Architecture, Empire, and Trade
The United Africa Company
Ewan Harrison author Iain Jackson author Michele Tenzon author Rixt Woudstra author Claire Tunstall author
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Publishing:9th Jan '25
£90.00
This title is due to be published on 9th January, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
Tells the untold history of West African architecture in the colonial era, as revealed for the first time through the archives of the United Africa Company (UAC).
This open access book tells a new and untold history of the architecture of West Africa in the colonial era, as revealed for the first time through the archives of the United Africa Company (UAC).
From the imperial Royal Niger Company’s charter in the 1890s through to its suave African department stores of the 1960s, the UAC – a British company firmly embedded in the economies of colonialism, extraction, and exploitation – became the largest commercial firm in West Africa, involved in almost every commercial enterprise and sector, and responsible for procuring architecture, infrastructure, and city real-estate across a vast region.
Based on unprecedented access to the UAC archives, this book pieces together a new architectural history of West Africa from the high colonial period through to independence. It reproduces an extraordinary array of newly-uncovered material – from photographs of streetscapes, buildings, and West African everyday life to civic reports and city plans – and presents these alongside critical and theoretical discussions to reveal an alternative account of the architecture of the region which stands in contrast to more conventional state-focused histories. The book explores technological, aesthetic, and political shifts through an architectural lens, and brings to the fore an awareness of the violence and appropriation which underlie each architectural episode, showing how the UAC, as a case-study, presents a unique opportunity to investigate how architecture manifests power, culture, and identity in colonial and post-colonial contexts.
The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the University of Liverpool.
Meticulously researched by a collaborative team this book brings to light and discusses a whole layer of new archival material that will shape not just a better awareness of colonial and post-colonial eras in Africa, but also of the nature of research itself. * Mark Jarzombek, Professor of the History and Theory of Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA *
This is a substantial contribution to current debates on architecture and the built environment in colonial British West Africa and its successor countries. It shows how the UAC and its subsidiaries shaped cities and landscapes in the region by exploiting the advantages available to British companies during the colonial rule and by adapting to the shifting political conditions in the wake of decolonization. * Lukasz Stanek, Professor of Architecture, University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, USA *
This history of the century-old UAC from perspectives offered in its recently opened archive is brilliant, demonstrating how the company’s history in extraction and export, and later in local production of wholesaled and retailed commodities, saw it become a major player in the production of new forms of architecture and urbanism in West and Central Africa in the colonial period but also, unexpectedly, in the post-Independence era. An excellent addition to the growing scholarship on African architecture and urbanism from the late 19th through the period after Independence. * Ikem Stanley Okoye, Associate Professor of African Art and Architecture, University of Delaware, USA *
ISBN: 9781350411319
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
464 pages