Colonial Rule and Crisis in Equatorial Africa: Southern Gabon, c. 1850-1940

A look at the encounter between the French and the peoples of Southern Gabon in terms of their differing conceptions of boundaries.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, two very different practices of territoriality confronted each other in Southern Gabon. Clan and lineage relationships were most important in the local practice, while the French practice was informed by a territorial definition of society that had emerged with the rise of the modern nation-state and industrial capit...