Colonization was actually the and point of a long process of transformation. The old convergence of interest between french traders and aristocrats, i have begun to be replaced by a new convergence of interest with farmers. So you have a process of decline of th aristocracy in any region that took place during the nineteenth century. And so we have a set of interrelated conflicts that kind of emerged in that period which gave to the french the desire to just take control of everything.
Featuring Rahmane Idrissa on Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. The region has been beset by jihadist insurgencies and, in the case of Mali and Burkina Faso, recent military coups. This is a comprehensive interview that puts the present conflict—which has drawn in French military and then Russian mercenary intervention—into deep historical and political-economic context from struggles over the slave trade, through French colonialism, to the neocolonial imposition of neoliberalism.
Idrissa’s work:
newleftreview.org/issues/ii132/articles/rahmane-idrissa-the-sahel-a-cognitive-mapping
newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/kabores-defeat
nybooks.com/daily/2022/05/25/potent-policies-of-empire
lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n04/rahmane-idrissa/coup-contrecouplrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n23/rahmane-idrissa/countries-without-currency
Special outro music from Ali Farka Touré.
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Check out Inside the Second Wave of Feminism: haymarketbooks.org/books/1887-inside-the-second-wave-of-feminism