Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Sydney Kanya-Forstner (1940-2017)

May Sydney Kanya-Forstner's soul rest in peace. We pray that God would protect his family members and grant them the fortitude to bear the loss.

Prof Felicia A. D. Oyekanmi Department of Sociology University of Lagos Akoka, Yaba, Lagos Nigeria Tel: {234} 1 7941757 Cell: {234}8056560970

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On Mon, 3/4/17, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Sydney Kanya-Forstner (1940-2017)
To: "dialogue" <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Monday, 3 April, 2017, 5:27








 






From: Chair <chairhis@YORKU.CA>

Date: April 2, 2017 at 4:51:54 PM CST

To: FTFACLIST@YORKU.CA

Subject: Sydney Kanya-Forstner (1940-1917)

Reply-To: Chair <chairhis@YORKU.CA>










Dear historians,


It is with great regret that I must write to inform you
that our former colleague, Sydney Kanya-Forstner, passed
away this past Friday night. As soon as we hear details of
funeral arrangements from Sydney's family, we will pass
these on. 



In the meantime, I've prepared, with Paul
Lovejoy's help, a brief appreciation of Sydney's
many lasting contributions to history, to the Department and
to York University.  I shall prepare a revised version
for the Departmental website, and I would appreciate
receiving comments and reminiscences from colleagues about
what else should be mentioned.



In sadness,  Jonathan


------------


Sydney Kanya-Forstner (1940-2017) was a much esteemed
colleague in the Department of History for no fewer than
thirty-four years. Born in Budapest in 1940 and educated in
Toronto at Upper Canada College, he gained his Honours B.A.
in History at Trinity College,
University of Toronto in 1961. He won a prestigious
Commonwealth Scholarship – as well as a Woodrow Wilson
Fellowship, a Canada Council Fellowship and a Queen
Elizabeth II (Ontario) Scholarship, all declined – to
study for his Ph.D. at King's College, Cambridge,
where he completed his thesis in just four years in 1965.


He was immediately appointed to a four-year Research
Fellowship in History at Gonville and Caius College before
being elected a Fellow and College Lecturer in History at
that same college in 1969. His first book,
The Conquest of the Western Sudan: A Study in French
Military Imperialism (Cambridge University Press, 1969),
was based on his doctoral thesis and remains the definitive
work on French expansion in West Africa. He was tempted back
to Toronto in 1972
to take up an appointment as Associate Professor at History
at York, where he continued to publish a series of
pathbreaking studies on the history of French West Africa
and French imperialism more generally. Notable was the book
that he wrote in collaboration
with Cambridge historian Christopher Andrew in 1981: The
Climax of French Imperial Expansion 1914-1924 (Thames
& Hudson/Stanford University Press). He was promoted to
the rank of Professor in 1982.



By this time, he had established a notable partnership
and rapport with our departmental colleague and African
historian Paul Lovejoy, and together they jointly published
a number of articles and three books in the 1990s:
Slavery and its Abolition in French West Africa: The
Official Reports of G. Poulet, E. Roume, and G. Deherme
(University of Wisconsin Press, 1994),
The Sokoto Caliphate and the European Powers,
1890-1907 (a special issue of
Paideuma: Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde, 1994) and
Pilgrims, Interpreters and Agents: French Reconnaissance
Reports on the Sokoto Caliphate and Borno, 1891-1895
(University of Wisconsin Press, 1997). (Some telling
insights on the nature of their
collaboration and a strong reminiscence of Sydney's wit
may be found in their joint-article, "Editing
Nineteenth-Century Intelligence Reports on the Sokoto
Caliphate and Borno, or the Delights of a Collaborative
Approach",
History in Africa 24, 1997, 195-204, available via
JSTOR.)
During his career at York Sydney taught a number of
courses on 19th/20th century European Imperialism and the
history of Modern Africa at the undergraduate and graduate
levels, but he will arguably be most remembered for
developing and teaching one of the
Department's most popular courses: HIST 1010 6.0, War,
Revolution and Society in the 20th Century. He taught it
first in 1982 and was still lecturing in the course in the
year of his retirement 2005-6, only taking a break for
sabbaticals. The course still
continues as in demand as ever thirty-five years after its
creation.


K-F, as he was usually known, was also active in
administration, serving as Director of the Graduate
Programme in History from 1980 to 1984, where his incisive
intellect and attention to detail saw him appointed
Associate Dean of Graduate Studies from 1983
to 1988. He had served YUFA in a number of roles in his
early years at York, for instance, chairing the negotiations
committee in 1975-77, and served on a number of important
Senate committees during his career. He was always quick to
spot a logical flaw in
motions under discussion at Departmental Council and was
never slow to make a decisive, often witty, intervention to
bring matters to a sensible conclusion.



Throughout his career at York, Sydney was generous in
offering a series of directed readings courses to graduate
students in African history, and as testimony to their
esteem, two of them, Femi J. Kolapo and Kwabena O.
Akurang-Parry, published a Festschrift
in his honour in 2007 to mark his retirement from teaching:
African Agency and European Colonialism: Latitudes of
Negotiations and Containment
(University Press of America).


Sydney made a huge contribution to the Department of
History and to York University. He will be much missed. The
Department's sincerest condolences go out to the
Kanya-Forstner family at this difficult time.







--
Jonathan Edmondson
Professor and Chair
Department of History
Programme in Classical Studies

2140C Vari Hall
York University
4700 Keele Street
Toronto. Ontario.
Canada. M3J 1P3.

Tel.: 416-736-5123 or 416-736-2100, ext. 66966
Fax: 416-736-5836











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