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Territorial appropriation, trade, and politics in the Somalia-Kenya borderlands (c.1925-1963) : state formation in transnational perspective
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Bruzzone, Anna (2019) Territorial appropriation, trade, and politics in the Somalia-Kenya borderlands (c.1925-1963) : state formation in transnational perspective. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
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Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b3494376~S15
Abstract
This thesis examines how the lived experience of British and Italian colonialisms on the two sides of what would become the Kenya-Somalia border transformed local society and local politics, through an interactive process in which African communities asserted their agency while colonial governments competed for sovereignty over the frontier.
Chapters 1 and 2 examine how socio-political identities and ideas of belonging acquired new shapes and functions in the process of state formation from the colonisation period to the establishment of a United Nations Trusteeship in former Italia Somalia in 1950, following Italy’s defeat in WWII. Chapters 3 and 4 examine how different social actors in the Somalia-Kenya borderlands became involved in negotiating the state during the period of Italian Trusteeship until Somalia’s independence on 1 July 1960. Chapters 5 and 6 explore the deeper history of political activism and insurrection in the Northern Frontier District (NFD) of Kenya during the final years of British rule until the colony became independent on 12 December 1963.
Envisaging factors which are usually associated with a-historical notions of identity and culture as social processes grounded in history, local economies, and regional reconfigurations of power, this thesis rejects the prevailing argument that the state was doomed to fail in these borderlands due to its imported origin and to unconducive cultural conditions. It is argued here that historically contingent power relations shaped politics in this region in a way that undermined the state’s legitimacy and the borderlanders’ trust in state institutions. Challenging the idea that state formation was a unidirectional process from which the borderlanders attempted to escape, this thesis demonstrates that the local negotiation of authority and access to resources influenced socio-economic relationships and political options in the ‘periphery’, while peripheral politics shaped the character of the emerging nation-states in Somalia and Kenya.
Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
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Subjects: | D History General and Old World > DT Africa | ||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Borderlands -- Kenya -- History, Borderlands -- British Somaliland -- History, Borderlands -- Somalia -- History, Nationalism -- Kenya -- History -- 20th century, Nationalism -- Somalia -- History -- 20th century, Kenya -- History -- 1895-1963, British Somaliland -- History, Somalia -- History -- 1960-1991, Kenya -- Politics and government -- To 1963, British Somaliland -- Politics and government, Somalia -- Politics and government -- 1960-1991 | ||||
Official Date: | April 2019 | ||||
Dates: |
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Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
Theses Department: | Department of History | ||||
Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Anderson, David, 1957- ; Branch, Daniel, 1978- | ||||
Sponsors: | University of Warwick ; British Institute in Eastern Africa ; Royal Historical Society (Great Britain) | ||||
Format of File: | |||||
Extent: | 303 leaves : colour illustration, maps (some colour) | ||||
Language: | eng |
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