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African Thresholds: Borders and Places of Passage in Africa, c.1450 to Present
Series: - Studies in Global Social History, Volume: 56/5
- Studies in the Social History of the Global South, Volume: 56/5
Volume Editor:
The Open Access publication of this book has been made possible by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
What is a border, and why does it exist? Reappraising a key idea from Arnold van Gennep’s Les rites de passage, this book argues that a border is a threshold, a limen, made to be crossed. African Thresholds studies places of passage spanning from the riverine networks of Senegambia to border-making in colonial Gold Coast and Côte d’Ivoire; from the desert roads of central southern Africa to river heartlands in colonial Togo; from flows of cowrie shells across the Volta River to insurgent borderities in the Lake Chad. In a time when state borders are increasingly shut, this book aims to show us that a border is made by those who cross it as much as by those who stand by it.
Contributors are: Ettore Morelli, Fernando Mouta, Pierluigi Valsecchi, María José Pont Cháfer, Giulia Casentini, and Aimé Raoul Sumo Tayo.
What is a border, and why does it exist? Reappraising a key idea from Arnold van Gennep’s Les rites de passage, this book argues that a border is a threshold, a limen, made to be crossed. African Thresholds studies places of passage spanning from the riverine networks of Senegambia to border-making in colonial Gold Coast and Côte d’Ivoire; from the desert roads of central southern Africa to river heartlands in colonial Togo; from flows of cowrie shells across the Volta River to insurgent borderities in the Lake Chad. In a time when state borders are increasingly shut, this book aims to show us that a border is made by those who cross it as much as by those who stand by it.
Contributors are: Ettore Morelli, Fernando Mouta, Pierluigi Valsecchi, María José Pont Cháfer, Giulia Casentini, and Aimé Raoul Sumo Tayo.
Ettore Morelli, Ph.D. (2019), SOAS, is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Universität Basel. His research focuses on the history of central southern Africa from Mapungubwe to the lifaqane (c. 1200–1830s). He has published on various themes in African history.
"For readers engaged with borderlands, mobility, and West African history, the volume offers substantial insights that meaningfully contribute to the expansion and refinement of the concepts of borders and thresholds." – Cristina Udelsmann Rodrigues, Centre for African and Development Studies, University of Lisbon, in: Connections. A Journal for Historians and Area Specialists 06.02.2026.
Preface
Lists of Figures and Maps
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: The Threshold
Ettore Morelli
1 Merchants without Borders: Lançados and Luso-Africans in Upper Guinea, 1450s–1600s
Fernando Mouta
2 Gyzikoa: Twin-Folk and Threshold on the Orange River Border, Southern Africa 1686–1796
Ettore Morelli
3 ‘No Palaver about 1 or 2 Villages with 10 or 20 inhabitants’
Pierluigi Valsecchi
4 Thresholds, Borders and Cowries: the Problem of Small Change in West Africa and the Spread of Single Currencies in Northern Ghana
María José Pont Cháfer
5 Border Crossing, Strategies of Resistance and Colonial Violence: Narratives from Northern Ghana and Togo (1920s–1940s)
Giulia Casentini
6 Borderities and Freedom in Colonial and Post-Colonial African Borderlands: a Case Study of the Borders in the Lake Chad Basin
Aimé Raoul Sumo Tayo
Conclusion: Places of Passage
Ettore Morelli
Bibliography
Index
Lists of Figures and Maps
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: The Threshold
Ettore Morelli
1 Merchants without Borders: Lançados and Luso-Africans in Upper Guinea, 1450s–1600s
Fernando Mouta
2 Gyzikoa: Twin-Folk and Threshold on the Orange River Border, Southern Africa 1686–1796
Ettore Morelli
3 ‘No Palaver about 1 or 2 Villages with 10 or 20 inhabitants’
Pierluigi Valsecchi
4 Thresholds, Borders and Cowries: the Problem of Small Change in West Africa and the Spread of Single Currencies in Northern Ghana
María José Pont Cháfer
5 Border Crossing, Strategies of Resistance and Colonial Violence: Narratives from Northern Ghana and Togo (1920s–1940s)
Giulia Casentini
6 Borderities and Freedom in Colonial and Post-Colonial African Borderlands: a Case Study of the Borders in the Lake Chad Basin
Aimé Raoul Sumo Tayo
Conclusion: Places of Passage
Ettore Morelli
Bibliography
Index
This book will be of particular interest to journalists, (state and NGO) policy-makers, historians, political scientists, and anthropologists.