- Department: History
- Credit value: 20 credits
- Credit level: H
- Academic year of delivery: 2024-25
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Africa, the start of his journey from Mohandas to ‘Mahatma’) and numerous Indian and African anti-colonial leaders; unpublished personal and archival papers collected from India and Africa; memoirs; press sources; and African-Asian fiction.
Students taking this module must also take the first part in Semester 1.
Occurrence | Teaching period |
---|---|
A | Semester 2 2024-25 |
The aims of this module are:
Students who complete this module successfully will:
Students will attend a 3-hour seminar in weeks 2-4, 6-8 and 10-11 of semester 2. Weeks 5 & 9 are Reading and Writing Weeks (RAW). Students prepare for and participate in eight three-hour seminars in all. A one-to-one meeting between tutor and students will also be held to discuss assessments.
Seminar topics are subject to variation, but are likely to include the following:
Task | % of module mark |
---|---|
Essay/coursework | 100 |
None
For formative assessment, students submit an essay draft of 2000-words.
For summative assessment, students complete a 4000-word essay relating to the themes and issues of the module. This comprises 100% of the overall module mark. Summative assessments will be due in the assessment period.
Task | % of module mark |
---|---|
Essay/coursework | 100 |
Following their formative assessment task, students will receive a one-to-one meeting with the tutor to discuss the essay and their plans for the assessed essay.
Work will be returned to students with written comments in their tutorial and may be supplemented by the tutor giving some oral feedback to the whole group. All students are encouraged, if they wish, to make use of 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. For more information, see the Statement of Assessment.
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: