Year: 2026
Type: editorial
Abstract: This introduction situates a special issue of Annali MEMOTEF comprising four papers originating from the Young Scholars Initiative (YSI) Africa Working Group Pre-Conference, held in September 2024 in Rome ahead of the 17th AEHN Annual Meeting. Though spanning different geographies and periods - from the East African currency crisis of 1919–1923, through settler taxation disputes in early twentieth-century Southern Rhodesia and Chinese investment in contemporary Zimbabwean chromite mining, to Rhodesia Front conservation policy during the liberation war—the papers cohere around a shared political-economy lens. Each shows how ostensibly technical instruments (currencies, taxes, foreign capital, environmental regulation) function simultaneously as mechanisms of political power, shaped by contestation among differentiated actors rather than by uniform colonial or capitalist logic. All four combine rigorous archival and oral-history methods with attentiveness to historiographically marginalised actors, African traders, Black Rhodesian settlers and miners, women in artisanal mining, and dispossessed peasants. The introduction also reflects on the mentorship model underpinning the collection, arguing that structured pre-conference support helps offset the uneven distribution of institutional resources that continues to shape who can participate in producing African economic history.
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7215230816