Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks: African Employees in the Making of Colonial Africa

Abstract

Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks: African Employees in Making of Colonial Africa. Edited by Benjamin N. Lawrance, Emily Lynn Osborn, and Richard L. Roberts. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2006. Pp. viii, 332; 4 maps, I photograph, and I illustration. $45.00. Edited by Benjamin Lawrance, Emily Osborn, and Richard Roberts, Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks is a compilation of papers presented at eighth Stanford- Berkeley Symposium on Law and Colonialism in convened by editors at Stanford University in May 2002. The original objective of conference was to explore how African intermediaries shaped colonial legal institutions, but papers presented, as reflected in this publication, addressed the wider roles of African intermediaries in making of modern Africa (p. vii). They brought to center stage of African colonial historiography activities of previously marginalized African colonial intermediaries including, bush lawyers, servants, and messengers, besides interpreters, translators, and clerks. In compiling present volume, therefore, editors embraced activities and impact of African intermediaries in making of modern as its major theme. The salience and timeliness of Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks hardly requires any exaggeration. For this reviewer especially, whose research covers African interpreters and similar mediators in colonial Senegal, this volume represents an important contribution to African colonial historiography to extent that it puts spotlight on crucial, albeit ambiguous, roles of African go-betweens in shaping relations not only between Africans and Europeans but also among Africans themselves during colonial period. The chapters by Osborn, David Pratten, and Maurice Amutabi, for example, probe activities of ordinary African administrative employees in French Guinea, Nigeria, and Kenya, respectively, to reveal how power, authority, and knowledge intersected and mutated. Other contributors include Lawrance, Ruth Ginio, Jean-Herve Jezequel, Ralph Austen, Brett Shadle, and Andreas Eckert, whose essays cover intermediaries in British Lome (Togo, 1914-1920), French West Africa, Mali, Cameroon, Kenya, and Tanzania. West indeed is more extensively represented in volume than other parts of continent. Little wonder, therefore, that in addition to papers selected from among those presented originally at conference, editors solicited contributions on South from Roger Levine and Thomas McClendon to give volume a better geographical balance. Collectively essays present intriguing analyses of conflicts and negotiations as well as opportunities and constraints that typified daily interactions in colonial Africa. Thus they help us understand more profoundly that relations between European colonizers and Africans were far more intricate, contradictory, and shifting than conventional binaries, such as colonizer/colonized and collaborator/resistor, would allow us to comprehend. Martin Klein's chapter in Afterword complements incisive and cadenced introduction by editors and brings curtain down with insightful comments on lived experiences of different groups of African intermediaries, some of whose multifaceted functions were performed outside the formal structure of colonial state (p. …

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