Architecture, Empire, and Trade

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20th century
A01=Claire Tunstall
A01=Ewan Harrison
A01=Iain Jackson
A01=Michele Tenzon
A01=Rixt Woudstra
Age Group_Uncategorized
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archive
Author_Claire Tunstall
Author_Ewan Harrison
Author_Iain Jackson
Author_Michele Tenzon
Author_Rixt Woudstra
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Capitalism
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=AMX
Category=HBJH
Category=HBTQ
Category=NHH
Category=NHTQ
Congo
COP=United Kingdom
corporations
Decolonisation
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eq_history
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eq_non-fiction
Gambia
Ghana
Global South
Land
Landownership
Language_English
Lever Brothers
Mercantile
modernity
Nigeria
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plantations
Post-colonial
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Forthcoming
River Benue
River Niger
Royal Niger Company
settlements
Sierra Leone
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Transnational
Unilever
West Africa

Product details

  • ISBN 9781350411319
  • Dimensions: 189 x 246mm
  • Publication Date: 20 Feb 2025
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
  • Publication City/Country: GB
  • Product Form: Hardback
  • Language: English
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This open access book tells a new and untold history of the architecture of West Africa in the colonial era, as revealed for the first time through the archives of the United Africa Company (UAC).

From the imperial Royal Niger Company’s charter in the 1890s through to its suave African department stores of the 1960s, the UAC – a British company firmly embedded in the economies of colonialism, extraction, and exploitation – became the largest commercial firm in West Africa, involved in almost every commercial enterprise and sector, and responsible for procuring architecture, infrastructure, and city real-estate across a vast region.

Based on unprecedented access to the UAC archives, this book pieces together a new architectural history of West Africa from the high colonial period through to independence. It reproduces an extraordinary array of newly-uncovered material – from photographs of streetscapes, buildings, and West African everyday life to civic reports and city plans – and presents these alongside critical and theoretical discussions to reveal an alternative account of the architecture of the region which stands in contrast to more conventional state-focused histories. The book explores technological, aesthetic, and political shifts through an architectural lens, and brings to the fore an awareness of the violence and appropriation which underlie each architectural episode, showing how the UAC, as a case-study, presents a unique opportunity to investigate how architecture manifests power, culture, and identity in colonial and post-colonial contexts.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the University of Liverpool.

Iain Jackson is Professor of Architecture at the University of Liverpool, UK; Ewan Harrison is Lecturer at the University of Manchester, UK; Rixt Woudstra is Lecturer at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Michele Tenzon is research associate at University of Liverpool; Claire Tunstall is Global Head of Art Collections, Archives and Records Management at Unilever.