the royal african society
June 4, 2009 1 Comment
I generally take the utterances and writings of Richard Dowden, the director of the 100-year old, London-based Royal African Institute, serious. Among others, the Institute also publishes (with Zed Books), “African Arguments,” which is a series of short book-length provocations on key policy questions, as well as the academic journal, “African Affairs“–in the video interview with the website Big Think, above, Dowden makes the claim that it is “the premier journal in the field” (I know a few people who will disagree with that).
Anyway, I must have heard wrong when Dowden, with a straight face and with no apparent hit of irony, then went on to talk about the Institute’s origins in Britain’s colonial project, it’s “distinguished” reputation and the idea of colonialism being “done right.”
Watch for yourself.
I think Dowden is doing a good job in modernising the RAS. The origins of the society are late-Victorian (the idea was Mary Kingsleys). So it was never rooted in quite the same raid-and-trade mentality as the Royal Niger Company and Sir George Taubman Goldie, although Kingsley and Goldie were ‘friends’…