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Frederick Cooper (born October 27, 1947, in New York City) is an American historian who specializes in colonialization, decolonialization, and African history. [1] [2] He is Professor Emeritus of History at New York University. [3]
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Frederick Cooper (born October 27, 1947, in New York City) is an American historian who specializes in colonialization, decolonialization, and African history. [1] [2] He is Professor Emeritus of History at New York University. [3]
In 1969, Cooper received a BA from Stanford University. In 1974, Cooper received his PhD in history from Yale University where he specialized in African history. [4] His PhD dissertation, "Plantation Slavery on the East Coast of Africa in the Nineteenth Century," [5] was published with Yale University Press in 1977. Prior to NYU, Cooper taught at Harvard University from 1974 to 1982 and the University of Michigan from 1982 to 2002. [6]
Cooper initially studied the history of labor and of labor movements in East Africa, but later moved on to broaden his scope to embrace francophone West Africa as well. Though a firm base in social and polit-economical history is a constant of his works, one characteristic of Cooper's approach to history is a strong concern with epistemological questions and the possibilities and limits of knowledge production, as can best be seen in his articles on globalization and identity, reprinted in his book Colonialism in Question in 2005.
Cooper's research on federalist and confederated proposals to structure relations between the French metropole and its African colonies influenced a new scholarly literature on federalism. [7]
Cooper's contributions to the history of colonialism in Africa and to contemporary African history have been crucial in the fields of African studies and beyond. One of his best known conceptual contributions is the concept of the gatekeeper state that he developed in a number of article contributions in the late 1990s, and in his 2002 book-length essay Africa since 1940. the past of the present.
Cooper made some important impacts on the growing field of global history, not least with Empires in World History co-written with his wife, the historian Jane Burbank, and published in 2010. [8] Moreover, over the course of the last decades, several topical collections of articles by a wide array of international scholars which Cooper edited or co-edited, have had a lasting impact on global historical thought and research directions. These include Struggle for the City (1983), International Development and the Social Sciences (1997), and Tensions of Empire (1997).
Colonialism is the advancement of control over and exploitation of land and people by separation, through another and often foreign group. Colonizers monopolize political power and hold conquered societies and their people to be inferior to their conquerors in legal, administrative, social, cultural, or biological terms. While frequently advanced as an imperialist regime, colonialism can also take the form of settler colonialism, whereby colonial settlers invade and occupy territory to permanently replace an existing society with that of the colonizers, possibly towards a genocide of native populations.
During the Age of Discovery, a large scale colonization of the Americas, involving a number of European countries, took place primarily between the late 15th century and the early 19th century. The Norse explored and colonized areas of Europe and the North Atlantic, colonizing Greenland and creating a short-term settlement near the northern tip of Newfoundland circa 1000 AD. However, due to its long duration and importance, the later colonization by the European powers involving the continents of North America and South America is more well-known.
French Equatorial Africa was a federation of French colonial territories in Equatorial Africa which consisted of Gabon, French Congo, Ubangi-Shari, and Chad. It existed from 1910 to 1958 and its administration was based in Brazzaville.
Léopold Sédar Senghor was a Senegalese politician, cultural theorist and poet who served as the first president of Senegal from 1960 to 1980.
The French colonial empire comprised the overseas colonies, protectorates, and mandate territories that came under French rule from the 16th century onward. A distinction is generally made between the "First French colonial empire", that existed until 1814, by which time most of it had been lost or sold, and the "Second French colonial empire", which began with the conquest of Algiers in 1830. On the eve of World War I, France's colonial empire was the second-largest in the world after the British Empire.
French West Africa was a federation of eight French colonial territories in West Africa: Mauritania, Senegal, French Sudan, French Guinea, Ivory Coast, Upper Volta, Dahomey and Niger. The federation existed from 1895 until 1958. Its capital was Saint-Louis in Senegal until 1902, and then Dakar until the federation's collapse in 1960.
The Fon people, also called Dahomeans, Fon nu or Agadja are a Gbe ethnic group. They are the largest ethnic group in Benin, found particularly in its south region; they are also found in southwest Nigeria and Togo. Their total population is estimated to be about 3,500,000 people, and they speak the Fon language, a member of the Gbe languages.
Blaise Diagne was a French political leader and mayor of Dakar. He was the first person of West African origin elected to the French Chamber of Deputies, and the first to hold a position in the French government.
Slavery in the British and French Caribbean refers to slavery in the parts of the Caribbean dominated by France or the British Empire.
Slavery in the Spanish American viceroyalties included indigenous peoples, enslaved people from Africa, and enslaved people from Asia. The economic and social institution of slavery existed throughout the Spanish Empire including Spain itself. Enslaved Africans were brought over to the continent for their labour, indigenous people were enslaved until the 1543 laws that prohibited it.
The Brazzaville Conference was a meeting of prominent Free French leaders held in January 1944 in Brazzaville, the capital of French Equatorial Africa, during World War II.
French Africa includes all the historic holdings of France on the African continent.
Maurice Delafosse was a French ethnographer and colonial official who also worked in the field of the languages of Africa. In a review of his daughter's biography of him he was described as "one of the most outstanding French colonial administrators and ethnologists of his time."
The Four Communes of Senegal were the four oldest colonial towns in French West Africa. In 1848 the Second Republic extended the rights of full French citizenship to the inhabitants of Saint-Louis, Dakar, Gorée, and Rufisque. While those who were born in these towns could technically enjoy all the rights of native French citizens, substantial legal and social barriers prevented the full exercise of these rights, especially by those seen by authorities as "full-blooded" Africans. Most of the African population of these towns were termed originaires: those Africans born into the commune, but who retained recourse to African and/or Islamic law. Those few Africans from the four communes who were able to pursue higher education and were willing to renounce their legal protections could "rise" to become termed Évolués (Evolved) and were nominally granted full French citizenship. Despite this legal framework, Évolués still faced substantial discrimination in Africa and the Metropole alike.
Georges Balandier was a French sociologist, anthropologist and ethnologist noted for his research in Sub-Saharan Africa. Balandier was born in Aillevillers-et-Lyaumont. He was a professor at the Sorbonne, and is a member of the Center for African Studies, a research center of the École pratique des hautes études. He held for many years the Editorship of Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie and edited the series Sociologie d'Aujourd'hui at Presses Universitaires de France. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1976. He died on 5 October 2016 at the age of 95.
Charles-André Julien was a French journalist and historian specialised in the history of the Maghreb, his most famous work is Histoire de l'Afrique du Nord : Des origines à 1830.
Ann Laura Stoler is the Willy Brandt Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology and Historical Studies at The New School for Social Research in New York City. She has made significant contributions to the fields of colonial and postcolonial studies, historical anthropology, feminist theory, and affect. She is particularly known for her writings on race and sexuality in the works of French philosopher Michel Foucault.
Benin–Turkey relations are the foreign relations between Benin and Turkey. Turkey has an embassy in Cotonou since 2014, while the Beninois embassy in Ankara opened in 2013, however the embassy was closed in 2020.
Lorelle Denise Semley is an American historian of Africa specialized in modern West Africa, French imperialism, gender, and the Atlantic World. She is a professor of history at the College of the Holy Cross.
Citizenship between Empire and Nation: Remaking France and French Africa is a book by Frederick Cooper published in 2014 by Princeton University Press. The work is about citizenship, colonialism, and identity in France and French North Africa from 1946 to 1960.
