The most recommended decolonization books

This book uses a transpacific, decolonial, and interdisciplinary approach to study the connections between Latin America and East Asia, concentrating on contemporary commodity extraction and exchanges. The book explores South-South exchanges without Global North metropolitan mediations, thus recentering East Asia-Latin America as an epistemological lens through which to consider these sophisticated networks and produce new knowledge. In my view, the originality of this book resides first in the interdisciplinary connection it makes between the decolonial project and transpacific studies, and secondly, in the two-pronged approach from two unfortunately often disconnected academic perspectives: Latin American and East Asian Studies. 

Ngugi wa Thiong'o is not just a celebrated writer, but a respected critic of African literature, known for his advocacy of African languages. In this book, wa Thiong'o provides an exploration of slavery’s effects on the historical, cultural, and literary lives of Africans. His focus is on the fragmentations that slavery created in African identities and how these play out in literature. The book advocates for a re-membering of fragments created by slavery. I think this book – and frankly any work by wa Thiong'o – is a necessary addition to the collection of any reader interested in African literature, particularly the legacy of slavery and colonialism in African writings.  

Owen White’s excellent book has given Algerian wine the place it deserves in the wine history of both Algeria and France. Wine production, introduced to Algeria by French settlers in the late 1800s, was an anomaly because the majority Muslim population of the colony did not drink. But it became essential to the French wine industry because it was commonly blended with the then-anemic wines of southern France to make wines with colour and strength. Even so, many French wine producers regarded Algeria as a rival and there was a constant tension between producers who needed Algerian wine and those who resented it. It was resolved when Algeria won independence from France and the wine industry there went into steep decline. 

I loved this novel about a young woman growing up in what was then Rhodesia. I’m a total sucker for coming-of-age stories.

Tambu, the narrator, is a village girl who is chosen by her uncle, the headmaster of the missionary school in the larger town, to become a scholar and hope of the family. I love how we get Tambu's experience and determination, of course, but also her careful analysis of how to change yet stay true to her roots.

The author doesn’t explain a lot for those of us who don't know the region, but we get what we need to know about a world where relationships are everything, and responsibilities go in many directions.

As part of an international project comparing imperial retreat and the wars of decolonization (or national liberation), I had to do extensive reading in this growing field.

Although there have been some important works, including a recent Pulitzer Prize winner, Martin Thomas’s book was one of the first and remains one of the best. The book’s title summarizes the choice facing post-World War 2 British and French leaders: did they attempt to defend colonial rule or abandon their overseas empires?

In both countries, the overseas colonies were seen as essential both economically and for national prestige. With impressive research and even more impressive fairness, Thomas challenges long-held interpretations that emphasized British moderation and managed decolonization with alleged French repression.

He also covers the anticolonial movements in both empires, emphasizing both their local roots, their shared international connections, and how the liberation movements played such an important role in Cold War… show more.

This is the first book, following the opening of the archives thirty years after independence, to examine how bills of rights came to be incorporated into the independence constitutions of Britain’s former colonial territories.

It shows why and how, after the unfortunate political experience of an independent Ghana under Nkrumah, the Colonial Office foisted bills of rights on the independence constitutions of its colonial territories. A case of British do as I say and not as I do.

In this superb, prize-winning book, Cooper shows that despite France’s often gruesome treatment of its African colonies, its postwar leaders tried to make amends. After taking power in 1958, Charles de Gaulle gave each of France’s African territories three choices: 1) full departmental status within the French Republic (à la Martinique and Guadeloupe); 2) internal autonomy and democratic self-government in a newly dubbed French Community modeled on the British Commonwealth; 3) complete independence with a cutoff of all financial assistance. Every territory voted for option 2, except Guinea, which chose independence. Although the Community option ultimately fell apart, Cooper shows nonetheless that there was nothing inevitable about the devolution of France’s African empire into a series of independent nation-states.

Chakrabarty’s monograph is a classic work of postcolonial theory.

Basically, it shows that despite their pretensions to universality, a lot of the humanities and social sciences have been founded on unexamined Eurocentric perspectives on world history. While modernity is often held up as a universal standard, Chakrabarty unmasks the widely held assumptions about “sovereignty,” “disenchanted space,” and “secular time,” as European constructs.

Famously, he also shows how the transition to capitalism was an act of translation that changed the way people saw the world and their relationship to each other. This book can be hard going, but it is very much crucial reading as it really undercuts some of the most widely held myths of modernity. 

Not so much the book that I have read but most, if not all, of the essays that will be contained therein. These are true classics written by one of the greatest minds of the 20th century: Anibal Quijano.

The words of caution expressed by this world-famous Peruvian intellectual resonate with me today, precisely because they presaged the age of “untruth” that we are living in.

Quijano was something that we rarely find these days: A true humanist who coined pivotal concepts such as “coloniality of power” and “coloniality of knowledge” that are celebrating a much-deserved global revival as a part of the “decolonization” movement that has merged with several other global movements for social and political emancipation.

Duke University Press will publish the best and the brightest essays of Quijano in the next year under the poignant title: Aníbal Quijano: Foundational Essays on the Coloniality of Power –… show more.

This is the best account I know of the double bind that artists subjected to settler forms of colonialism have had to endure. Taking Nigerian modern art as his case study, this eminent Africanist art historian shows how, on the one hand, colonial officials attempted to abolish the indigenous artistic heritage as "savage," or "primitive," while simultaneously blocking African artists from a European art education. To become modern required a negotiation between these dual limitations and ended up producing something very different from Western modernism.