Africa

Short Teaching Module: Borderland Migration and Communities in Twentieth-Century West Africa
Cross-border mobility has created borderland cultures and led to the development of vibrant communities that in some cases have stretched across several states.

Map and Population Table for British Gambia, 1915-1918
Many people in West Africa fled across colonial boundaries to avoid military conscription in the late 19th and early 20th century. For example, during World War I, tens of thousands of people left the French colony of Senegal for neighboring British Gambia and Portuguese Guinea-Bissau.

Short Teaching Module: Connecting the French Empire
For a long time, historians tended to study colonial empires of the 19th and 20th centuries one colony at a time, or through the relationship of one colony to its metropole.

Analyzing Travel Records
In a way, all historical thinking and all historical writing deal with travel accounts.

Photograph of "Principal Chiefs" from West Africa
The following is an image that appears in the on page 296 in the book Britain Across The Seas: Africa; A History And Description Of The British Empire In Africa published in 1910 and written by Harry Johnson. This particular photograph was taken by Capt. T.C. Hincks.

Ship Plan of a Late-19th Century Steamship
This ship plan from the late-19th century offers a partial view of spatial arrangements within a Messageries steamship.

Shipping Company Route Map from 1889
This route-map of the Messageries Maritimes shipping company displays the main routes connecting metropolitan France to its empire in the Indo-Pacific. While the map dates to 1889, these routes retained their basic structure through the 1950s.

Kasai Velvet, Democratic Republic of the Congo
Despite its name, Kasai velvet, or velours du kasai, is not actually a velvet.

“Drive the old and new colonialists out of Africa!” Propaganda Poster, 1964
This Chinese propaganda poster, dated August 1964, was designed by Chinese painters Wang Datong and Du Yongqiao and published by the People’s Fine Arts Publishing House in Beijing.

Business contract between Richard P. Waters and his Omani-Zanzibari trading partner, Esau bin Abdul Rahman
This contract represents how business was typically transacted in Zanzibar and throughout the Omani Empire.