African Urban History: Past and Present Perspective

bibliographic database
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Periodical article

Title:	African Urban History: Past and Present Perspective
Author:	Fourchard, Laurent
Year:	2005
Periodical:	Lagos Historical Review
Volume:	5
Pages:	1-21
Language:	English
Geographic terms:	West Africa Africa
Subjects:	urbanization urban history History and Exploration Urbanization and Migration colonialism
Abstract:	The history of cities in Africa is a recent field of research which interrogates the ways in which Africans shape the patterns of urbanization and how urbanization influences African social and cultural practices. The development of numerous case studies testifies to this new interest in African cities. Focusing on the West African region, the article explores the extent to which political and social history has benefited from the emergence of this new subfield of research in the 1980s and concludes that a substantial part of the extant literature is still based on the traditional approach. Consequently a West African urban history is yet to emerge despite the existence of ancient traditions of urban settlement in this area and the uniqueness of that phenomenon in sub-Saharan Africa. Bibliogr., sum. [Journal abstract]