibadan (Lagos: Government Printer, 1914); Atanda, The New Oyo Empire, pp. 95–7. On Irefin, see I. B. Akinyele, The Outlines of Ibadan History (Lagos: Alebiosu Press, 1946), pp. 22–3.

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Authors
  1. Terence Ranger
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. St Antony’s College, Oxford, UK

    Terence Ranger (Rhodes Professor of Race Relations) (Rhodes Professor of Race Relations)

  2. State University of New York, Stony Brook, USA

    Olufemi Vaughan

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© 1993 Terence Ranger and Olufemi Vaughan

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Ranger, T. (1993). The Invention of Tradition Revisited: The Case of Colonial Africa. In: Ranger, T., Vaughan, O. (eds) Legitimacy and the State in Twentieth-Century Africa. St Antony’s/Macmillan Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-12342-1_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-12342-1_3

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-12344-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-349-12342-1

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)

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