The Partisan

Jeremy Harding

  • The Search for Africa: A History in the Making by Basil Davidson
    Currey, 373 pp, £25.00, March 1994, ISBN 0 85255 719 1

Travelling in West Africa a little over forty years ago, Basil Davidson was shown around the chamber of the new territorial assembly in Bamako, built by the French as a concession to the growing demand for independence in Mali. The chairman of the assembly ‘pointed with a cautious smile to the plaster-white figure of the French state symbol on the chamber wall above his ceremonial chair. “There is Marianne,” said he with another cautious smile but with an echo of laughter in his voice, “and here are we. She so white, and we so black.” ’

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