kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
517 803-8839
harrow@msu.edu
Sent: Friday, March 4, 2022 9:50 AM
To: USAAfricaDialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - My Book, "Emirs in London," Published
I'm delighted to announce that my book, Emirs in London: Subaltern Travel and Nigeria's Modernity(Indiana University Press), is now published and is available for purchase on all major online book vendors' websites. It's also in select brick and mortar bookstores in North America.
It's a blessing to witness the release of this book after laboring on it for so long, from research to writing to multiple rounds of rewriting and revision. It's my most laborious book project yet, and I'm proud of the final product.
To get a sense of what the book is about, please see below some generous and flattering blurbs and endorsements written by a group of highly accomplished colleagues from multiple universities.
Here's the book's press summary:
Emirs in London recounts how Northern Nigerian Muslim aristocrats who traveled to Britain between 1920 and Nigerian independence in 1960 relayed that experience to the Northern Nigerian people.
Moses E. Ochonu shows how rather than simply serving as puppets and mouthpieces of the British Empire, these aristocrats leveraged their travel to the heart of the empire to reinforce their positions as imperial cultural brokers, and to translate and domesticate imperial modernity in a predominantly Muslim society.
Emirs in London explores how, through their experiences visiting the heart of the British Empire, Northern Nigerian aristocrats were enabled to define themselves within the framework of the empire. In doing so, the book reveals a unique colonial sensibility that complements rather than contradicts the traditional perspectives of less privileged Africans toward colonialism.
Here's the link to the amazon.com page of the book.
Brilliantly researched and full of archival discoveries, this original book deepens and extends the historiography of imperial travel. Ochonu focuses on a hitherto neglected group of travellers and travel-writers, the emirs and aristocrats of Northern Nigeria who undertook tours of Britain with their entourages, noting and narrating their experiences for audiences back home. Curious explorers and avid ethnographers, they produced lectures and travel narratives in Hausa and English through which they made sense of metropolitan institutions from a comparative aristocratic perspective. Through his careful account of forty years of such narratives, Ochonu reveals the complexities of Muslim aristocrats' relationships with British power, attending to the ambiguity – and occasional contradictoriness – of Northern Nigerian elites as they repurposed colonial relationships into strategic assertions of authority for the postcolonial era.
Stephanie Newell, Professor of English, Yale University
Ochonu's exceedingly fascinating account of becoming (post)colonial approaches the institution of British colonial rule from the consciously crafted political cohabitation maneuvers that lurk in the always self-interest driven reports that Northern Nigerian emirs, deftly named "subaltern aristocrats" by Ochonu, wrote about their travels to London. The analysis uncovers a lot that is new about colonization and colonialism. Emirs in London braids archival gems into a seamless account. Ochonu's distillation of insights in literature, literacy studies, religion, gender studies and even psychology incites new historical thinking about African states. Do not be deceived into thinking that this book is a study of colonial travels.
Adélékè Adéẹ̀kọ́, Humanities Distinguished Professor, Ohio State University.
Emirs in London enriches our appreciation of the cultural capital that travel secured for Northern Nigerian elites as they navigated the colonial landscape and the contradictory affective relationships that sometimes evolved. This very engaging text that brings together Hausa literary traditions, colonialism, modernity, travel writing and Fanon will attract intellectual, social and cultural historians, anthropologists as well as literary scholars. I welcome the conversations this book will spark as we revisit the travel accounts of Nigerian visitors to Britain that are buried in libraries and archives.
Judith A. Byfield
Cornell University
In this beautifully written and conceived book, Moses Ochonu has reversed the traditional imperial lens to reveal a significant new panorama. In a thought-provoking analysis, Ochonu shows how the experiences and writings of the emirs of Northern Nigeria in imperial Britain offer an exploration of 'the other' on the same terms as traditional imperial travel writing. These colonial Nigerian travel writings reveal mutually constituted identities of imperialism, and a strange logic of emotional affect whose resonance endures into the 21st century.
Toby Green
King's College London
How did Africans experience and make sense of colonialism? In Northern Nigeria, regional elites served as crucial intermediaries for British administrators. What convinced them to do so, and how did they persuade others? As this erudite and perceptive study shows, sponsored travel to Britain helped to solidify the personal relations between Northern Nigerian elites and colonial administrators that were at the heart of indirect rule in this "model" African colony. Historians know fairly well how administrators intended for these relationships to function, but we understand far less how they looked through Nigerian eyes. Though the emirs' travels in the UK included events that were highly scripted by their British hosts—tea with dignitaries, photo opportunities, pomp and circumstance—it was the emirs themselves who presented their observations to ordinary Nigerians, in the process imparting lessons for living under British colonialism and its immediate aftermath. How does one sell an unequal political arrangement? This snapshot from many decades ago enriches our understanding of British colonialism as well as our own world of conquest and unequal relations of power.
Lisa A. Lindsay
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Drawing on extensive primary sources and authoritative command of secondary scholarship across several humanities and social science disciplines, Ochonu has written a brilliant book on an intriguing subject in Nigerian studies. With exceptional analysis contained in six riveting chapters — along with an engaging introduction and epilogue— this elegantly written book is pathbreaking. Emirs in London is very well-conceived, insightful, and innovative. It is impressive in its erudition and analytical lucidity. Along with many outstanding scholarly works in Nigerian historical studies, this exceptional book has certainly confirmed Ochonu's reputation as a foremost African historian.
Olufemi Vaughan
Alfred Sargent Lee & Mary Ames Lee Professor of African Studies
Amherst College
Emirs in London is an impressive, informative, and important book that will stimulate anyone who is seriously engaged in the fields of colonial studies, Atlantic world studies, Nigerian studies, and world history. Ochonu's findings indicate that while Northern Nigeria is popularly perceived as a site of Islamic conservatism resistant to modernist schemes, in actuality, its aristocrats were enthusiastic participants in colonial modernization initiatives. The findings also enrich our understanding of black Muslims' mobility and life in imperial and Atlantic spaces, African representations of the imperial metropole, the politics of imperial courtship, colonial mediation, gender relations, and the observational and narrative methodologies of Northern Nigerian metropolitan travel writers.
Mohammed Bashir Salau
Professor of African History
The University of Mississippi
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