Steven Steven Salm & Toyin Falola 
African Urban Spaces in Historical Perspective 

This book presents new and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of African urban history and culture. Moving between precolonial, colonial, and contemporary urban spaces, it covers the major regions, religions, and urban societies of sub-Saharan Africa.


African Urban Spaces in Historical Perspective presents new and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of African urban history and culture. It presents original research and integrates historical methodologies with those of anthropology, geography, literature, art, and architecture. Moving between precolonial, colonial, and contemporary urban spaces, it covers the major regions, religions, and cultural influences of sub-Saharan Africa. The themes include Islam and Christianity, architecture, migration, globalization, social and physical decay, identity, race relations, politics, and development. This book elaborates on not only what makes the study of African urban spaces unique within urban historiography, it also offers an encompassing and up-to-date study of the subject and inserts Africa into the growing debate on urban history and culture throughout the world.

The opportunities provided by the urban milieu are endless and each study opens new potential avenues of research. This book explores some of those avenues and lays the groundwork on which new studies can build.

Contributors: Maurice Nyamanga Amutabi, Catherine Coquery Vidrovitch, Mark Dike De Lancey, Thomas Ngomba Ekali, Omar A. Eno, Doug T. Feremenga, Laurent Fourchard, James Genova, Fatima Muller-Friedman, Godwin R. Murunga, Kefa M. Otiso, Michael Ralph, Jeremy Rich, Eric Ross, Corinne Sandwith, Wessel Visser.


Toyin Falola is the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin; Steven J. Salm is Assistant Professor of History, Xavier University of Louisiana.

Tabla de materias

Moving East, Facing West: Islam as an Intercultural Mediator in Urban Planning in the Sokoto Empire – Mark Dike De Lancey

Oppressive Impressioins, Architectural Expressioins: The Poetics of French Colonial (Ad)vantage, Regarding Africa – Michael Ra Lph

‘Just Build it Modern’: Post-Apartheid Spaces on Namibia’s Urban Frontier – Fatima Muller-Friedman

Colonial Urbanization and Urban Management in Kenya – Kefa M. Otiso

‘Inherently Unhygienic Races’: Plague and the Origins of Settler Dominance in Nairobi, 1899-1907 – Godwin R. Murunga

Urbanization and Afrikaner Class Formation: The Mine Workers’ Union and the Search for a Cultural Identity – Wessel Visser

The Importance of Being Educated: Strategies of an Urban Petit- Bourgeois Elite, South Africa 1935-50 – Corinne Sandwith

Where Every Language Is Heard: Atlantic Commerce, West African and Asian Migrants, and Town Society in Libreville, ca. 1860-1914 – Jeremy Rich

Captured and Steeped in Colonial Dynamics and Legacy: The Case of Isiolo Town in Kenya – Maurice Nyamanga Amutabi

From Marabout Republics to Autonomous Rural Communities: Autonomous Muslim Towns in Senegal – Eric Ross

Africanite and Urbanite: The Place of the Urban in Imaginings of African Identity during the Late Colonial Period in French West Africa – James Genova

Urban Poverty, Urban Crime, and Crime Control: The Lagos and Ibadan Cases 1929-45 – Laurent Fourchard

The Fluctuating Fortunes of Anglophone Cameroon Towns: The Case of Victoria, 1858-1982 – Thomas Ngomba Ekali

Urban Planning and Development in Zimbabwe: A Historical Perspective – Doug T. Feremenga

Somalia’s City of the Jackals: Politics, Economy, and Society in Mogadishu (1991-2001) – Omar A. Eno

Sobre el autor

JEREMY RICH is Associate Professor of History, Marywood University. His books include A Workman is Worthy of His Meat: Food and Colonialism in the Gabon Estuary (2007).