2025/05/01 by Madina Thiam · 2 voices
Social Sciences · #African Studies and Geopolitics #Anthropological Studies and Insights #African Studies and Ethnography
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/hia.2025.10008
Abstract In 1864, Umar Taal, one of the most consequential figures of nineteenth-century West Africa, perished in Maasina (Mali), a region he had conquered two years prior. Historians have studied the political and intellectual underpinnings of Taal’s last conquest, but not its ramifications inside families. Exploring colonial-era migrations and marriages in my own family in Mali, I suggest intimate history as mode of historical inquiry and writing to elucidate the afterlives of war. I provide a translocal and gendered microhistory of the aftermath of Taal’s jihad, showing how the ripples of past Islamic revolutions shaped the intimacies of twentieth-century family life.