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African Boundaries: Barriers, Conduits and Opportunities. Edited by Paul Nugent and A.I. Asiwaju. London: Pinter, 1996. Pp.xii + 276. 47.50. ISBN 1 85567 372 X This is an excellent contribution to the growing literature on borderlands in Africa. Within its ambitious scope, African Boundaries offers insights into pre-colonial and colonial history, war, refugees, veterinary medicine, crop health protection, pastoralism and ecology. The various threads are skilfully woven together by the editors' introductory and concluding remarks, the end result coming admirably close to a comprehensive account of a complex phenomenon.
The chapters interrogate, in their various ways, the paradox of African international boundaries being at once arbitrarily imposed by colonial and postcolonial governments, and actively manipulated by borderland communities themselves. There is a useful tension between the chapters by Simon Katzenellenbogen and Paul Nugent. The former focuses on the imperial agendas of boundary-making in the colonial era, stressing the importance of specific agreements between imperial powers rather than the `much-vaunted' Berlin Conference in 1884-85. Nugent modifies, with West African evidence, Katzenellenbogen's account...