Africa in the Colonial Ages of Empire

Words like “colonialism” and “empire” were once frowned upon in
the U.S. and other Western mainstream media as worn-out left-wing
rhetoric that didn’t fit reality. Not anymore! Tatah Mentan observes
that a growing chorus of right-wing ideologues, with close ties to the
Western administrations’ war-making hawks in NATO, are encouraging
Washington and the rest of Europe to take pride in the expansion of
their power over people and nations around the globe.

Africa in the Colonial Ages of Empire
is written from the perspective that the scholarly lives of academics
researching on Africa are changing, constantly in flux and increasingly
bound to the demands of Western colonial imperialism. This existential
situation has forced the continent to morph into a tool in the hands of
Colonial Empire. According to Tatah Mentan, the effects of this
existential situation of Africa compel serious academic scrutiny. At the
same time, inquiry into the African predicament has been changing and
evolving within and against the rhythms of this “new normal” of Colonial
Empire-Old or New. The author insists that the long and bloody history
of imperial conquest that began with the dawn of capitalism needs
critical scholarly examination. As Marx wrote in Capital: “The discovery
of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and
entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the
conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a
warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signaled the rosy dawn
of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the
chief moment of primitive accumulation.” Africa in the Colonial Ages of Empire
is therefore a MUST-READ for faculty, students as well as policy makers
alike in the changing dynamics of their profession, be it
theoretically, methodologically, or structurally and materially.