A01=Philip Janzen
African diaspora
African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church
Aime Cesaire
archives
Author_Philip Janzen
Barbados
British colonial administration
British Guiana
Category=JBSL
Category=JP
Category=NHH
Category=NHTQ
colonial archives
colonial education
colonialism
Cunliffe Hoyte
David McNeil-Stewart
diasporic imagination
Edith Goring
Edouard Glissant
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Felix Eboue
Fily Dabo Sissoko
Francis Simmons
Frantz Fanon
French colonial administration
Gold Coast
Henri Jean-Louis Baghio'o
Henri Jean-Louis Baghio’o
intellectual history
interdisciplinary
Jamaica
Joseph Britton
Kamua Brathwaite
labor migration
Lebert Veitch
Martinique
migration
Pan-Africanism
Port of Spain
Rene Maran
Trinidad
Product details
- ISBN 9781478031925
- Weight: 445g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 06 Jun 2025
- Publisher: Duke University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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In An Unformed Map, Philip Janzen traces the intellectual trajectories of Caribbean people who joined the British and French colonial administrations in Africa between 1890 and 1930. Caribbean administrators grew up in colonial societies, saw themselves as British and French, and tended to look down on Africans. Once in Africa, however, they were doubly marginalized-excluded by Europeans and unwelcome among Africans. This marginalization was then reproduced in colonial archives, where their lives appear only in fragments. Drawing on sources beyond the archives of empire, from dictionaries and language exams to a suitcase full of poems, Janzen considers how Caribbean administrators reckoned with the profound effects of assimilation, racism, and dislocation. As they learned African languages, formed relationships with African intellectuals, and engaged with African cultures and histories, they began to rethink their positions in the British and French empires. They also created new geographies of belonging across the Atlantic, foundations from which others imagined new political horizons. Ultimately, Janzen offers a model for reading across sources and writing history in the face of archival fragmentation.
Philip Janzen is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Florida.
