Studying at York
The Ghosts of Gandhi: India and Africa since the nineteenth century - Semester 1 - HIS00188H
- Department: History
- Credit value: 20 credits
- Credit level: H
- Academic year of delivery: 2024-25
Module summary
India and Africa have been intimately linked for centuries by the monsoonal trading currents of the Indian Ocean. But over the twentieth century Indo-African relationships altered dramatically and irrevocably as new forms of Indian Ocean migration, European imperialism, anti-colonial freedom movements and post-colonial repercussions 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 Indian traders and labourers to African shores. Such linkage would have profound consequences for the growth of Indian and African anti-colonial nationalism from the 1920s-60s, as well as the nature of post-colonial African societies. Finally, students will delve into India’s resurgent economic conviviality with Africa since liberalisation in the 1990s-2000s, and assess how such contemporary connections reflect, and depart from, historical narratives of Indo-African solidarity over the twentieth century.
The modules are split into two chronological clusters: semester 1 is devoted to the study of themes relating to the colonial period and the dynamics of decolonisation up to the 1960s. Semester 2’s endeavours assess the period from the 1960s to today, in dialogue with the history of the early twentieth century. Crucially, students must grapple with a wide array of primary source material including: the writings of Gandhi (who served a 20 year political apprenticeship in South Africa, the start of his journey from Mohandas to ‘Mahatma’) and numerous Indian and African anti-colonial leaders; unpublished personal and archival papers collected from India and Africa; memoirs; press sources; and African-Asian fiction.
Related modules
Students taking this module must also take the second part in Semester 2.
Module will run
| Occurrence | Teaching period |
|---|---|
| A | Semester 1 2024-25 |
Module aims
The aims of this module are:
- To introduce students to in depth study of a specific historical topic using primary and secondary material;
- To enable students to explore the topic through discussion and writing; and
- To enable students to evaluate and analyse primary sources.
Module learning outcomes
Students who complete this module successfully will:
- Grasp key themes, issues and debates relevant to the topic being studied;
- Have acquired knowledge and understanding about that topic;
- Be able to comment on and analyse original sources;
- Be able to relate the primary and secondary material to one another; and
- Have acquired skills and confidence in close reading and discussion of texts and debates.
Module content
Students will attend a 1-hour briefing in week 1 and a 3-hour seminar in weeks 2-4, 6-8 and 10-11 of semester 1. Weeks 5 & 9 are Reading and Writing Weeks (RAW). Students prepare for and participate in eight three-hour seminars in all.
Seminar topics are subject to variation, but are likely to include the following:
- 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
- Conceptualising imperial citizenship: M.K. Gandhi in South Africa & A.M. Jeevanjee in Kenya, 1890s-1920s
- The diasporic Indian Ocean and the struggle for freedom, 1920s-60s, part I
- The diasporic Indian Ocean and the struggle for freedom, 1920s-60s, part II
- Indian independence, Nehruvian internationalism and free African futures, 1947-64
Indicative assessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Essay/coursework | 100 |
Special assessment rules
None
Additional assessment information
For formative work, students will produce a text commentary.
The summative assessment will consist of two parts, to be submitted together:
a) Two text commentaries of 500-750 words; and
b) One 1,500-word essay.
The commentaries comprise 50% and the essay 50% of the overall mark for this module. Summative assessments will be due in the assessment period.
Indicative reassessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Essay/coursework | 100 |
Module feedback
Following their formative 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 seminars 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 formative work during their tutor’s student hours. For more information, see the Statement on Feedback.
For summative assessment tasks, students will receive their provisional mark and written feedback within 25 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.
Indicative reading
For semester 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:
- Sana Aiyar, Indians in Kenya: The Politics of Diaspora (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015).
- Emma Mawdsley and Gerard McCann (eds.), India in Africa: changing geographies of power (Oxford: Pambazuka Press, 2011).
- Kenneth King and Meera Venkatachalam (eds.), India’s Development Diplomacy and Soft Power in Africa (Oxford: James Currey, 2022).