USA Africa Dialogue Series - Obituary: Sydney Kanya-Forstner

From Paul Lovejoy:

Sydney Kanya-Forstner was an esteemed colleague in the Department of History, York University. Educated at Upper Canada College, the University of Toronto and Cambridge, he was appointed to the Department in 1971, serving for a time as Graduate Program Director. He was an authority on French imperial expansion. His first book, The Conquest of the Western Sudan: A Study in French Military Imperialism, Cambridge, 1969, remains the definitive work on French expansion in West Africa. He also published The Climax of French Imperial Expansion 1914-1924 with Christopher M. Andrew in 1981 (Stanford University Press), and with Paul E. Lovejoy, Slavery and its Abolition in French West Africa: The Official Reports of G. Poulet, E. Roume, and G. Deherme (University of Wisconsin, 1994), The Sokoto Caliphate and the European Powers, 1890-1907(Paideuma, 1994) and Pilgrims, Interpreters, and Agents : French Reconnaissance Reports on the Sokoto Caliphate and Borno, 1891-1895 (University of Wisconsin, 1997). Femi J. Kolapo and Kwabena O. Akurang-Parry published a festschrift in his honor in 2007, African Agency and European Colonialism: Latitudes of Negotiations and Containment, Lanham: University Press of America.