Borders as Bridges, not Barriers

Anthony I. Asiwaju
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Abstract

In the year 1960 alone, a total of 17 African countries gained flag independence, followed in quick succession by many others in the following years, invariably validating the euphoria that the 1960s was the decade of independence for Africa.With a plethora of former colonial possessions of European countries gaining independence, there was palpable anxiety,if not outright expectation, that the new African nation-states would explode, combust and convulse violently in an orgyof inter-state bloodbath on a continental scale. It was apparent that the territorial states that colonial adventure had created and bequeathed to Africans were anything but durable,1 and the boundaries that separated or ‘sliced’ (apologies to Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka) them into new nation-states were not only artificial and arbitrary but had scant regard for ethnographic realities on the ground, often splitting or sundering the same peoples between several territorial states and corralling diverse and hitherto un-integrated ethnic nations into the same compact. Hence what Professor Anthony Asiwaju has famously referred to as ‘partitioned Africans.’
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边界是桥梁,而不是障碍
仅在1960年一年,就有17个非洲国家获得了国旗独立,随后几年又有许多其他国家迅速获得独立,毫无例外地证实了人们对1960年代是非洲独立十年的兴奋。随着大量欧洲国家的前殖民地获得独立,人们明显感到焦虑,如果不是直接预期的话,新的非洲民族国家将在大陆范围内爆发、燃烧和剧烈动荡,引发国家间的血腥屠杀。很明显,殖民冒险创造并遗留给非洲人的领土国家绝不是持久的,将它们分割或“分割”成新的民族国家的边界(向诺贝尔奖获得者沃勒·索因卡教授道歉)不仅是人为的和武断的,而且很少考虑到当地的人种学现实。经常分裂或分裂相同的民族在几个领土国家之间,并将不同的和迄今为止未整合的民族国家聚集在同一个契约中。因此,安东尼·阿西瓦朱(Anthony Asiwaju)教授提出了著名的“被分割的非洲人”。
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Africa Review of Books, Volume 8, n° 2, 2012 Africa Review of Books, Volume 11, n° 1, 2015 Africa Review of Books, volume 14, n° 1, 2018 Africa Review of Books, volume 14, n° 2, 2018 La CFAO et le commerce en Afrique
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