Nation-making at the Border: Zambian Diplomacy in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Location
Danford Room, 2nd floor, Arts Building (R16 on the campus map)
Dates
Wednesday 27 September 2017 (16:30-18:30)
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How and where were new African national identities made in the moment of decolonisation? Focusing on the periphery rather than the centre provides an insightful answer to this question: imposing national identity in border regions with mixed and mobile populations, dynamic migrant flows and cross-border linkages was a task fraught with contradiction.

This paper explores the establishment of Zambian political and diplomatic space in the Democratic Republic of Congo, specifically on the activities of Zambian political and diplomatic representatives in the southern Congolese city of Elisabethville, close to the Zambian border, in the early-to-mid 1960s.

Miles Larmer is Professor of African History at the University of Oxford. He has written extensively on the political and social history of Zambia and Central and Southern Africa in the late twentieth century. His most recent book, co-authored with Erik Kennes, is 'The Katangese Gendarmes and War in Central Africa: Fighting their way home' (2016). He is currently directing an ERC-funded research project entitled 'Comparing the Copperbelt: Political Culture and Knowledge Production in Central Africa'.

Speaker: Miles Larner (University of Oxford)

Part of the Africa Talks Seminar Series Autumn 2017.

All welcome. 

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