Oxford University Press in Postcolonial Africa: a review essay

Creating Postcolonial Literature: African Writers and British Publishers, by Caroline Davis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, 255 pp. ISBN 9780230369368 £50.Based on extensive oral testimonies and new archival research in, among others, the archives of Oxford University Press, this is a study about an eclectic but now largely forgotten series of postcolonial literature, the Three Crowns series. At the same time the book presents an insightful examination of the activities of three branches of Oxford University Press in Africa over a period of several decades.The Three Crowns series was launched by OUP in 1962. It was terminated in 1976, although it lived on for a short time thereafter, as OUP branches in Africa were allowed to continue to use the Three Crowns name and logo for their locally published literary titles. The series became the vehicle for the international publication of the works of several prominent African writers such as Wole Soyinka, John Pepper Clark, Joe de Graft, Athol Fugard, Oswald Mtshali, Lewis Nkosi, and Leopold Sedar Senghor, among others. Although small, financially unsuccessful and hence short lived, the series, Caroline Davis says, "provides a unique insight into the process of postcolonial literary production and transcultural relations" (p.1). The study also probes into to two broader questions: how did Britain impose and maintain its cultural dominance over Anglophone African literature beyond the end of former colonisation in the continent; and what role was played by British publishers in the creation of African literature in this period of decolonisation?In much of the literature about the relationship between Western publishers and the African writer there have usually been two opposing strands of thought: one which casts foreign publishers as a benevolent influence in the development and growth of a literary culture in Africa, a 'civilising mission', and the other presenting the publishers as agents of cultural imperialism. It is the author's intention to test some of these assertions by closely examining the publishing strategy of the Three Crowns series, describing how the literature in the series was evaluated and selected, and how the books were produced, marketed and sold. In particular she seeks to establish how OUP "assumed a role as both gatekeeper and 'consecrator' of African literature" and "how it attained the power to confer value on the literature, and what the implications of this were for the literature published" (p.5).Part I of the study surveys the historical and contextual background to literary publishing in Africa, which unfolds in four highly detailed chapters that chart and scrutinise OUP's publishing strategies in colonial and postcolonial Africa, and the activities of OUP's branches in Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa. In addition to describing the development of the branches' literary lists, it examines the nature of OUP's vision and cultural mission in Africa, issues such as OUP's sometime special relationship with African governments and heads of state (Jomo Kenyatta, Julius Nyerere, and Kenneth Kaunda all published speeches and memoirs with OUP, although they preferred being published in London rather than by OUP branches in Africa), its strategic association with examination boards, and, in South Africa, OUP's controversial policies and how they coped with the South African government's repressive censorship laws under apartheid.Interestingly, it also reveals what sort of sales and profits African branches generated from branch publications. According to a table reproducing Nigeria branch accounts for the period 1962 to 1978, it shows that in the boom years after 1975 the branch reported very substantial trading surplus figures. peaking in sales of £9 million in 1977 (representing over 20% of OUP's total turnover worldwide of £46 million in that year) and a net profit in excess of £2 million in both 1977 and 1978. The boom in the Nigerian market was, however, short lived, and the boom years were followed by forced divestment in 1978, when OUP was compelled by a change in Nigerian law to sell 60% of its assets in the country, resulting in the formation of a new indigenous company, University Press Limited, in which OUP retained an interest as a shareholder. …