- Department: History
- Credit value: 40 credits
- Credit level: H
- Academic year of delivery: 2022-23
India and Africa have been intimately linked for centuries. But in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries Indo-African relationships altered dramatically and irrevocably as new forms of Indian Ocean migration, European imperialism, freedom from colonial rule and post-colonial opportunity thrust Indians and Africans into ever more entwined and complex relationships. Focusing on India, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda ,this module gives students an opportunity to engage in advanced interdisciplinary research; combining transnational history with literary studies and international relations. The course begins in the late nineteenth century as new arenas of oceanic economic exchange and imperial connectivity brought hundreds of thousands more Indians to African shores. Such linkage would have profound consequences for Indian and African anti-colonial nationalism from the 1920s-60s, as well as the nature of post-colonial African societies over the century. Students will also delve into India’s resurgent economic conviviality with Africa in the last decade, and how this reflects, and departs from, the narratives of historical connections across the twentieth century.
The module is split into two chronological clusters: autumn term is devoted to the study of themes relating to the colonial period and the dynamics of decolonisation. Spring term’s endeavours assess the period from the 1960s to today, in dialogue with the history of the early twentieth century. Crucially, students must promiscuously grapple with a range of primary source material including: writings of Gandhi and numerous Indian and African anti-colonial leaders; unpublished personal papers; memoirs; Afro-Asian media; and, importantly, African-Asian fiction and conceptual art.
Occurrence | Teaching period |
---|---|
A | Autumn Term 2022-23 to Spring Term 2022-23 |
The aims of this module are:
Students who complete this module successfully will:
Teaching Programme:
Students will attend a 1-hour briefing in week 1 of the autumn term. Students prepare for and participate in fifteen three-hour seminars. These take place in weeks 2-5 and 7-9 of the autumn term and weeks 2-5 and 7-10 of the spring term. Both the autumn and spring terms include a reading week for final year students and so there will be no teaching in week 6. There will also be a two hour revision session in the summer term. One-to-one meetings will also be held to discuss the assessed essay.
Seminar topics are subject to variation, but are likely to include the following:
Autumn Term
The Indian Ocean and the consolidation of European Empire
Dhows, dukas and coolies: Indian settlement histories in Africa to 1920
The subaltern mechanics of Empire: Indians and the colonial economies of Africa
Settled strangers: the socio-cultural worlds of Africa’s South Asians to 1950
M.K. Gandhi in South Africa & A.M. Jeevanjee in Kenya – conceptualising imperial citizenship, 1893-1923
The diasporic Indian Ocean and the struggle for rights, 1920s-60s
The diasporic Indian Ocean and the struggle for freedoms, 1920s-60s
Spring Term
Indian independence, Nehruvian internationalism and free African futures, 1947-64
Africanisation I: the wananchi and the wahindi in East Africa
Africanisation II: case studies – Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda
Indian identity in apartheid South Africa
Indians in Africa since democratization in the 1990s – a new politics of autochthony?
The rise and fall of third worldism: India-Africa relations, 1964-1991
Historical narrative, ‘India Inc.’ and resurgent Indo-African relations since 1991
Children of Bharat Mata? India’s relationships with diaspora in Africa from Gandhi to Modi
Task | % of module mark |
---|---|
Essay/coursework | 50 |
Online Exam - 24 hrs (Centrally scheduled) | 50 |
None
For formative assessment, students will be given the opportunity to do two practice gobbets and then are required to write a 2,000-word procedural essay relating to the themes and issues of the module in either the autumn or spring term.
For summative assessment, students complete a 4,000-word essay which utilises an analysis of primary source materials to explore a theme or topic relating to the module, due in week 5 of the summer term.
They then take a 24-hour online examination for summative assessment in the summer term assessment period comprising: one essay question relating to themes and issues, but showing an awareness of the pertinent sources that underpin these AND one ‘gobbet’ question (where students attempt two gobbets from a slate of eight).
The essay and exam are weighted equally at 50% each.
Task | % of module mark |
---|---|
Essay/coursework | 50 |
Online Exam - 24 hrs (Centrally scheduled) | 50 |
Following their formative assessment task, students will typically receive written feedback that will include comments and a mark within 10 working days of submission.
Work will be returned to students in their discussion groups and may be supplemented by the tutor giving some oral feedback to the whole group. All students are encouraged, if they wish, to discuss the feedback on their procedural work with their tutor (or module convenor) during student hours. For more information, see the Statement on Feedback.
For the summative assessment task, students will receive their provisional mark and written feedback within 20 working days of the submission deadline. The tutor will then be available during student hours for follow-up guidance if required. For more information, see the Statement of Assessment.
For term time reading, please refer to the module VLE site. Before the course starts, we encourage you to look at the following items of preliminary reading:
Bose, Sugata. A Hundred Horizons: the Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006.
Gregory, Robert. South Asians in East Africa: An Economic and Social History, 1890-1980. Boulder: Colorado University Press, 1993.
Mawdsley, Emma and Gerard McCann, eds. India in Africa: changing geographies of power. Oxford: Pambazuka Press, 2011.